This already exists with rubber stamp FISA courts (a rejection rate of 0.03 percent) for citizens and non-citizens. It is just a difference of degree and scale (the APIization of everything).
There are also other workarounds to FISA courts including the “willful“ volunteering of information and tools (or else), using the NSA and their tools, and other foreign “friendly” collaborators like the Five Eyes, or German intelligence etc...
I agree that this is too low and is a sign of rubber stamp-iness, but what would be the right rejection rate to make you feel more comfortable about the FISA process?
Agencies come to the court with what they think is a rock solid case, so it's not entirely outrageous that the court would have a very high approval rate. See other similar stats like the conviction rate by federal prosecutors (93%+), where they only drag a defendant into court with very good reason.
> Agencies come to the court with what they think is a rock solid case
I think the rubber stamp reputation of the FISA courts undermines this assumption. Are 99.7% of cases ~really~ ironclad? Building a rock solid case takes a lot of work and if the FISA courts aren't actually going to scrutinize the evidence, I expect that the people bringing these cases will take advantage of that.
Having worked with people who bring cases to FISA, they spend a ton of time ensuring they are ironclad before they bother bringing them to FISA.
Previously I had assumed it was a lot of rubber-stamping, however the folks I worked with frequently bemoaned about how incredibly difficult and time consuming it was to get a FISA warrant.
I will assume good faith in your comment. I don't think you were "fed lies" or that there's some soros deep state conspiracy going on.
That being said, the approval rate for the court is pretty shocking. If this isn't a rubber stamp court, I don't know what is. Their approval rate on 41,000+ warrants in 40+ years is 99.97%.
I don't think the notion that each of those 41,000+ warrants were air tight, or wouldn't be rejected by other normal (read: public, transparent, democratic) courts, passes the smell test.
I would be curious to know what the approval rate for regular search/arrest warrants is too.
>> I agree that this is too low and is a sign of rubber stamp-iness, but what would be the right rejection rate to make you feel more comfortable about the FISA process?
Whether that is due to “very good reasons” or the possibility
that prosecutors have many options of how many charges to bring and what degree of charge is debatable.
The word choice "very good reason" in the parent comment isn't in regards to anyone's view of the ethics of a particular case. A different way of phrasing the parent comment would be prosecutors only pursue cases that they think are winnable, given the evidence available.
Foreigners living in the US also have to renew their visas or even green cards. Do you think giving USCIS their social media accounts doesn't have a chilling effect on their ability to criticize the government?
Should green card holders not be allowed to criticize the government?
The current rules for immigrants require "any account names ... over the previous five years" so an immigrant could be denied entry for failing to provide the account name for a deleted account.
I submitted a DS-160 application for a B1/B2 this past Friday and which asks for all social media handles in use over the past 5 years. The implication is that this a request for accounts you've used, not those that are still "active".
Yes, such a requirement for my visits to the US would also motivate me to not open any new social media accounts if I was planning on visiting the US within the next five years.
Probably not, I'm a pragmatist. The US government asking for social media handles is a significant disincentive that brings the value of many, but not all, social media accounts below zero.
Just because you "delete" the accounts doesn't necessarily mean they are deleted. The social media companies most likely just set the flag in the "deleted" column. Not only that, it's almost a certainty that some government entity is vacuuming all the social media data anyways. So even if you delete it, the government would still have your social media data.
If people you know visit the US and they hand over their social media info, then your interaction with these people will be visible to the government. Social media is a very insidious beast.
Also, suddenly deleting a bunch of social media accounts before traveling to the US would probably raise some red flags.
My goal isn't to make it impossible for the US government to get the information I've already given to social media companies - it's to do my part to remove the incentive for the US government to ask for social media details in the first place. If everyone outside of the USA had the same policy, it would devastate American social media companies, and cause the government policy to be entirely counterproductive. By not closing my social media accounts, I'd be complicit in incentivizing the government to ask for their details.
> Also, suddenly deleting a bunch of social media accounts before traveling to the US would probably raise some red flags.
I'd delete my social media accounts as soon as the policy is changed, which is likely to be months or years prior to my next visit to the US.
I hadn't heard about this law. Seems it came into effect after I last filed a DS-160 in June 2019. Can anyone provide a reasonable justification for any non-nefarious reason for requiring the social media handles of all visa applicants?
It seems pointless at best. Downright evil at worst.
You might be Facebook friends with someone linked to terrorism, or you might have Liked posts from terrorism-linked groups. Or maybe there's a specific person who the government suspects has recently joined on with some terrorist cell, and if you're their Facebook friend, that is likely fairly interesting to some investigators.
I don't expect that this sort of question catches a lot of serious terrorists, but if they don't ask, you come blow something up, and you did have such immediately discoverable information on social media, it'd be really bad press for the folks who are supposed to stop that sort of thing.
I don't think it's a particularly controversial statement that lots of extra information about who you know and what your interests are would be at least a mildly useful signal for determining if you're a threat, but I doubt it's worth the intrusion and the risk of more nefarious uses.
It seems like 90% of the comments here didn't read the article and think it has to do with section 230, which Twitter is also in the news for right now.
Regardless of how you feel about their moderation policies, if you care about free speech you should at least be on their side with this one. Requesting social media handles from visa applicants does chill speech. As a visa holder, I've thought long and hard over whether I should post political comments or photos from protests on social media. If you truly care about free speech, be consistent and care about that too.
It doesn't only chill speech, it indicates that a decision about whether to let the person into the country will be based on their speech. Speech isn't "free" if the government is going to punish you for it.
No. The First Amendment applies to everyone. It applies to American law on American soil, on foreign soil, to citizens, and to non-citizens. There are some exceptions, particularly for illegal immigrants, but in general foreign nationals have the same Constitutional rights as American citizens.
It's not even hard to find legal scholar opinions stating such:
Guantanamo Bay being a violation of due process and habeus corpus is one of the big problems with it. The problem is that it's excruciatingly difficult to have standing and jurisdiction in these cases, which is one of the ways the government skirts accountability.
Edit: I replied before your edit; I will leave this comment as-is, however.
Given some forms of speech are illegal and the government would have an interest in preventing people engaging in those forms of speech, why would denying someone based on their speech be a negative thing? I've seen a few people try to argue around this by saying the specific types of speech that are illegal (and which most everyone agree should be illegal) don't actually count as speech, but that feels like playing semantics.
There is a concern that government will make their judgments based on something other than illegal speech, but that is a larger concern with the government in general and selective enforcement of laws. Consider the guy who was publishing 3d weapon designs. Officially he wasn't punished for his speech but for other crimes (which just so happens to be one of the few strict liability crimes so the government doesn't have to prove mens rea), but he was given special focus that appears to have been because of his legal speech. Selective enforcement of laws already leads to a chilling effect on speech that is a much larger concern as it impacts all citizens, residents, immigrants, and potentials thereof, not just visa applicants.
There's plenty of things that are illegal, but that we don't collect the maximum amount of evidence at the border to detect.
For example rape is illegal, and collecting DNA samples at the border might deter or detect rapists. Some drugs are illegal, and hair sample drug tests might deter or detect drug users. Money laundering is illegal, and requiring online banking credentials be handed over might deter or detect money launderers.
As it's at the border, there would be no constitutional concerns.
And yet we don't do these things - why do you think that is?
Cost and backlog. Take DNA, we aren't even able to work through the existing backlog of DNA collected specifically surrounding allegations of crimes. For many crimes that aren't at the level of seriousness of murder we don't even collect DNA from a crime scene.
>Money laundering is illegal, and requiring online banking credentials be handed over would deter money launderers.
We do far more than that to stop money laundering and not merely at the border.
To say nothing of the many other types of searches we already perform at the border.
a - give up your details when required to do so by the government.
b - lie on a government form and/or to a government official
If you choose b, then at any point in the future it's discovered that you did lie, then this can make life very very difficult. Not only can your Visa be cancelled, it can mean you're never again able to visit the US. It means uprooting your entire life to return to the country you were born in.
There's been plenty of stories, some posted here, where this has happened to someone who either through a mistake, or even no fault of their own - has ended up in hot water and their Visa withdrawn.
Using Tor and successfully remaining truly anonymous are non-trivial things, and endangering your livelihood and ability to remain in the US is a large risk.
This ignores the genuine possibility of prosecution for making false statements and/or lying to a government official.
At the point your threat model includes nation states of note — in my opinion, any recommendation of Tor should acknowledge why Tor would not increase threats instead of reducing them.
>As a visa holder, I've thought long and hard over whether I should post political comments or photos from protests on social media.
If you're a visa holder, you should refrain from taking political action in the country you're staying. The US is pretty lenient on this matter, but the majority of countries are much more strict.
As a visa holder you should generally respect the laws of your host country. To the extent that the laws of your host allow you to participate in political action you should feel entirely free to. In the case of the US I'm 95% certain that the laws allow you to engage in political speech.
Obviously you should not misrepresent yourself as a citizen of the host country, but that's just part of the general "lying is bad" moral prohibition.
While this is a good thought, and in theory you should be correct, it is just not really how it works (I can only speak for my experiences with the US, and with TN work status). The majority of US citizens do not understand the visa/status/immigration process. Many people seem to think that there is a list of checkboxes, and if you hit them, you can get your visa/status. In practice it does not always work that way.
The individual officer (wither USCIS or CBP) has, for the most part, full discretion each time you want to enter the US. It does not matter if you have a visa, and it does not matter if you have been admitted with the same documentation 5 times in the past. As well, the reason for your denial does not really have to be provided in a clear fashion, and there is not much of an appeal mechanism. If you were to post an opinion critical of a given administration, or a given action, and your adjudicating officer sees it and disagrees with you, there is really nothing stopping them from denying you entry based on your personal opinion.
So yes:
- it is perfectly within my rights to make a twitter post that I disagree with something.
- I should feel comfortable doing that without fear that it will be used it against me
I discovered this with green card as well, one of the conditions to keep it is to not have permanent residence abroad. What this means is completely up to the border agent talking to you on arrival. There have been grandmas that have been away for 20 year that were fine, and there have been people coming back after 3 months that were in trouble. I once came back a month after last time and was almost denied. Border controls are just very arbitrary, and it is up to the mood of the agent.
A border agent alone cannot rescind a green card (although there have been cases where they've tricked non-native English speakers into signing forms that do rescind them: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/30/trump-travel...). At worst they can let you in but send your case to an immigration judge who might. But the judge is an expert in the law in a way the border agent is not.
True, but you cannot leave the court while waiting for the court case which is usually months and having this come up as a possibility is a terrifying thing.
The problem is that it really matters the mood of that border agents. I have probably entered the us more than 20 times, and that one bad experience left me feeling super helpless.
> you should not misrepresent yourself as a citizen of the host country, but that's just part of the general "lying is bad" moral prohibition
There is actually a specific question of this nature on the application for US citizenship. So, it's more than just moral prohibition, it could result in a rejection of citizenship.
They also asked me about this during my in-person citizenship interview.
Reddit has bugging me relentlessly to add an email address to my account for the past year. Sometimes, the banner can't even be dismissed. I'm not sure if it's related to this case or just general tracking and list building, or maybe even actual account security as they suggest.
It feels a bit weird to engage in politics in a country you are not a citizen of, though. It's good that it's allowed and it shouln't be impeded but it feels a bit like when you go to a friend's house and tell them how they should educate their children differently.
>As a visa holder you should generally respect the laws of your host country.
... and terms of your visa.
>To the extent that the laws of your host allow you to participate in political action you should feel entirely free to.
You are taking a risk that a citizen of that country does not. If a citizen gets arrested as part of riot/protest control, they'll get released in a short amount of time. You, as a visa-holder, may get your visa revoked, lose your job and get deported. You may have issues with visa renewal or reentry (because typically visa terms allow for arbitrary revocation and lots of discretion is given to border agents and issuing officer). But it's your life. Take any risk you want.
Nice PR move, tacking onto a lawsuit from a year ago in support of free speech.
That aside I personally think Reddit has far more serious speech challenges to overcome than Twitter. It's too easy to manipulate certain viewpoint to always appear on the front page. Especially blatant during election years. Too weird for me to visit.
I enjoy Reddit when logged in and unsubscribed from all the large default subreddits. I’m always shocked at how different it is when I accidentally view it logged out. The home page feels almost like a piece of carefully curated political performance art in order to somehow get a result allegedly from folks across the nation that is so perfectly aligned with a very specific agenda and advertising platform.
Certain subs are heavily curated. You will immediately get banned if you go against the mods view of the world. And they do this to even the most innocent posts.
If you are used to these subs, as soon as you leave your perfect bubble you will see a Reddit full of (to your eyes) lies and deception. Of course the same applies to outsiders visiting your sub, they will be shocked by the amount of lies casually presented as facts.
That's why everyone should subscribe to at least two subreddits they don't agree with.
> That's why everyone should subscribe to at least two subreddits they don't agree with.
Certain subs will automatically ban you if you ever participate in another sub mods of the former sub do not like. r_offmychest will automatically ban you at the first comment for instance.
This very thing does prevent good faith people from participating in subs that are antagonistic.
It's against reddit rules but admins do no care. Admins do not care about brigading either (a sub encouraging the harassment of another sub or person), unless some specific subs/users are victim. r_ch* p* tr* ph* * s* regularly engaged in the bullying of users and subs until they attacked the wrong person and got quarantined.
I don't care what the rules are, only that they are enforced very differently depending on who violates them and who is the victim.
> r_ch* p* tr* ph* * s* regularly engaged in the bullying of users and subs until they attacked the wrong person and got quarantined.
I'll admit I don't really understand the practice of censoring things that aren't clearly swear words from context, but in this case you've censored it so much (and I suspect thrown in spaces so Hacker News doesn't italicize bits of it) that I really have no idea what you're talking about.
I frequently read the specific sub he censored, and even I could not decipher the name initially.
The sub is chapotraphouse, based upon the podcast of the same name. I've never listened to the podcast, I tried once and within a few minutes found it obnoxious. As somebody interested in political theory/history/whatever label you want to apply to "the study of power structures", I often find the perspective of the sub interesting, and can usually be summed up as "21st century communists in America".
>That's why everyone should subscribe to at least two subreddits they don't agree with.
So the solution to reddit's partisan and out of touch politics is to consume more of it, but make sure that you have a good cross section of dumb viewpoints?
I have a better suggestion: find political insight literally anywhere other than reddit. It's a naive place with all the perspective and context of a 15 year old first discovering the world and trying to express opinions about it.
I came here to say this. Mods on most major subreddits exercise their own politics and force their views on everyone.
What makes matters even worse is that there is a very narrow group of users being mods on the most influential subs.
These are perfect conditions for creating world view bubbles and what always baffled me is that reddit admins don't seem to care.
It looks like Reddit wants their platform to be like this.
Lots of subreddits will ban you if you post on a subreddit they don’t like..
Past totally apolitical random subs like /ski it is just silly. Reading stuff right now going on about US protests I can easily see how anyone with 2 brain cells can write a bot that will creat posts driving certain agenda. If you have few hundred minimum wage posters on staff and some tools it should be really trivial to creat a lot of shit
Not to mention that reddit basically pushed the_donald to its own website by removing all the mods and only allowing new ones they help handpick. Which has been zero to the best of my knowledge.
I’m actually surprised with how good the software powering theDonald dot win has become. I stalk them to see what kind of bananas they are throwing around and it’s a more pleasant experience than reddit is these days.
To be fair The_Donald was not really the champion of free speach themselves. They did absolutely everything they could to silence anyone who did not 110% agree with their views.
I assume you believe it to be left orchestrated. My guess? The overwhelming majority of young people (and people overall, though not by nearly the same margin) are left leaning or very left. It's probably just a demographics thing.
I would argue this is precisely the impression they’re trying to manufacture. There’s a vast and stark difference between the Reddit of today and the Reddit of 2016. The viewpoints of tens or hundreds of millions of people have been systematically removed from the site in the last 4 or so years in one of the most aggressive and vast campaigns of censorship and manipulation I’ve ever personally seen on the internet.
It's not more diverse on unmoderated platform it's the opposite. Unmoderated platform (like chans) mostly attract those who despise any censorship, that's far from everybody.
It's impossible to have a diverse opinion when the range of acceptable opinions is enforced from on high on threat of banishment. At least the worst that will happen on an average chan is that people will yell at you.
I used 4chan a lot and got to know a lot of people of a subcommunity that started there nearly a decade ago, and "4chan has become an alt-right hellhole and I don't go back because of that" became a common enough position among them over the last few years. I get the impression from a few of the progressive online communities I've dipped into that there's a number of ex-4channers that got sick of the culture shift at 4chan, but it's hard to quantify. A lot of people on Mastodon use it specifically because it has more protective rules than Twitter.
I don't think people like to talk too much about why they leave online hangouts, because it's like admitting defeat, because people still at the place won't sympathize with you because they either disagree with your criticisms or think you're slandering the place (or else they'd have already left too), and because outsiders who agree with your criticisms of the place may have other criticisms of the place and judge you for being associated with or expecting differently of the place.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories but if I'm told to watch my unconscious biases in check then maybe social media sites, their admins, and their moderators should do the same in regards to conservative thought on their sites.
>but if I'm told to watch my unconscious biases in check
Assuming this phrase is about biases about race, then this is a dumb comparison. Biases about race and minorities are different than biases about political positions and opinions. Political positions aren't a protected class.
It is due to systematic rule breaking even after multiple warnings. If you break the rules of HN you get banned after a while. And if there were sub-HNs here and one would take almost all the moderation time it wouldn't exist for long.
Also, if it is about a board usually called "TD" that one is quarantined, not banned.
That’s certainly a good argument for not using Reddit, but there is absolutely no requirement that Reddit be neutral in the law or in the first amendment.
That is the debate over Sec 230 though, with many people saying that if a platform wants to enjoy the immunity granted under sec 230 they need to be neutral, failure to do so means they lose that Sec 230 Immunity.
This would mean any moderation makes them liable as a publisher as under current law if you do not have Sec 230 immunity then the only other way to avoid liability to not do any moderation at all of user generated content (or to prohibit user generated content)
> with many people saying that if a platform wants to enjoy the immunity granted under sec 230 they need to be neutral, failure to do so means they lose that Sec 230 Immunity.
Who's saying that? That's very much not what section 230 says. And as a change to the law to do this would eliminate all social networks (along with newspaper comment sections and similar) it is highly unlikely to ever go anywhere.
None of what you said is actually true; Section 230 does not in any way require neutrality in order to gain its protections. The law is very clear about this, and the courts have been very clear about this.
Heck, we’ve been over this before on HN multiple times this past week; 230 does not require neutrality.
Well the current debate is on if it SHOULD not if it does
The secondary debate is on if the FCC has the legal authority to make a rule that it does or if that would have to come from congress
My personal opinion is that Congress should amend the CDA to state that any Public Company that wants to be considered a platform under 230 should be required to follow the First amendment of the US Constitution as if they were a governmental agency in their moderation policies for United States based Users. This would still allow them to moderate illegal, violent, and other content, but prohibit political bias that is rampant on all the major platforms
> Well the current debate is on if it SHOULD not if it does
Then say that instead of saying that 230 means they “need” to be neutral.
As far as “should”, the answer is a hard no. It is not wise or prudent to inject the government into regulation of private speech to achieve short term political aims.
And yes, your plan is an attempt to regulate speech, snuck in via the back door. You would give the government the ability to decide which forms of protected speech receive extra special protections, creating a 3 tiered system. It is wholly unconstitutional, and represents a massive growth in governmental power. Hard pass.
>>Then say that instead of saying that 230 means they “need” to be neutral.
umm, read the entire line.. I clearly states "many people say that is... then they need" in this context that is clearly an opinion that people are taking on CDA 230,
>the answer is a hard no. It is not wise or prudent to inject the government into regulation of private speech to achieve short term political aims.
The very fact that CDA230 exisist is government injecting itself into the market place, it is providing a liablity shield.
your statement is akin to the people holding a sign saying "keep the government out of my social security"
We are talking about reforms to an existing regulation, if you want the government out of it, then CDA should be repealed in its entirety
>You would give the government the ability to decide which forms of protected speech receive extra special protections
Incorrect, forcing companies to abide by the 1st amendment would in no way grant the government the authority to decide which forms of speech is protected, that is not how constitutional law works
>Hard pass.
Well it is hard pass from me in allowing Authoritarian left wing Silicon Valley companies that enjoy market dominance largely on the back of government regulations that prevent competition in the market place to control public discourse in a way that is clearly biased and has the objective to rig national elections in favor of a single political party
To be clear I would equally support a total repeal of the CDA and have no liability shield for these corporations. This would likely return us to Open Protocols and decentralization which I would prefer anyway. The world was a better place before Twitter and Facebook
Anything that ends Silicon Valley's reign over human communications is a Win in my book
> umm, read the entire line.. I clearly states "many people say that is... then they need" in this context that is clearly an opinion that people are taking on CDA 230,
You used weasel words to imply that 230 requires neutrality, which it clearly does not. If you want to make a prudential argument about what the law should do, do it directly. Don’t hide behind “many people”.
> The very fact that CDA230 exists is government injecting itself into the market place
No, 230 is allowing the market to decide, not the courts. That in fact is what judicial conservatism is supposed to be about; letting the markets decide and not the courts. Without 230, all online action would be subject to civil lawsuit, and I personally don’t want the judiciary to have final say over what is and is not allowed online.
> Incorrect, forcing companies to abide by the 1st amendment would in no way grant the government the authority to decide which forms of speech is protected.
You have already said that companies should be allowed to moderate violent speech; except most forms of violent speech are actually protected! So you are saying that the government should shield some protected speech, but not others. Where, pray tell, do you draw the line? And who draws it? And how do you survive the constitutional challenge from say, porn makers who argue that their protected speech should also be censorship proof?
> allowing Authoritarian left wing Silicon Valley companies that enjoy market dominance largely on the back of government regulations
This is the kind of argument that works well on people who agree with you, and sound like utter jibberish to everyone else.
> I would equally support a total repeal of the CDA and have no liability shield
Enjoy total moderation then! If Twitter comes liable for defamatory content posted on their site, they are going to clamp down on politics hard. Why risk it?
As an added bit of irony, without 230 Trump’s account would have been banned in 30s flat; way too much risk of a lawsuit.
> You have already said that companies should be allowed to moderate violent speech; except most forms of violent speech are actually protected! So you are saying that the government should shield some protected speech, but not others. Where, pray tell, do you draw the line?
And, going back to what spurred this; what would one call Donald's little outburst? It could easily be considered both political speech and violent speech. Which wins? Even more to the point, what about his libel? That's both political, and something that Twitter could easily be sued for without CDA230.
Of course, in the case of such narrowing actually happening and surviving the courts (which seems pretty implausible), Twitter would presumably just ban him on the violent speech thing (or for no stated reason at all, as permitted by their ToS); far safer. There is some considerable irony in the fact that it's only due to the strong protections provided to websites via the CDA that he has a platform.
And that’s the core of the situation; the politicians (well, most) at the heart of this know that an end of 230 means that Trump will get banned. This is about partisan posturing, not a bona fide attempt to change how internet regulation occurs. It’s exactly like Trump’s threats to “open up” the libel laws; ignoring the fact that he has no authority to do that, he would be the first victim of such a change.
Section 230 is essentially about the ability to quote someone else without fact checking or taking responsibility for what was said. It has nothing to do with neutrality and never had anything to do with neutrality until recent efforts to manufacture outrage started conflating Section 230 and the entirely unrelated concept of free speech.
Wholly incorrect, Sec 230 was in direct response to 2 lawsuits and mainly in respond to Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co
It was not about "quoting someonelse"
As far as recent efforts to "manufacture outrage" one would have to be completely bias or willfully ignorant to not see the clear political bias that is shown by silicon valley in the modern area of politics
Many of these companies have executives in power that have publicly stated their desire to manipulate the election in favor of their political ideology
Aside from that normal everyday moderation has a clear political bias to it.
So I do not believe the outrage is "manufactured" at all
> Many of these companies have executives in power that have publicly stated their desire to manipulate the election in favor of their political ideology
Which companies? Which executives? Do you have links to public statements made stating they want to manipulate the election?
Quite a lot of moderation is required either by law or other forms of liability. And then you have the international jurisdiction question: if a social media platform removes posts to comply with French or German anti-Nazi law, or UK defamation law, does that make them liable under s230?
Those should only apply to users accessing from those nations
It is a complex issue for a global company for sure, but I do not want the internet to be censored down to the lowest common denominator of Government regulations.
A Person in nation X should not have to be censored under the laws of nation Y
Reddit is the biggest echo champer I've ever seen. You can literally see hundreds of posts and thousand of comments about a certain topic and when you get out, you see that they take the bits of information that pushes their agenda.
The last big example I've seen is during the democratic primaries. I didn't really care at all about it but everyday I could see how Bernie was killing it. Then I saw somewhere else that Biden was the candidate getting the most delegates and was probably going to be the nominee. Not a single word about this in none of the main big subreddits.
> Visa applicants who have never used social media will not be refused on the basis of failing to provide a social media identifier, and the form does allow the applicant to respond with "None."
Chances are they wouldn't (if you were reasonably cautious with, e.g., your phone). But if they find out you don't later they can throw you in jail and deport you. Lying to federal officers while getting a visa over something as innocuous as a social media account really doesn't seem to be worth it under basically any circumstances.
And it isn't about the "platform" being registered, it's about users:
> that require nearly all visa applicants to register their social media handles with the U.S. government and connected policies permitting the retention and dissemination of that information.
Care to explain why? There's riots in the streets because of police brutality, browser history can now be requested by law enforcement without a warrant, .. i mean OP has a point?
The US is not even close to totalitarian. Even China, a far more repressive state, is not totalitarian. Totalitarian governments are those that are so authoritarian that they control just about all aspects of life of the residents. Only Eritrea and North Korea fit the bill in today's world.
Yes, OP has a point, but his characterisation of the US is not accurate.
I think comparing the US to China is misleading. Compared to the US in the past I can't tell if it's more totalitarian. Looking from the outside it looks more totalitarian.
Freedom of speech and privacy have been eroding in the US. I don't know if police brutality is constant at this level though I think the large amount of military grade equipment the police have has increased.
From my perspective it seems like a good idea for the US to reflect on where it is going compared to its past.
I don't get that at all. There is more communication going on now, than at any point in history. Easy proof: the internet and Twitter exist now. How is this an erosion of free speech? Almost every last dope in the country can blurt out nonsense 100 times a day (look at our POS).
Of course that was a relative classification. When selecting my destinations for travel I do not start at the end of the list. And traditionally the US has been on a top rank.
My daughter had a phase where she was excited about China. She was not happy with my clear refusal to travel there. I was in Russia once for 12 hours, because there was the possibility to go there without a visa. These decisions don't follow scientific criteria.
Just to poke your brain, or anyone's, suppose we shared concerns and views on all topics. Now let's consider a spectrum of "how well are are individual rights upheld in practice?", with all the nuances.
What's your short list of particularly good/best places in SE Asia/Oceania (that you'd be comfortable travelling to, but even work with, invest in? (Coming from the north Atlantic)
I'm down to:
- Australia + NZ
- Taiwan (sadly HK seems 'compromised')
- Singapore
Pretty much in that order. That's the shortest this list has even been in my lifetime. What am I not seeing?
If "browser history" is already off your radar when responding to a claim like this, you're beyond saving.
What is it with this absurd need to defend how poorly your country is doing by essentially saying "hey at least we're not North Korea!"?
Get your head out of the clouds here: Your country elected an atrocious president, who, with both some poor timing and some atrociously bad decision-making got handed a platter of crises that are completely beyond the capabilities of his administration.
Now, as a direct result, your country is more divided than it has ever been in recent history. People are rioting while a pandemic is happening. Civilians are being shot, journalists are being arrested, and you're here, pretending everything is fine because you're not literally starving in a prison right now.
Like, what? You want to wait&see even longer until this fully develops or you want to start fixing?
Let that sink in: The people who say "it could be worse" are part of the problem.
I'm not saying "it could be worse." I'm saying, "it's not as bad as it appears."
Police brutality nationwide is not as bad as is being represented (despite the most recent case being a tragedy), and the reason people are comfortable protesting is because COVID-19 failed to meet apocalyptic expectations.
Not to mention we have an election coming up, and there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear worse than they are.
I don't support warrantless browser history requests, but it won't be too long until a generation who grew up with computers is actually in the legislature. It's a very solvable problem, and not in the same ballpark as protests in big cities or COVID-19.
> the reason people are comfortable protesting is because COVID-19 failed to meet apocalyptic expectations
Risk is a trade-off. People are out there protesting because the problem is bad enough that it warrants risking lives over. And not just in an "I might catch COVID" way: People are being teargassed and shot.
> there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear worse than they are.
This cuts both ways: there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear better than they are. Consider this: I'm an outsider, and have no horse in that demented race. I follow what's happening over there because what does happen may impact my country. What I see does not look good, and there isn't really a debate about this on this side of the atlantic.
The fact that whether your country is doing as bad as it appears to be is even in question just shows how divisive your media is.
> I don't support warrantless browser history requests
Well I'm glad to read that, but in this thread, warrantless browser history requests aren't the only thing you've been downplaying. Personally, I think you're trying to convince yourself that things aren't "that bad". The longer you do so, the harder it's going to hit when you realize not only it is that bad, but it's only gotten worse since.
> People are out there protesting because the problem is bad enough that it warrants risking lives over. And not just in an "I might catch COVID" way: People are being teargassed and shot.
I think the vast, vast majority are truly risking nothing and know it. What you see in the media are the tiny minority who know what they're getting into.
> This cuts both ways: there's a lot of people who have a vested interest in making things appear better than they are. Consider this: I'm an outsider, and have no horse in that demented race. I follow what's happening over there because what does happen may impact my country. What I see does not look good, and there isn't really a debate about this on this side of the atlantic.
I understand what you see doesn't look good, but what you're seeing is entirely filtered through what traditional and social media want you to see. You (presumably) don't have family all over the country you stay in contact with who know what it's really like here.
And what is it like? There were some protests in certain areas of big cities. For everyone else (the vast, vast majority), it was just another weekend.
> The fact that whether your country is doing as bad as it appears to be is even in question just shows how divisive your media is.
Media is supposed to be divisive. If you're getting only one perspective from your media, you should already be concerned.
> Well I'm glad to read that, but in this thread, warrantless browser history requests aren't the only thing you've been downplaying. Personally, I think you're trying to convince yourself that things aren't "that bad". The longer you do so, the harder it's going to hit when you realize not only it is that bad, but it's only gotten worse since.
We're not at war. COVID-19 is on the way out. The fact that people are protesting over-emphasized police brutality is evidence things aren't as bad as they are. They're not protesting a lack of food, or access to drinkable water. Let's try and keep things in perspective here.
I don't have family but I do have a lot of friends over there in the US. Several of them used to have your nonchalant view of "all this won't affect me". None of them have it today anymore. One is leaving the US.
> Media is supposed to be divisive.
Oof. This is on the same level as hearing "my SO is supposed to hit me when I'm wrong". Media is supposed to be neutral and bring you the facts. Your media clearly doesn't do that, but it's certainly not supposed to be that way.
You're trying to "keep things in perspective" because you think you're arguing with people who believe you're North Korea. If I believed that, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing, because by that point it would be too late. Things are really bad for the US right now, and they're headed for worse. You can keep arguing about exactly how bad it is, or you can start to think about how you can help prevent them from getting worse.
> I don't have family but I do have a lot of friends over there in the US. Several of them used to have your nonchalant view of "all this won't affect me". None of them have it today anymore. One is leaving the US.
I don't know what to tell you then. Consider getting more friends in the US if you want a realistic view of the country.
> Oof. This is on the same level as hearing "my SO is supposed to hit me when I'm wrong". Media is supposed to be neutral and bring you the facts. Your media clearly doesn't do that, but it's certainly not supposed to be that way.
No, news is supposed to be neutral. And again: if you're only getting one perspective, you're not getting others. It sounds like you've already heard all you want to.
> You're trying to "keep things in perspective" because you think you're arguing with people who believe you're North Korea. If I believed that, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing, because by that point it would be too late. Things are really bad for the US right now, and they're headed for worse. You can keep arguing about exactly how bad it is, or you can start to think about how you can help prevent them from getting worse.
I think a key sign of a successful society is when people are free to (and do) protest issues that are not nearly as serious as they think they are. It's not a sign of failure, it's a sign of success.
If you step out of the media bubble, you might realize COVID-19, police brutality, and racism aren't nearly as bad as portrayed--at least in the vast majority of areas. But don't let that compromise your view.
> Consider getting more friends in the US if you want a realistic view of the country.
I certainly lost contact with some people who started getting increasingly angry at everyone and everything. Lashing out on others like the world is out to get them. I'm sure if I kept in touch they'd give me their ever-so-rosy point of view on how well America is doing right now but it doesn't take a genius to figure out their point of view is an illusion they barely believe themselves.
I'm going to stop arguing now because you're starting to say things that are blatantly wrong and it feels like you're baiting me into a bigger argument than this is worth.
I'm just offering you a perspective from another corner of the globe, that isn't biased by your media you so proudly declare is supposed to be divisive. You're free to ignore it. You're free to think you're better-informed by consuming twice as much clickbaity media rather than half as much neutral media.
I don't gain anything by correcting you, after all.
The fact is that all the problems highlighted (C19, police etc) got magnified by a bloodthirsty media looking for clicks.
Outside of big cities covid has been a nonfactor and the numbers are convincing especially when you take nursing homes out if the equation. There is plenty of research conclusively stating that police racism is behind us (see ex. research paper by black harvard PHD, widely cited). Even the riots in NYC were mild considering what is happening in cities like PHI.
So yes, there are indeed parts where things are not great PHI, NYC covid etc, but those are outliers. Yet the media ia using those examples and projecting it over an entire countey. Thats wrong and also a lie
What I mean is that if you are consuming news media and seeing only one point of view, something is wrong. I feel like I frequently see commenters who implicitly believe there's only one valid side to an issue, and the other side is just racism / bigotry / corruption.
True, that's a call for diversity. But if you're seeing multiple perspectives butting heads consistently across the news media consumed by an entire country, that's divisive, as a result of having diverse perspectives and coverage. To your point, though, that's likely more the result of a lack of diversity at individual sources and people picking and choosing to consume less diverse news. "Divisive" isn't the right word.
>but it won't be too long until a generation who grew up with computers is actually in the legislature
How old is your legislature in average? Many people who grew up with the computers are in their 30s/40s now. Even 50s. I being 60 yo fart was using computers since I was 20 granted there might not be too many like myself.
I'm seeing the average age in the US House is 57.8 years, and 61.8 for Senators.
I'm 31 and was one of the first few years where computers were in every classroom in my school district. We didn't have Internet in them until five or so years later, though.
“Police brutality nationwide is not as bad as is being represented (despite the most recent case being a tragedy)“
Do you think this is the case across the board or is it worse for some segments of the population than others (I.e. by socioeconomic status, which neighborhood you live in, whether you are visible minority, ey )
Across the board. I think a variety of factors contribute to some groups being more likely to commit violent crimes, resist arrest, run from police, etc., and this leads to a higher likelihood of bad police outcomes.
That's not to say it justifies police brutality, of course, but again: it's statistics at a macro level.
> If "browser history" is already off your radar when responding to a claim like this, you're beyond saving.
I don't subscribe to your religion, so that's ok with me. I happen to think searching (and registering) social media is a progressively enlightened activity, similar to having any other record of action (criminal history) as an enduring element of identity.
> The people who say "it could be worse" are part of the problem.
Having a different standard of acceptability is not "part of a problem", from my perspective of what constitutes problems. Setting up an us vs them isn't a compelling call to action.
> Having a different standard of acceptability is not "part of a problem", from my perspective of what constitutes problems.
Since you're in favour of said policy, I'm going to put aside whether or not it's a good idea to do this.
More simply, my point is that claiming "things could be worse" is a problem and only serves as a path for things to get worse.
Politics is like a plane crash. You can choose to correct course when the sensors start pointing in the wrong direction. If you keep going, you can still try to alleviate the issues even when it's too late to prevent some kind of disaster. You can crash and maybe still salvage something. But at no point in that whole chain of events is it productive to say "things could be worse".
Ok, things could be worse. Then what do you do when they do get worse?
That reaction long-predates social media propaganda farms. A similar argument that has come up for years and years is using Venezuela as an example of "Socialism" or "the anti-American-capitalist state". "See, socialism doesn't work, just look at Venezuela".
Why, because browser history isn't sensitive? Let's have yours then.
A police force with no accountability, the ability to pry into the details of your private life without a warrant, and the ability to incarcerate or even murder you without cause is basically what we used to call "secret police". I don't think it's alarmist to avoid countries with institutions like that.
I mentioned this in another thread, but it's because I see it as just another example of legislators who didn't grow up with computers. It's bad, but we'll repeal it. And obviously you don't have to send your browser history to a company who can have it requested.
Former PM of Norway got detained in US for previously having visited Iran. Lots of articles about tech people going to conferences in US and having all kind of crap happen to them at the border.
My point is just that mostly my time and to a lesser degree my money to travel are limited. So why should I choose a destination, which treats visitors in such a discriminating way. Assuming we will travel at all any time soon...
If news articles are to be believed, UK is a horrifying place to live too. It has it all: barely accountable politicians, unsolved racial tensions, massive police overreach, acute gang problem (and while there is almost no gun violence, acid throwing somehow feels even worse).
I'm sure that it doesn't seem to be that way from insiders perspective - it's very much possible to live safely and not to suffer from above mentioned problems on a daily basis, but same is true for those living in US.
Personally I wouldn't relocate willingly to either of the countries.
The UK situation is weird: on a day to day basis you notice almost none of that in most places, and while the gang problem is real in certain places it's also massively overhyped by right-wing politicians.
The big tensions are all anti-"immigrant" and of course Brexit and now the poor pandemic response. You can't tell people to ignore the deaths and hospitalisations of people they actually know. While most of the consequences of Brexit haven't hit yet, there is going to be a huge mess when the interim arrangements expire at the end of this year and the government has still done almost nothing to prepare.
From the inside (UK -> US immigrant), it is really bad right now. From an American perspective, maybe it is not so bad as we think because of the difference in 'overton windows'. We now have the president essentially demanding the criminalization of left wing politics, and there is a large contingent of support in the Republican base, gorged on misinformation, frothing at the mouth at the prospect of throwing anyone to the left in Gitmo. Considering that the politics of most of Europe are considered to be communism by many in the US, it's worrying to say the least. The US is very clearly, very openly sliding into a degenerate fascist state.
American here who fully disagrees, particularly on the first part. Even in today's craziness worldwide it's clear the US has fucked up worse than many other countries.
I'm not going to live and die on external opinions but calling it irrelevant simply isn't accurate. In fact, I hope that the global protests may actually help change things for the better here. The sad thing is that it appears current politicians don't care about the world standing of the US, and that could get dangerous.
You as an individual might not care what the rest of the world thinks but it matters to America as whole what the rest of the world thinks. There are genuine effects economically, culturally and militarily that reaches every US citizen in some form or the other. Unless you retreat into some form of isolationism so severe it is without historical precedent then you will care.
A non-US citizen expressing critism of America does not automatically mean that they're laughing at you or your country. This isn't a competition or a school playground.
Set your pride and nationalism to the side for just a second and consider that these critisms could have been born from a genuine issue, and not fabricated/exaggerated by "European media"
Every time I check out BBC, DW, France 24, or any other European world news service, America is almost always first to be discussed. What Trump says, shootings, demonstrations, etc. It's all domestic affairs, but covered as though it's world news. Why would someone in Bavaria care so much about a shooting in Flint, Michigan? What about shootings in other countries? The horrors in Africa? Barely covered. No one cares.
So that's why this is not criticism, but some kind of competitive snickering. Europeans seem to need to feel better about themselves when comparing about Americans. Americans, on the other hand, rightfully don't care about what goes on overall in Europe.
I watch the news in the UK nearly every day and what you say is just not true. I suspect you're viewing the international versions of those channels rather than the domestic ones.
> From the inside, the rest of the world looks like either anarchy or arbitrary despotism.
I don't even live in any of these countries but... Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland, etc.?
Is this a time-traveling commentary from 1776? :-D
If the only source of information is Breitbart and Fox News,then yes,sure,the rest of the world is still Soviet Union. Individually it doesn't matter,but collectively it does.Look at Africa,as an example: Americans lost any credibility they had left and Chinese took over with ease. The Economist is peppered with cases, where the locals point blank refuse to deal with anyone from the states. The more of Trump the rest of the world sees the more they think the country is going nuts and etc. The current events puts US on the same level with Russia: corrupt, power hungry policemen being supported all the way to the top of the government.
Consider looking at the CNN reporting team that was arrested live on television without reason? It's not a good sign if media is being censored like that.
There are at least 20 cases of credentialed journalists being attacked or arrested by police in the last 48 hours. While a few of these may have been mistaken identity, many weren't.
People can pick and choose where they stand on this incident or perhaps even choose not to participate in the partisan dialectic.
I'd just like to point out that the opposing view on that incident would characterize it as exactly the kind of sensationalized coverage which the above poster could be referring to. One narrative suggests that it was staged. Worth looking at it from both sides. As we discuss this, let's not steam roll past those concerns.
My personal view is that there's more than a little BS flying from all angles. CNN wouldn't be what I consider hard hitting or informative journalism. I don't know what really happened and I can't jump to any conclusions. Thanks.
See other threads, but this is not an isolated incident. Trying to argue that it was staged seems incredibly disingenuous and an unreasonable standard of proof given the widespread occurrences of this and police brutality in the past 48 hours.
Just to be explicit, I don't take sides, I'm not interested in advancing any argument and I am skeptical of most claims. This goes doubly so for the extreme partisan takes, which are generally unreasonable. I'm sorry this disclaimer is seemingly necessary.
My personal views are secondary to the point of my comment, which was: Perhaps we should consider both sides?
The interesting thing about these claims is that in many there are multiple film views of the same incident, and in the CNN case there was an apology issued.
If you must pry, I'll say that CNN (a highly partisan outlet) has every incentive to have their reporter arrested. I'll also say that arresting a journalist is out of line and that the police could have let it ride. However no one is perfect, certainly not myself. Therefore I have little room to pass judgement upon police officers who are clearly under more than a little bit of stress. Similarly, I can't condemn the reporter even if he is indeed (which I can't know with certainty) advancing his career in a very cynical way.
For me I'm comfortable just leaving it as an unknown instead of attempting to take sides or claiming an authoritative understanding of the event. Moral grandstanding for either claim would be a further leap too far for me personally. However you are welcome to argue your opinion with someone else. I just can't do that in good faith. Thanks for understanding.
I hadn't actually seen the CNN incident until I saw it via the Australian journalist who were arrested.
It made quite an impact here - and while you seem to think it's journalist trying to get ahead in their careers in this case that doesn't make sense. Being arrested makes it more difficult for foreign journalists to re-enter the US which has a huge negative impact on their job.
>you seem to think...
I'll just reiterate that I don't have a position on the specific incident.
Similarly, arresting reporters isn't a plus for a policeman's career.
I do take a position on outrage culture and rampant moralizing which is not serving us well. The blame game isn't the way out of this mess. One-sided, partisan takes are just more fuel on the fire.
> I'll just reiterate that I don't have a position on the specific incident.
Except that you do.
> CNN (a highly partisan outlet) has every incentive to have their reporter arrested.
> Therefore I have little room to pass judgement upon police officers who are clearly under more than a little bit of stress. Similarly, I can't condemn the reporter even if he is indeed (which I can't know with certainty) advancing his career in a very cynical way.
Police -> Under stress
Journalist -> advancing his career in a very cynical way
You seem to be using a rhetorical technique where you claim the moral high ground ("However I will refrain from making the judgement of which side is in the position of power."[1]) and then make third-person claims that you can deny are actually making an argument ("If the police department (or perhaps a social strata) were more powerful than CNN's (highly privileged) reporter then why was he released?").
No one else is calling you out on this, so I will. State your argument and stand behind it.
There's no sense in having a discussion if you can't assume good faith. Similarly, if you are going to tell me my position, then why are we talking?
You put the cart before the horse when you accuse me of using a rhetorical technique to take the 'moral high ground'. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that my reluctance to pass judgement on either party informs my statements?
You selectively quote me and ignore that I've also said that the police could have 'let it ride'. If it helps you any, I'll say here that arresting journalists is generally a bad move. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the outset.
The statements you quote were in response to the suggestion that one side was in a position of power. Symptomatically, you divorce this from context as you seek to find meat for your partisan cleaver.
As humans our views are subjective and fallible. The problem of induction etc. If I want to find fault I can most probably nit pick each respective side for hours. No, this is not an invitation to level further criticism on either party. I think we have had enough of that and it isn't getting us anywhere.
You establish the options as Pepsi and Coke and demand that I must choose a cola. Yet, I am not interested in these sugary, carbonated beverages. Here's my view: Partisan takes are all a bunch of gas, short term stimulation with no nourishment.
I'll repeat myself again in case you're still not following. Narrow views, divorced of context are not serving us well. They create a divisive atmosphere. Each respective side engages in outrage culture while offloading responsibility for the ugly outcomes onto their adversary.
Choosing not to participate and a reluctance to rush to judgement isn't a rhetorical technique. It is an acknowledgement that the choices laid before us represent a false dichotomy. It is a rejection of the toxicity of outrage culture. Thank you.
Who says people have not considered both sides, reasoned, and then come to a conclusion? Considering both sides does not mean forbidding conclusions to be made. It's clear that I find your level of skepticism to be too far for the context, we'll have to agree to disagree there.
(edits for bad spellcheck)
But at the end of the day, your stance is already siding with someone by default, the side in power. You can claim neutrality ideologically, but that's useless in practicality. I'm sorry that you are disconnected enough from the world to not take sides or draw conclusions (even with caveats) unless you have a level of information that is practically impossible to gain.
>But at the end of the day, your stance is already siding with someone by default, the side in power
This is highly presumptuous mischaracterization of my statement and intentions. We're discussing something online, unless you have a crystal ball I'd say you've made a bit of a leap here.
Not taking sides is de facto siding with the more powerful side in a situation for practical/effect purposes, this is pretty well established across many disciplines. I 100% am not saying you are ideologically siding with them, only that it is the effect of your lack of siding at all.
Thinking in realpolitik may be a viable way to inform oneself of a strategy to achieve ends, but I don't accept it personally as a method of observation or diving a moral truth of an event. I.E. the means justify the ends etc. This is where I diverge on your assumptions. Usually this method is characterized as resulting in immoral outcomes.
Furthermore, it hasn't been established that CNN, with an army of lawyers on retainer and a a massive budget isn't in the position of power. For CNN the arrest played well if not better than the normal coverage. Would you dispute that the arrest buttressed CNN's narrative? These are the ends which were achieved by this event. It is evidenced by the fact that we are having this discussion.
Who has more power in media, CNN or whichever local police department?
The relevant expression would be, "The pen is mightier than the sword". However I will refrain from making the judgement of which side is in the position of power.
Let us also observe that the reporter was released. If the police department (or perhaps a social strata) were more powerful than CNN's (highly privileged) reporter then why was he released?
No, I am afraid that I am left with more doubts after examining it at depth.
I'm not from the US, but I used to be very much on the "things aren't as bad as they appear" thing too.
The last 6-9 months has made me change my mind.
The systematic firing of 5 inspector generals and the US Justice Department's reversal on the charges against Flynn and Stone have made me change my mind.
The US has always had inequal access to law, but now it appears the rule of law is in doubt. It doesn't matter if you are left or right leaning - if the law is that corrupted there is something to be concerned about.
We felt that way when Hillary Clinton avoided charges after using her private e-mail server for sending and receiving classified information, after Fast and Furious, and the IRS targeting of conservative organizations. But those weren't framed as "the rule of law is in doubt" because a different guy was in the White House.
And if you're seeing the Flynn case as an example of a solid and reasonable case being dropped due to political interference, I don't think you've read enough about it.
I provided clear examples of laws being broken, people not being held accountable, and people like you not caring when it's someone on your side pulling the strings.
Where did you provide clear examples? If you mean Hillary Clinton then you do realize there have been six separate investigations and no charges.
Did you know that what happened in the Clinton case is not an uncommon occurrence? Did you know that Bush did the same thing[1]? And Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump did the same?[2]
In all these cases it's not the right thing to do, but nor is it criminal.
And what is this "people like you" attack? The Marc Rich case is something I'll condemn Bill Clinton for any day of the week - it's a complete miscarriage of justice and I wish there was a way it could be reversed. I'm not aware of anything like that from the Obama era but it's possible I've missed it.
I think everyone has been over this a million times, and it applies to all these cases. None of them have a criminal case to argue. That's the exact point - and it's the exact opposite of whataboutism!
I'll leave this here:
Because the government is awash in secrets, they are regularly mishandled unintentionally. In 2013, according to the National Archives, which tracks classification, executive branch agencies created more than 77 million documents with secrets in them, including 46,800 with newly created secrets. The FBI receives dozens of referrals of leaked classified information every year, according to Justice Department declarations to Congress.
Prosecutors have also been wary of testing whether broad prosecutions under the espionage laws would hold up in court, especially in cases of news organizations pursuing Secret or Top Secret information for publication. In the Clinton probe, investigators found that at least some of the classified information referred to was contained in a newspaper article that aides then forwarded to Clinton
US citizens are also becoming tired of it and choosing to live abroad. Perhaps one day the US might move towards some of the original foundational values of classical liberalism. Until that time there are incentives for those with the means to opt-out of all of the nonsense.
Yep. I'm one of them. The biggest surprise for me about living abroad is how much better life can be under a military dictatorship; it's actually kind of weird. There are some downsides when it comes to free speech. But as a non-citizen I can't vote anyway so I don't have much of an itch to criticize the government. On the plus side, the police rarely beat up and kill people, which is nice.
Less developed countries where most things will pass are highly underrated. People have incentives to work it out for themselves. Although the bureaucratic state might be enormous on paper, in practice freedom fills the void where there is no enforcement.
Of course there are downsides as well, but you learn how to work it.
In practice, a lot of working things out involves petty graft. That's another thing that has surprised me, how efficient that is. They have lots of regulations on paper, but everybody knows how inefficient it is when simple things get over regulated. So the nice officials often offer you both options, the by-the-book way (slow and expensive) or off-the-books way (fast and cheap).
Maybe there ought to be a Wikipedia page listing the "graft level" of a country (in nominal and PPP amounts, of course).
In more corrupt countries, a large fraction of the population gets to use petty graft. In less corrupt countries, a small fraction of the population gets to use grand graft.
The newspaper and news channel can be held liable for what they publish. If social media companies want to editorialize the content that users are seeing then they are no longer a platform, and they should play by the same rules as the newspapers and news channels.
They could always choose not to do that and allow users to post whatever they like, within the bounds of the law.
Again, this only came up because Twitter is taking an active role in the election process. The election process is adversarial. There is already someone on Twitter who can hold a candidate accountable - their opponent. Twitter can just pin Joe Biden's reply and fact check below any Trump tweet and vice versa. Instead they have chosen to insert a platform specific feature to qualify what someone else is publishing. Their insertion is not accountable to anyone, and as such can be constituted as a canonical truth. If they apply their insertions selectively, then they are basically manipulating the audience. If this is allowed then you no longer have a democracy. The social media platform will just pick your winner.
False argument. News organisations exercise editorial, budgetary and managerial control over the reporters they hire to investigate and write the news they report. There is a tradition/expectation (sadly in very poor condition in these times, better/worse for some media organisations) of fact-checking before publication, with editor oversight of that investigative process.
This is not, and can not be the case for social-media platforms.
Drawing any equivalency between the two is simply bogus.
I've seen many people discuss how this ruling could kill small internet communities. Curious how people would react to simply making a separate class for excessively large websites that are effectively public spaces due to scale and likelihood of frequent encounter.
Basically this. I run a small moderated community and the repealing of Section 230 would mean I would become responsible for everything my site's users say if I dare to moderate anything beyond illegal content. There needs to be a separation under law of social media giants which permeate every corner of social life and small communities.
The problem is that it's not enough anymore to try to moderate away illegal content on a best-effort basis and you're required to be perfect. In the earlier situation, if the moderation misses some violating content and leaves it there, it's still the sole liability of the poster. With the recent changes, if you don't want to be liable for less-than-perfect moderation, the prudent choice seems to be to avoid any moderation at all; you'll leave all the illegal content alone but at least that won't be your liability.
Illegal is nebulous, there are two aspects to it, criminal and civil. Civil liability is the one that's most in play here, since criminal content like CP or threats of violence are more easily recognizable. Defamation and libel lawsuits can be problematic, and you can be sued by celebrities and politicians for defamation. Even if you win it, the lawyer fees, and the inconvenience of dealing with the courts etc. isn't worth it at all.
That only feels problematic if you're a huge company, which is exactly my point. If you're a small forum, I don't see any problem with you playing both roles.
I feel like it's really easy for these sites to have their cake and eat it too. Anything the company writes is considered publishing and anything someone not affiliated with the company says falls under platform.
If a forum's owner/admin participates in the forum, does that mean it's no longer a platform?
I doubt that this ruling is going to kill small internet communities. They generally have people of similar interests are more closely knit, so there is less spam or mindless conflicts.
The big ones like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, might be killed or at lease heavily impacted should this ruling go against them.
> Curious how people would react to simply making a separate class for excessively large websites that are effectively public spaces due to scale and likelihood of frequent encounter.
>I doubt that this ruling is going to kill small internet communities. They generally have people of similar interests are more closely knit, so there is less spam or mindless conflicts.
Let's say you like kittens and are in a kitten forum. I'm an unscrupulous lawyer looking for a pay day. I go to your forum specifically to troll and say kittens should be eaten as snacks. You ban me. I file a lawsuit against you.
It's not the members that you have to worry about, it's third parties with an ax to grind against the whole community or financial gains for doing so.
It's not like these companies particularly care about the First Amendment, seeing their actions when it comes to things protected by 1A but too icky for their platforms. I expect a blog post(s) to come out of this containing the words "As $COMPANY, we believe the right to freedom of expressing yourself." Bonus points if they include the term "responsible speech".
A publisher has the right to regulate the content they publish.
A common carrier must strictly avoid regulating the content of their carriage.
There are different regulations in place for different businesses. A common carrier must scrupulously avoid even the appearance of modifying or restricting the information they carry.
The grey areas lurk in what publishers condone and promote: what constitutes hate speech or child pornography and is subject to reasonable restrictions on speech in a free and democratic society at one end of the spectrum, and what constitutes political campaigning and is subject to campaign finance and political contribution laws at another.
Does "common carrier" describe any social media website? All social media sites, besides choosing what content to allow, make many decisions about what to promote. (These decisions are usually made algorithmically, but not exclusively, and the choice of what algorithms to use and how to tune them is still very opinionated.) The common carrier rules seem intended for companies like phone providers and ISPs that don't make any decisions about what people should use on the platform. In comparison, social media sites seem like more open versions of newspapers and TV stations.
I think it's clear that organizations that publish content to the web are publishers. They just don't want to be saddled with the responsibility of more traditional publishers and all that that entails. They're "disruptors" for gosh sake, not media presenting content to consumers as a means to generate revenue.
People always forget that the Bill Of Rights is about the relationship between the Federal government and the people within the US. Applicability to the relationship between businesses and the people can be extended by Congress and the Courts but is not the reason the Bill Of Rights exists.
Of course, Reddit has the right to fight for free speech while at the same time suppressing it on its own platform, or at least tolerating the suppression of a free discourse in the most popular subreddit. But doing so makes it seem reddit cares first and foremost about its own freedom, and less about freedom of speech in general. It also means reddit is a poor choice if you want to run a forum that leans conservative.
> doing so makes it seem reddit cares first and foremost about its own freedom, and less about freedom of speech in general
It’s a company. Of course that’s its motive. I’d argue this is true for most people, too.
Which is fine. It is incumbent upon those users whose free speech Reddit impinges upon to rectify the situation, but bringing other users to support their cause or setting up a competitor.
Either way, this is all orthogonal to the First Amendment concern of this case.
The same principle that allows individuals to say what they want also allows companies like Reddit to disallow certain speech on their platform. It's not as though they're fighting for it to virtue signal. Besides that, you want to keep the flow of speech open, even if you bottleneck it yourself, because it gives you more range on what to allow and what to block.
> article makes it look like they are in support of the former (free speech)
Fighting for the First Amendment does promote feee speech. Without the First Amendment, free speech is dead. With it, it has a chance (but is not guaranteed).
I would argue that free speech as a concept is just as dead in a world where most communication platforms are owned by large companies who enforce their politics on their users.
I only ever seem to see this argument as a justification for censorship that has already occurred, as in I was “just doing my job” and following the rules on what we’re allowed to think. Where do I cast my vote that I think this kind of moderation is inhumane toward all participants and that I would prefer to participate in communities where we discuss things instead of supporting the chilling effect of Zero Thought Tolerance?
If this is what you believe, why do you participate in the heavily-moderated HN instead of barely-moderated alternatives like 4chan or 8chan? If it's because you think there's a better standard of conversation here, then I'd argue that's not unrelated to the moderation that happens.
I didn't realize I had to choose between communities. How do you know I don't already participate in those too?
e: At least when I disagree with somebody on an imageboard they don't go through my user profile and downvote every comment I've made in the past day like somebody just did to me here =p
I guess it would weaken my point if you were posting on this subject on both HN and 4chan now. My point was intended as a rhetorical one to highlight that people generally post to HN because they're looking for a certain kind of audience or quality of discussion that you won't find anywhere near as consistently on less moderated places like 4chan.
Yep, I do participate in HN because I find value in its unique audience and discussion quality, and I do think the moderation is necessary to maintain those unique qualities. I also appreciate the enrichment and access to totally-new ideas that I get from existing in other worlds with differing norms like 4chan/9chan. HN is a well-maintained and enjoyable bubble, but still a bubble. They supplement each other more than they compete, and I feel more able to tolerate the moderated world thanks to the less-moderated ones.
A Publisher of content has the right to regulate their content for sure
a Platform that want special legal status from liability that other people do not get well that liability shield should and does come with strings attached and one of those strings should be neutrality
One Suggestion that I have seen talked about is to modify Sec 230 to says that a platform will only get immunity from liability if follow the the First Amendment of the US Constitution as if they were a US Government Agency, Thus only illegal content would be prohibited
The 10th amendment. Nowhere in the constitution is the Federal government granted power to restrict non-citizens from movement or employment. The constitution only delegates to the Federal government the power to determine rules for naturalization.
My understanding of the Constitution is that it sets limits on government power, e.g. it can't pass a law that restricts free speech. It does not enumerate all the things the federal government may do.
One of those limits (10th amendment) is all powers not enumerated by the constitution are left to the states or the people.
It’s ironic that one of the original grievances in the Declaration of Independence was the king restricting immigration to the colonies.
Freedom of movement is a common law right going back to the Magna Carta: It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and Merchants who shall be treated as it is said above.
When you say "unconstitutional" though, do you mean "something that is not in the constitution" or "something that directly contradicts the constitution"?
I don't think those two things are meaningfully different.
10th amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
No. A non-citizen moving from one place to another isn’t commerce among the states. A non-citizen working at a restaurant is also not commerce among the states.
The purpose of the interstate commerce clause was to prevent states from enacting tariffs or banning goods from other states or nations. There’s plenty of analysis of the origin and intent of the commerce clause online if you’re interested.
No it's not inconsistent. You simply do not understand.
The first amendment protects you from censorship by the government:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The social media companies argue they are not common spaces so they can maintain
'jurisdiction' over their own sites. This isn't related to the first amendment at all, as they are not a government entity.
Being asked to share social media does chill first amendment free speech, because it's the government that gets to see everything you do and say online
and thus there is an incentive to self-censor in fear of later retaliation.
The whole point of the first amendment isn't that you can say anything you want at any time anywhere, it's that you don't have to fear retaliation from the government.
But let's assume that your issue is
with 'free speech' online in general, not just in the context of the first amendment. Then there is still a huge difference between the two.
If, say, Reddit
censors the speech you wish to spread, you don't suffer any consequences beyond
being unable to use Reddit as your platform. You're free to use any other social
media to spread your message.
If the government requests all social media accounts your speech is chilled everywhere, effectively censoring you, the person.
You make a good point on the difference in censorship.
One thing has to do with government. It isn't "the government" but rather then "United States government". The individuals involved in this process are in other countries currently under the jurisdiction of non-US governments.
Your argument is that as part of the process to let people from other governmental jurisdictions into the US, the US government should not look at what those individuals say in public because it might lead to them to self-sensor.
> If the government requests all social media accounts your speech is chilled everywhere, effectively censoring you, the person.
If the US government looks at your social media and you live, for example in South Africa, you aren't censored as a person everywhere. That person lives in South Africa and not the US. That person may not gain entrance to the US. But, they as a person are not censored everywhere.
I point this out because _the government_ is often used where there are many governments instead of one. If there were a one world government the argument about censoring a person would be true. But, there currently isn't.
Do you think the US government should not look at what people publicly say as part of their entrance criteria to the US? If so, what about those people who publicly say they want to harm an individual or group of people? Should what they say not be considered for entrance? The US government has a responsibility to protect it's individuals as part of the entrance selection criteria to the US.
> Do you think the US government should not look at what people publicly say as part of their entrance criteria to the US? If so, what about those people who publicly say they want to harm an individual or group of people? Should what they say not be considered for entrance? The US government has a responsibility to protect it's individuals as part of the entrance selection criteria to the US.
It's the endless debate of security v.s. privacy and potential abuse of policy. Governments across the globe are trying to use the technology boom as an opportunity to redefine the borders on this topic that I believe were perfectly fine before. And it's all smoke and mirrors to
distract from the fact that it's just literally 'because technology'.
Example 1: the postal service opening your mail is a big no-no without a warrant, but suddenly 'because technology' it's okay to do to internet traffic?
Example 2: Two people having a private conversation has been possible since the dawn of time, but suddenly 'because technology' the government has the inalienable right to eavesdrop and backdoor every conversation at any time?
Example 3: The right to not self-incriminate is incredibly
important, but suddenly 'because technology' you can be forced to give up encryption keys and open laptops using information that only exists in your head, or risk being detained indefinitely?
I believe that if your argument boils down to 'it's X but with technology' then the government shouldn't have any extra rights or deny any of yours.
I personally think the real issue with the social media border inspection is the self-incrimination and possibly warrentless searches.
I don't have an issue with a border agent looking you up on Facebook,
finding your public profile and seeing you posted messages inciting violence against gays, and denying you entry.
I do have issues with the government forcing Facebook to give up private messages without a warrant.
I also have a problem with you being forced to divulge all
your social media accounts or risk being denied entry based
on the fact that you lied. This is just plain self-incrimination.
You bring out some good issues. Three things come out to me...
1. What we post through most social media platforms is direct messages rather than private messages. It's a subtle semantic difference but an important one. The things we say there isn't private. I remember reading about banks getting access to direct messages on FB. I'm not suggesting governments should pilfer this information. I am suggesting we should not have an expectation of privacy.
2. There is a semantic difference between "because technology" being used to avoid warrants and a government looking at what one says in public. I think this is important because pushing for and informing the public on one does not inform or solve the other. The "because technology" angle needs far more general society discussion.
3. There is another angle to the security/privacy discussion. In order to keep privacy one may need to not engage with certain things in certain ways. For example, if I don't want my neighbors to know what I'm doing in my yard I need to live in a place with a natural boundary, like a rural area. Being in a rural area means I'm not living in a city. It's a trade-off and always has been.
I totally understand the issue with abuse and the 'because technology' situation.
> Example 1: the postal service opening your mail is a big no-no without a warrant, but suddenly 'because technology' it's okay to do to internet traffic?
Considering piracy supporters appear very self righteous about watching HBO shows, Disney movies and so on just because internets allows them to do so for free. And forums such as this are quite encouraging of this behavior. I feel most arguments are essentially "If it works in my favor, it is good and I will call it ethically right thing to reinforce this behavior otherwise it is obviously bad and others should not be allowed to do so.
So would a site like Reddit selectively choosing what speech to report to the government create a chilling effect on the First Amendment, given that they may report speech that isn't illegal but still results in an investigation and maybe even court fight, and they may choose to do so based on the political leanings of individual posters (which isn't out of line with other behavior already demonstrated to be politically motivated, such as editing users comments to change what they were saying)?
> So would a site like Reddit selectively choosing what speech to report to the government create a chilling effect on the First Amendment, given that they may report speech that isn't illegal but still results in an investigation and maybe even court fight
That's not how the system we were discussing works. You are supposed to self-report your social media accounts, and then the government looks into those social media accounts. The platform is never asked to report anything at all.
Or are you describing an entirely different scenario, in which a site like Reddit voluntarily reports on its users (selectively or not)? In which case I don't see how that creates a chilling effect of speech more than anyone else. Any motivated individual can check your social media accounts and report anything they see to the police if it's illegal or suspicious. And they can choose to do this as selectively as they want.
>That's not how the system we were discussing works.
I'm talking more generically.
>The platform is never asked to report anything at all.
I thought platforms routinely work with the government to report potentially illegal content.
>Or are you describing an entirely different scenario, in which a site like Reddit voluntarily reports on its users (selectively or not)?
Discussing the existing system and what the logic being used in this context means when applied elsewhere.
>Any motivated individual can check your social media accounts and report anything they see to the police if it's illegal or suspicious. And they can choose to do this as selectively as they want.
Generally other individuals don't have access to things like IP addresses. And while those don't correlate to a person, it doesn't stop the government from treating it like it does and forcing you to fight it out in court.
> The first amendment protects you from censorship by the government
It is assumed by the 1st amendment that we have freedom of speech (among many other rights). The amendment does not grant the right, but prevents infringement of it.
At the time of the amendment, there was concern that the federal government might infringe on it, so this amendment specifically called that out.
Later, it became clear that the states had a history of infringing on these and other rights. We fought the Civil War over this. The result was that now states are also enjoined to not infringe on these rights.
Later, it became clear the corporations might infringe on the rights of people, as they, too, were becoming very powerful. This was the anti trust era. It's pretty much settled law that when a corporation attains a certain level of power, as indicated by monopoly status, then they are restricted in their activities. We do not allow the electrical monopoly to cut off power to groups they don't like, or force the signing of terms of partisan terms of service.
Later, during the Civil Rights era, segregationists insisted that people didn't have a constitutional right to eat in the restaurant of their choice, use the drinking fountain of their choice, go to the same schools as others, etc. The federal government ended up sending in the national guard.
These private businesses don't get to infringe on rights just because they're private.
So, the 1st amendment has not only broadened, it has also put the federal government in a sort of supervisory role to interfere when it sees states and business infringing on people's rights.
There is nothing special about a social media company that should give them the ability to infringe on our rights.
I agree with what you wrote, except that it's the 1st amendment that's relevant.
> There is nothing special about a social media company that should give them the ability to infringe on our rights.
I personally believe that social media platforms are public spaces (although I don't think it's clear how to precisely define this into law without or minimal loopholes).
But I don't think it's inconsistent or hypocritical for a company to not want to lose control over the discourse on its site while simultaneously advocating against government requests for self-reporting of social media accounts due to previously discussed chilling effects.
I think in this era we will see how or if our rights will be protected with all of these large corporations with immense powers.
In the Civil Rights era, it took from the 1930s until 1964 to pass the Civil Right act, despite bipartisan support. They ended up having to re-invent how the Senate votes to do it.
It will be interesting to see the law that gets created during this time.
Also, I don't think it is possible to divorce the other aspect of what the government is attempting to do here. Guests in our country are exactly that. We depend on the government to vet them in some way to prevent criminals or terrorists from easily crossing the border and causing mayhem. The government has vetted people for several decades in this manner by investigating who the candidate associates with, whether they have a criminal record, etc.
If a criminal comes to our country and commits crimes, and it is possible to know this from the social media that the criminal uses, what responsibility does the social media company have?
There are also other workarounds to FISA courts including the “willful“ volunteering of information and tools (or else), using the NSA and their tools, and other foreign “friendly” collaborators like the Five Eyes, or German intelligence etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
https://www.dw.com/en/report-us-germany-spied-on-countries-f...
https://www.rt.com/usa/qwest-ceo-nsa-jail-604/
Here is some details on historical spying (a much smaller scale because of the smaller digital footprint)for the curious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee