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Ron Paul Posts Criticism of Censorship ... Shortly Before Facebook Blocks Him

dirtpoorchris said:
I dont think you understand how this works. If leftist bans everyone simply posting a Trump qoute then republicans are gonna march on state capitols all accross the US. Leftists are banning MILLIONS of people from social media right now for posting qoutes or copies to speaches or even just for posting a Trump picture.
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It more likely they were banned for spreading the BIG LIE that the election was stolen and for any organizing around it.
 
CLAX1911 said:
Private companies that hold monopolies and have government protection from anti trust laws. So not really private companies.

I suppose someone can just go start their own internet... Lol
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But they don't hold monopolies. Just off the top of my head, here are some social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Tiktok.
How do these companies hold a monopoly if there are more than one of them?
 
PrincessBerlin said:
But they don't hold monopolies. Just off the top of my head, here are some social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Tiktok.
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Okay, oligopoly. Instagram is owned by Facebook. Lol
How do these companies hold a monopoly if there are more than one of them?
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Fair enough, it's an oligopoly and they are immune to anti trust laws.
 
CLAX1911 said:
A corporate overlord with a vast monopoly isn't a form of government?

If you say so...
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GOP is the party of big business and corporate tax breaks so you oughta know.
 
Moot said:
GOP is the party of big business and corporate tax breaks so you oughta know.
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That's why I find this so strange. People keep saying that, but the most wealthy people ever to live in the planet are strictly not GOP supporters. And the people licking their boots are strictly left wing.

It seems that you are mistaken
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
I guess we're going to be hearing a lot of tantrums about censorship in the future because apparently it's patriotic to give deep dive reconnaissance tours to insurrectionists and tweet the location of the House Speaker when armed mobs of them come looking for her.
But apparently social media doesn't agree.
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True, but I find it more than a little worrying that those on the left would put their trust in our public discourse being controlled by unaccountable billionaires. Especially sociopathic creeps like Mark Zuckerburg who was hungrily buying up menstruation data of millions of women through period tracker apps.
 
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Felis Leo said:
True, but I find it more than a little worrying that those on the left would put their trust in our public discourse being controlled by unaccountable billionaires. Especially sociopathic creeps like Mark Zuckerburg.
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It's just because they like that they are going after political rivals.

I'm reminded of Martin Niemöller... Sad these things are just lost in history.
 
Moot said:
GOP is the party of big business and corporate tax breaks so you oughta know.
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Mine is the party of business, large and small, Moot. But for me it all comes down to power. Because power corrupts, power must always be dispersed and checked, institutionally and sometimes legally, and cannot be allowed to pool in any one area of our polity, governmental, business, or social. But the share of actual power that social media companies enjoy and who seek to be treated as common carriers is far too great when someone as anodyne as Ron Paul is sought to be silenced as though he is no better than a David Duke or a Louis Farrakhan.
 
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Felis Leo said:
Mine is the party of business, large and small, Moot. But for me it all comes down to power. Because power corrupts, power must always be dispersed and checked and cannot be allowed to pool in any one aource. But the share of actual power that social media companies enjoy and who seek to be treated as common carriers is far too great when someone as anodyne as Ron Paul is sought to be silenced as though he is no better than a David Duke or a Louis Farrakhan.
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Very well stated.
 
PrincessBerlin said:
Conservatives believe that private companies should be allowed to refuse service to people until someone refuses service to them. You only believe in Capitalism when it works for you, which is Conservatism 101.
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True, PrincessBerlin. But up to a point. I do believe in general that private companies should be allowed to refuse service to whomsoever they choose. But I also believe that should be checked against the danger of cartelization, monopoly and colluding oligopolies. The rules change when yours is the only business in town that provides a particular necessary good or service, or effectively controls the life chances of a particular population. See the company stores of the 1800s.

But leaving aside the delicious irony I presume you are enjoying in seeing right-wingers being hoisted by their own petards, as a self-described socialist, what are your opinions of this level of power that a handful of private social media companies and web service platforms have over our public discourse? And how would you feel if this same power was directed against, say, Bernie Sanders and his many vocal followers? Would you be indifferent if a handful of billionaires decided to erase socialism off the face of the internet* for being a bit too radical for their personal taste? Because by all available evidence, if they decided to do so, that is well within their power to do.

*By “face of the internet” I mean American web hosting platforms and social media sites where socialists have found their most fertile beds to spread their ideologies.
 
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Felis Leo said:
True, PrincessBerlin. But up to a point. I do believe in general that private companies should be allowed to refuse service to whomsoever they choose. But I also believe that should be checked against the danger of cartelization, monopoly and colluding oligopolies. The rules change when yours is the only business in town that provides a particular necessary good or service, or effectively controls the life chances of a particular population. See the company stores of the 1800s.
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Sure, I don't think we should allow for monopolies or colluding oligopolies. But that's not what we have right now and it doesn't seem like we're headed there. I am concerned about powerful corporations controlling social media, but I have the same concerns about mainstream media. It's all part of the much bigger problem of the 1% having way too much power.

But leaving aside the delicious irony I presume you are enjoying in seeing right-wingers being hoisted by their own petards, as a self-described socialist, what are your opinions of this level of power that a handful of private social media companies and web service platforms have over our public discourse? And how would you feel if this same power was directed against, say, Bernie Sanders and his many vocal followers? Would you be indifferent if a handful of billionaires decided to erase socialism off the face of the internet for being a bit too radical for their personal taste? Because by all available evidence, if they decided to do so, that is well within their power to do.
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Like I said, I don't like that the 1% has the power to control discourse. And I think that they did try to bury Bernie Sanders in the primaries, including MSNBC, which is supposedly left-wing.
This is one of the reasons I'm a Socialist, I think we're all a lot more free when power is more evenly distributed throughout the community.
 
Facebook has jumped the shark if they are blocking Ron Paul. Ron Paul is as far away from being a rabid Trump supporter, as Bernie Sanders is as far away from being a rabid Micheal Bloomberg supporter.
 
Court Jester said:
Facebook has jumped the shark if they are blocking Ron Paul. Ron Paul is as far away from being a rabid Trump supporter, as Bernie Sanders is as far away from being a rabid Micheal Bloomberg supporter.
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People that go against the billionaires are being removed from things by other billionaires...

It's a bit fishy isn't it?
 
Felis Leo said:
Mine is the party of business, large and small, Moot. But for me it all comes down to power. Because power corrupts, power must always be dispersed and checked, institutionally and sometimes legally, and cannot be allowed to pool in any one area of our polity, governmental, business, or social. But the share of actual power that social media companies enjoy and who seek to be treated as common carriers is far too great when someone as anodyne as Ron Paul is sought to be silenced as though he is no better than a David Duke or a Louis Farrakhan.
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FB said what happened to Ron Paul was a mistake and he was back online within an hour. Shit happens, I guess.

Zuckerberg begged congress to regulate social media but they didn't. So it's not like social media companies aren't aware of the problem... it's more like the rightwing crossed the line way too many times and may have ruined the concept of free speech for everyone. Because just like after 9/11 they're gonna pass laws that chip away more of our freedom and all because the party of 'individual responsibility' have lost their ****ing minds and are in a state of denial and refuse to take responsibility for their words and deeds. We can't have a nation of laws if half the country think the laws, social norms, civility and common decency don't apply to them.
 
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Moot said:
FB said what happened to Ron Paul was a mistake and he was back online within an hour. Shit happens, I guess.

Zuckerberg begged congress to regulate social media but they didn't. So it's not like social media companies aren't aware of the problem... it's more like the rightwing crossed the line way too many times and may have ruined the concept of free speech for everyone.
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when you set the line at having a more right leaning opinion you've made the Target right wing people. And if you're going to be protected from antitrust laws and from lawsuits for the content you curate you should be held to a platform standard. If they want to be private companies then by all means accept when they choose that route antitrust laws apply to them and various other protections should be eliminated.
Because just like after 9/11 they're gonna pass laws that chip away more of our freedom and all because the party of individual responsibility have lost their minds and refuse to take responsibility for their words and deeds.
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we have freedom of speech. I should be allowed to say whatever I want so long as it's covered by the First Amendment. It's law enforcement and courts that should take care of the deeds.
We can't have a nation of laws if half the country think the laws, social norms and common decency don't apply to apply to them.
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Laws should apply to everybody applying social norms to people is a gateway to bigotry. just because you find someone else's Free speech unacceptable doesn't mean you should be able to silence them. That's totalitarianism. We did that once in this country it was called McCarthyism.
 
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COTO said:
This scares me to death. This is Ron Paul, the consummate libertarian, being axed for criticism of--of all things--an epidemic of censorship.

Via blogger Jonathan Turley (bold by me):
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Now former Texas congressman Ron Paul, 85, has been blocked from using his Facebook page for unspecified violations of “community standards.” Paul’s last posting was linked to an article on the “shocking” increase of censorship on social media. Facebook then proceeded to block him under the same undefined “community standards” policy.​
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Paul, a libertarian leader and former presidential candidate, has been an outspoken critics of foreign wars and an advocate for civil liberties for decades. He wrote:​
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“With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.”​
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His son is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted, “Facebook now considers advocating for liberty to be sedition. Where will it end?”​
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Even before the riot, Democrats were calling for blacklists and retaliation against anyone deemed to be “complicit” with the Trump Administration. We have been discussing the rising threats against Trump supporters, lawyers, and officials in recent weeks from Democratic members are calling for blacklists to the Lincoln Project leading a a national effort to harass and abuse any lawyers representing the Republican party or President Trump. Others are calling for banning those “complicit” from college campuses while still others are demanding a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to “hold Trump and his enablers accountable for the crimes they have committed.” Daily Beast editor-at-large Rick Wilson has added his own call for “humiliation,” “incarceration” and even ritualistic suicides for Trump supporters in an unhinged, vulgar column.​
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After the riots, the big tech companies moved to ban and block sites and individuals, including Parler which is the primary alternative to Twitter. Also, a top Forbes editor Randall Lane warned any company that they will be investigated if they hire any former Trump officials.​
​
Also (ibid.):

The riots are being used as a license to rollback on free speech and retaliate against conservatives. In the meantime, the silence of academics and many in the media is deafening. Many of those who have spoken for years about the dark period of McCarthyism and blacklisting are either supporting this censorship or remaining silent in the face of it.​
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Please don't let this be you.
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The Community they're referring to in those Standards are in Beijing.
 
Moot said:
FB said what happened to Ron Paul was a mistake and he was back online within an hour. Shit happens, I guess.

Zuckerberg begged congress to regulate social media but they didn't. So it's not like social media companies aren't aware of the problem... it's more like the rightwing crossed the line way too many times and may have ruined the concept of free speech for everyone. Because just like after 9/11 they're gonna pass laws that chip away more of our freedom and all because the party of 'individual responsibility' have lost their ****ing minds and are in a state of denial and refuse to take responsibility for their words and deeds. We can't have a nation of laws if half the country think the laws, social norms, civility and common decency don't apply to them.
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Hahaha. It is to laugh that Zuckerburg sought the kind of “regulation” you are thinking of, Moot. More like the regulation that a government-sponsored monopoly has over them.

But I agree with Zuckerburg. And I think the best form of regulation would be to break up Facebook since it has become so powerful that no communications platform can compete against it (since it buys up all of its competition and engages in anti-competitive practices). That is to say nothing of the Russian hackers who were able to use it to interfere with our elections and it was used as a platform to plan, organize and carry out ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. It is a menace to our society, and stands as a symbol of might that needs to broken up into a couple dozen pieces like Standard Oil.
 
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CLAX1911 said:
when you set the line at having a more right leaning opinion you've made the Target right wing people. And if you're going to be protected from antitrust laws and from lawsuits for the content you curate you should be held to a platform standard. If they want to be private companies then by all means accept when they choose that route antitrust laws apply to them and various other protections should be eliminated.
we have freedom of speech. I should be allowed to say whatever I want so long as it's covered by the First Amendment. It's law enforcement and courts that should take care of the deeds.

Laws should apply to everybody applying social norms to people is a gateway to bigotry. just because you find someone else's Free speech unacceptable doesn't mean you should be able to silence them. That's totalitarianism. We did that once in this country it was called McCarthyism.
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McCarthyism was never never never this bad. The leftists here are becoming like leftists everywhere when they gain power. East Germany is a good example.

But given the limits of the education system they may have never learned what actually goes on in leftist countries.
 
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