Trump vows to strip radical left of total control over social media

originally posted by: olaru12
a reply to: NightVision
Any corporation that pays taxes, pays the bills to stay in operation should be allowed the freedom to determine what products they sell and how to run the organization.

So... you are in favor of a business being able to refuse service to anyone, for any reason?

Like businesses with signs saying:

"We don't serve BLACK people here."
or
"We don't serve JEWS here."
or
"We don't serve LGBTQ-XYZ people here."

Interesting...

This will follow the "Drain the Swamp" timetable.

Still waiting

originally posted by: tanstaafl

originally posted by: olaru12
a reply to: NightVision
Any corporation that pays taxes, pays the bills to stay in operation should be allowed the freedom to determine what products they sell and how to run the organization.

So... you are in favor of a business being able to refuse service to anyone, for any reason?

Like businesses with signs saying:

"We don't serve BLACK people here."
or
"We don't serve JEWS here."
or
"We don't serve LGBTQ-XYZ people here."

Interesting...

It's interesting that you want to put words in my mouth. What you mentioned is discrimination and there are laws against that. Troll...

originally posted by: olaru12
It's interesting that you want to put words in my mouth.

Not at all. You are the one who said they should be able to run their businesses as they saw fit.

What you mentioned is discrimination and there are laws against that.

So Trump wants to add another category to the list of people who cannot be discriminated against - those who make their opinions known on social media sites.

There is ZERO difference - unless, of course, you suffer from TDS.

originally posted by: tanstaafl

originally posted by: olaru12
It's interesting that you want to put words in my mouth.

Not at all. You are the one who said they should be able to run their businesses as they saw fit.

What you mentioned is discrimination and there are laws against that.

So Trump wants to add another category to the list of people who cannot be discriminated against - those who make their opinions known on social media sites.

There is ZERO difference - unless, of course, you suffer from TDS.

This is how the left eats itself. If you are on the left and you disagree with them on any issue, they outcast you and accuse you of being a racist Trumper. Everyone should have a voice. Left, Right and Center. No more discrimination.

Even NBC agrees? Interesting

NBC News Media Bias Article

Conscious bias or not, such practices do not engender trust in the media amongst conservatives. They only reinforce the belief that the media seeks to defend their ideological allies on the left and persecute those on the right while claiming to be objective

a reply to: Gryphon66

originally posted by: Gryphon66
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

I encourage you to consider “confirmation bias” in regard to what you see in the discussion. Plenty of Trump-love here.

I didn't say there wasn't plenty of Trump supporters, there's obviously many on ATS, which is why it stood out to me when I saw so many of the Trump haters quickly jump into this thread and repeat the same nonsense talking points. Also I should mention I'm not a conservative or republican, nor am I American, I'm a libertarian who happens to support Trump because he supports liberty, freedom, and capitalism, not authoritarianism, censorship, and socialism.

Doesn’t exist. What my little quick experiment CLEARLY demonstrated is that there is not “right wing censorship” on any of the three entities mentioned here your circular argument notwithstanding.

Your little experiment didn't clearly demonstrate anything besides the fact it's impossible to hide all pro-conservative content. I'm not even saying they censor everything, clearly they need to at least maintain the appearance of being objective to some extent. I can almost guarantee however that on at least one of those platforms, some search results were hidden from you or pushed down to the bottom. Furthermore, the censorship doesn't apply to every possible search term, but there are certain keywords which will give you manually curated results or results filtered by AI. In my years on ATS I've come across many terms that have a high amount of censorship on social media, especially conspiracy-related terms.

Twitter has been caught shadow banning people and Project Veritas has shown how other large social media platforms also have similar "blacklists", and how their internal culture results in political bias. YouTube is also well known for rigging the trending videos and demonetizing or banning creators who aren't politically correct enough. Again, you wouldn't know this unless you actually follow them. Last year I created a thread detailing some of the different censorship tactics I've seen used on YouTube. If I had the time and motivation I could post several pages of examples, I can't even believe I'm wasting my time arguing a widely accepted fact of reality with people who are clearly never going to admit there's any truth to it.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

Just because these companies may back Democratic candidates doesn't mean they're Leftist. They're corporatist and apparently they perceive the DNC as being better for business.

There is no law of nature that says a leftist can't be a corporatist, they may love to virtue signal about how ethical they are, but actions speak much louder than words. That is one of the core reasons I dislike people who constantly virtue signal and judge everyone around them, it's a childish and egotistical way of acting and doesn't give me much confidence in the ethics of the left. It's all just pure talk, when the reality is they're making the same corporate backroom deals as the people they claim to hate, then using their monopolies to shape the political mindset of entire societies.

More to the point, it's primarily the employees of these companies which moderate the content, not the people who own the corporations. They often have arbitrary diversity quotas rather than just hire the most qualified people for the job. There's some Twitch drama happening right now over their new Safety Advisory Council because some of the people seem like fairly radical SJW's, reading through the bio's of the council members it's very clear why those people were picked. One council member in particular is getting a lot of criticism because she (trans guy-to-girl) thinks most gamers are white supremacists, she thinks voice chat in games is non-inclusive, she also gloated that Twitch cannot ban her now she's in the council. These are the beliefs and actions of a person who is in charge of deciding what content is allowed on Twitch.

a reply to: harold223

The right has moved further to the right, making centrists look like leftists.

Oh I don't doubt that many on the right have gone even further right as a result of recent political tensions, both sides have become more divided and separated from each other. But if you think for one moment that left hasn't shifted a million miles further left since Trump was elected you need to get a grasp on objective reality, because it does exist. I consider myself a center-right libertarian, supporting Trump doesn't automatically make someone far-right or a white supremacist, I actually watch some liberal YouTube channels such as ShoeOnHead. She supports Bernie Sanders and I have nothing against that because she's more of a centrist and respects all points of view, she doesn't constantly attack Trump supporters, instead she welcomes them. There was even a little bit of bonding between her Bernie supporters and her Trump supporters recently.

Since the day Trump was elected the left has gone insane and done everything possible in an attempt to remove him, and failed every time. I consider that to be political extremism and an attack on democracy. The primary reason the right has shifted further right is in response these attacks, generalizing Trump supporters as racists and villainizing all white males, it pushes people into a corner. I didn't support Trump initially but then I saw how he was attacked. Even Obama recently warned that the left is becoming "out of step with voters" by going too far left and ostracizing many of the more moderate voters with things like open borders and the judgmental attitude of what he called "woke culture". Bernie Sanders wanted to prosecute fossil fuel executives, Andrew Yang wanted to give everyone $1000 per month, Joe Biden literally promised a cure for cancer if he's elected. Biden does seem fairly moderate but he has zero chance of beating Trump.

I am genuinely confused how people can see things in such a fundamentally polar opposite way from what I see as reality.

Don't worry, I'm just as genuinely confused as you are. To me it's beyond clear that the left has a grip on most aspects of society, the majority of major MSM outlets are leftist, schools are liberal indoctrination camps, Hollywood is becoming a SJW propaganda machine, and large social media platforms are self-appointed arbiters of truth, but are really just using censorship in order to influence elections as they've been caught admitting on hidden cameras multiple times.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

You know, I think I get where some of the confusion comes from. Definitions. There are some that believe that 'left-right' is a very poor way of understanding political/social views. From my studies in Global Politics (I am a global politics/IR major), I have come across some other ways of looking at things.

You can look at it as a square. Left/right, liberal/authoritarian. It is actually even more complicated than that when you break it down (3D cube even). You can have positions that are economically 'left wing' but socially conservative. You can have positions that are socially liberal but economically conservative. You can have all sorts of combinations of these. But one thing that is being constantly confused is the concept of socialism. A socialist state is emphatically a state whereby the means and mode of production are under social or state control. This can in theory be either authoritarian or liberal/democratic. The world today is, by any academic definition, emphatically capitalist. More so than at anytime in at least a century. Neo-liberal capitalism is capitalism unchained. It is the emphasis on the corporate over the state. Neo-liberalism is a very right wing position to take and has been the dominant structure globally since Reagan/Thatcher. That is why I would argue that the Right has been in power, and more prominent to an increasing degree, for over fourty years now. I don't actually consider the US Democrats, or any major political movement in the US to be left wing. Socially liberal perhaps in some of the social justice standpoints. Some in the US are bordering on Social Democratic economic principles, which leans centre left, but even then, the Social Democratic positions taken in the US are much the norm in the rest of the world (think Europe and even Australia/NZ). It is a matter of perspective.

originally posted by: harold223
There really is not much a radical left in the United States. What is being framed "left wing" would be considered centre or even centre right to the rest of the world. The right wing in recent years have been working hard to move the Overton Window in regard to the left/right paradigm, painting centrists as radical leftists. Open your eyes people...

Open YOUR eyes! The radicals are in the Democrat Party and a number of them are in the DSA, and they work for the communist party.
m.barnesandnoble.com...
Oh yes and you sure give a good spiel of semantic globalist apologetics ....
just deny that the radicals are really not radical and right wing blah blah blah ... sheesh
I’m familiar with hegelian dialectic. Why don’t you just call it what it is?

I guess it depends what he means. If it’s censoring the left equally then it’s a pointless endeavour.

Needs to make them free and open platforms for all views. Let the people decide what they want to believe and let the algorithms be representative of people’s interests, not marketing and propaganda tools.

a reply to: NightVision


The right have the majority but are shackled when it comes to expressing opinions.

What amazes me is we are painted as the fanatics when really the majority of extremists (and idiots) are on the left.

I honestly don't know what the solution is.

What I do know is that when it comes to Facebook, Twitter, and the like there needs to be some kind of distinction. Once they limit a person's free speech (yes, I know they are a private company and free speech applied to the public forum) then they become a news outlet rather than a social media platform, and by default that changes things.

As for the news, well as much as the left LOVES a good regulation, here's one. All news outlets should be for reporting facts, NOT opinions, NOT agendas. If they want to do opinion based shows they should be clearly marked as such.

For instance, there's a hurricane. The news should be reporting facts of the hurricane. It's here, it's moving along this path, the wind speeds are "xx", the rainfall amount is "xx" etc. But when they bring on "experts" who start talking about "The mayor didn't act fast enough." when that "expert" wasn't even in City Hall when the discussions were taking place and decisions were made, that's opinion.

Or when they start a "Breaking News" report based on an "anonymous source", that's also opinion.

I'm all for freedom, but lets be real here. Regulations are a fact of life. The left loves to regulate every little detail of our lives, unless those regulations are aimed at them and restrict them in ANY way. Then it's righteous indignation in full force. So, it's time to let them know how it is.

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: olaru12

Funny how the Trump supporters are okay with an attack against free speech as long as it is speech they dont like.

The US has shifted far to the right. What would normally be considered centrists views are now considered the left.

This is setting a dangerous precedent.

I was hopeful that we would elect a decent president in 2020, however the DNC choose a lame duck. 4 more years of Trump will be devasting to the Constitution.

Funny how Republicans cry about voter fraud, when it's Republican who usually commit it, they cry about free speech but want to censor 'leftist' views, the say liberals want to take away liberty yet again it is consevatives who approve of authoritarian rules....

The term 'useful idiot' applies to most of the Trump crowd.

Conservatives are denied the ability to speak freely on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and many more social media sites. There has been a concerted effort by Democrats to silence anyone they fear or disagree with. That is a fact and easily proven.

Social media entities are owned by left leaning corporations that want acess to the internet infrastructure American tax dollars built while censoring those that are opposed to their ideology.

No one ia advocating silencing Liberals. What we are advocating is free speech on all internet platforms. The internet and social media has become the town square of today's world. Censoring any political speech whether it be liberal or conservative or any other for that matter is dangerous and leads to fascism.

originally posted by: poncho1982

As for the news, well as much as the left LOVES a good regulation, here's one. All news outlets should be for reporting facts, NOT opinions, NOT agendas. If they want to do opinion based shows they should be clearly marked as such.

I've been making that very issue a talking point for years. People's eyes just glaze over when you mention it. I don't want to limit free speech. I just want it to be titled correctly. Kudos to you sir.

a reply to: BenjanonFranklin

I don't believe one could even define them a Liberals, as the definition of a Liberal is the idea of allowing everyone to speak freely.

They are something else.

originally posted by: olaru12

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: Gryphon66

Ah.

Government needs to stay out of regulating freedom.

It is true this is all a new situation where you have private companies that have created public platforms that have become the common use by the masses for communication. I do not have an answer to this other than maybe they should not regulate anyone's fourth, but then they are private companies...

So where do we go? Will this open the doors for other companies to allow freedom of speech for all and that slowly drives these companies downward who decide to limit what they think is right or wrong? Should the government step in ands tell them not to limit freedom of speech being a private company? Should the Goverment label companies based on their political directions in what they allow or not?

As I said I do not have a good answer for this, but we all can see how companies like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and so on could drive a narrative of one sided support and extremely limit anything else, and that is not good either.

Let's use ATS as the model. You're free to speak almost anything you want here but the rightwing ideology is prominent and can stifle the opposition with ridicule and name calling. Why should any other private forum be any different? You are free to join in or leave...freedom of choice, lead, follow or GTFO!!

Government censorship has no place on ATS. Let the marketplace decide what people want to listen to; or would you prefer the communistic model of complete government control, limited access to the www. and censorship.

Save your money, rent time on a server and be the change you seek and let other companies run their business the way they think will be most profitable. That's the American way....

Or whine like a crybaby if you want to. You're in the right place....

The government sued Microsoft to stop their monopolistic practices. I’m all for an anti trust suit against a megalithic progressive corporate shark which seeks to limit free speech and seeks to stop the conservative voices speaking out against Progressive policies. Monopolies and Oligopolies are an unfortunate manifestation of Capitalism and gives fuel to anti capitalist sentiments of the proponents of communism. Free Enterprise is what we want, not megalithic corporations which strangle the lifeblood of small business entrepreneurs and family businesses. On the other hand, too many govt regulations also make it harder for smaller businesses to operate while the bigger guys can survive more easily. Lobbyists also are in the mix, as they get help from Congress but the little guy doesn’t have that luxury.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: Serdgiam

But how is limiting how successful a company can become any different than limiting the amount of wealth one can acquire?

If moves were made to break these companies up, what's to stop them from moving their headquarters to a more friendly country, theoretically losing us all the taxes these companies supposedly pay, while they continue to operate as they always have?

That’s rich coming from someone who seems to champion Progressive causes. It is Progressive govt regulations which has destroyed free enterprise in this country and pushed corporations into moving operations overseas.

a reply to: harold223

I wanted to mention that you are correct about a socialist state being one in which the state controls the means of production. Then you go on with a bunch of labels like “ neo-liberalism” and such. You have not taken into account the many Progressive ideals which have been promoted through the the state in the US and elsewhere. Social security is one in which the state forces individuals to give their money to the government and then depend on the government to take care of them later in life but government will tax that income again while controlling then with various regulations. Then there’s Medicare, and now Obamacare which is a give Draconian bureaucratic control. Obama used his authority to declare a moratorium on offshore drilling then gave foreign state controlled energy companies (Petrobas) American taxpayer money. To deny the socialistic aspects of this is to deny that Fabian socialism exists to promote socialist takeover in increments.

a reply to: trollz

I'm not sure Trump can do it as a plan but it is obvious his presidency has had a negative impact on the incentivized media. Throughout his presidency newsrooms, papers, websites have gone away and it is a marvelous thing. Those in media who propagate inappropriate "news" will be gone by the end of the year. At this moment, the media unions are asking for a bailout, what a joke! Only journalists committed to real reporting without incentive should be allowed to work.

As for ATS as a place for free speech...not so much. The liberals have a fierce representation here. In the past 30 days I had two posts taken down; one of them a link to the WhiteHouse petition website for a petition to investigate the Gates Foundation for Crimes against humanity and a second, a post describing a video called Fall of the Cabal with a link to the video. I was told it wasn't Q and was thrown in the trash. I have also been told "good people" aren't interested in what is going on with the Epstein cases - this was about 60 days ago, post is still up. So, yeah, there are some folks on ATS who just spew more of the same liberal/democrat/republican/closeminded/hatred bs. Thankfully, I'm not here for freaking flags OR stars.

a reply to: trollz

I'm glad we still have websites like ATS where people aren't banned or have their posts made invisible to others because the owners don't agree with their beliefs or opinions.

a reply to: harold223

Neoliberalism is a far right position and it has run the world since the 80s. The DNC are proponents of this ideology and so is the RNC.

That said, you might as well be screaming directly into a flushing toilet for all the good it will do saying it here.