We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo protect themselves from liability springing from what gets published on their platforms by claiming to be common carriers, like a phone company or ISP. But they are clearly nothing of the sort.
I have a saved file copy of this for later publication in case this video is also taken down. This is not about whether or not you support or oppose the lockdown, this is about being allowed to say what you think about it and why. Here is the original video.
42 comments to Big Tech platforms – are they common carriers? Clearly not.
Trump has appointed a LOT of judges. He will hopefully be re-elected and keep the Senate (and take back the House!? I can dream) which means a LOT more judges. Maybe, just maybe, we can win at least some battles, if not the war, against censorship by Big Tech, main stream media, et al. They are attacking the 1st Amendment in a serious, republic threatening way. We can’t just blog about this…their attack on us must have consequences, personal and costly. Am I still allowed to say I don’t trust Google?
This is not a first amendment issue. This is private censorship, not government. It needs to be stopped legally by challenging the assumption that these are unbiased utilities, but actively prohibit certain content. Therefore, they are liable for the content they do permit, just like newspapers are liable for letters to the editor that they print. Sue them all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
I have been saying this for a long time now. Either these communications platforms are more like a phone company, incapable of exercising editorial control over the communications that happen on their property, or they are more like a newspaper which can manage and curate the information that passes through their hands.
One or the other, not both. And I contend that if a platform is capable of, and in the habit of, removing “offensive” content, then they are clearly responsible for the rest of the content that appears on that platform. Legally, fiscally responsible.
While I am not usually a fan of legislation to fix problems, in this case I think a Federal law specifying that companies can either assert their property rights to their communications platforms, or their immunity to libel suits, but not both at the same time, is in order.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I contend that if a company claims to be a common carrier, the threshold for removing content from their platform should be a court order. Nothing less.
“They are attacking the 1st Amendment in a serious, republic threatening way.”
Mostly agree with your comment, but with one small quibble.
They’re not attacking anything. They’re merely exercising the power that We The Stupid People gave them when our elected representatives conferred immunity upon them without removing their viewpoint discretion.
And now it’s time to change that one small aspect of the development of the internet in the USA. Let them meet the same burden the electric company would face if it denied me service because of my politics.
bobby b
April 30, 2020 at 2:18 am
Let them meet the same burden the electric company would face if it denied me service because of my politics.
The same broad principle needs to be applied to banks and payment processors. The financial services sector cannot be allowed to continue denying service as a means of persecuting people for their political views.
GregWA: “Trump has appointed a LOT of judges. He will hopefully be re-elected and keep the Senate (and take back the House!? I can dream) which means a LOT more judges.”
If I had planned it, I would have devised a plan that would lock up Trumps supporters at home and away from his rallies, put many of them out of work and destroyed their businesses. What better way to demotivate them and make sure more Democrats turn out in November?
How could I do that?
How about I promote influenza into a horror bug. Then the MSM drums up a hysteria, which the ‘deep state’ obsequiously runs with. And as and when anything contradictory appears on google or Youtube, my chums in ‘Big Tech’ purge it immediately.
Consider though that platforms cite “community standards” when banning. If that were true, that they banned purely on complaints from other users, would that get them off the hook?
“If I had planned it, I would have devised a plan that would lock up Trumps supporters at home and away from his rallies, put many of them out of work and destroyed their businesses. What better way to demotivate them and make sure more Democrats turn out in November?”
You’ve got that the wrong way round. I can’t think of any better way to motivate Trump voters than to make them angry and feel threatened. The danger to Trump’s re-election is not the base, who by now would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, but the waverers – the people in the middle who switched from Obama to Trump. The danger is not that the threat is exaggerated, but that it isn’t.
The USA has just experienced a disaster with a death toll more than 15 times bigger than 9/11, and they’re only at the start. (Even in New York, the worst hit, only 20% have had it so far. You need to get to 60-80% before it stops on its own.) If they take the brakes off now, as many seem to want to, they could end up multiplying that death toll by 10. And that will mean that the campaign at the next election won’t be the economy and the wall, it won’t be trade and China, it won’t even be Russian dossiers and sex scandals, the headlines will be about how Trump killed half a million Americans because he couldn’t let go of the politics. And while his core base won’t believe it and wouldn’t care if he did, the former blue states who turned red for Trump will switch back. They’re already in virtual rebellion, with state governors refusing to open up in defiance of Trump’s edicts, and their people support that. Those people who Trump ‘abandoned to die’ and who lost family members won’t forget.
Trump’s position should have been that American lives are his top priority, that even if the science is uncertain that the risk of such a catastrophe is unacceptable and he is going to act to prevent even the possibility, that because of his success with the economy that they are starting off better placed to weather the economic storm, and more capable of bouncing back quickly after its over, and that American ingenuity will find ways to adapt. Seize the agenda. Seize the initiative. See where you’re going, get yourself out in front of the pack, and lead. An external threat against which the nation can unite usually leads to a huge boost in a leader’s popularity. (As with the effect of 9/11 on Bush’s popularity.) Partisan attacks against the leader then backfire, being seen as attacks against the national interest. If he’d done that, and found a way to take his base with him, he might have got the biggest majority ever at the next election.
A large part of his problem was the divided nature of American politics at the moment. Because he has been so continually attacked about everything, any adversity now gets automatically identified and interpreted as a partisan political attack. Because he had planned the coming election campaign around his success with the economy, an event that threatened to wreck the economy was seen as an electoral threat, (rather than as a massive opportunity, if he had the wit and agility to change emphasis). The behaviour of epidemics is counter-intuitive. They sneak up on you – they initially look less dangerous than they actually are, and if you manage to stop them before they take off it makes it look like a huge fuss made about nothing. Given that American politics for the last four years has all been a huge fuss about nothing, there was naturally a lot of suspicion that this was all some veiled partisan attack on Trump’s success, as if the rest of the world was in on it too. And instead of leading, Trump listened to his base and their suspicions and fears, and wavered, and dithered, and tried to pull back. And gave a lot of people the strong impression he didn’t understand the problem and wasn’t in control.
I suspect Trump will still win, but because of his lack of leadership against the virus it will be a lot closer than it might have been. The pandemic itself, and any damage it might do to the economy, was not a threat to Trump – it was a natural external threat which he could neither have foreseen nor prevented. His base wouldn’t care about missing rallies, and they’d figure they’d get their jobs back a lot faster under Trump than Biden. But if hundreds of thousands of people see half their family die around them in a matter of days, and can be sold the story that it is Trump’s fault, that’s a hell of a lot better for the Democrats’ prospects than anything they had before this.
Trump’s situation is actually quite similar to the one Boris Johnson had found himself in. Boris won the election with grand plans for an economic revival, rebuilding science, education and infrastructure, and opening up free trade with the rest of the world, and had his plans cut out from under him by the pandemic. Once he understood the full gravity of the situation, he instantly switched course, seized the leadership role on the response, and now his trust and popularity scores are through the roof. For an incumbent leader, it’s a huge opportunity.
Not fisking any more of your million word missives NiV–but the only person Johnson has to blame for his now reduced circs is Johnson and his own LMF.
I don’t know about Trump–he needs to reign in these shite-sucking democrat Guv’nors and end the LD quick–but it is now obvious that despite your claims of 2-3 weeks ago the mega-deaths aren’t arriving. Half of peoples families AREN’T going to die around them and voting for tyrannical marxistic scum isn’t going to resurrect either people or jobs.
@NiV 11:53am, “The USA has just experienced a disaster with a death toll more than 15 times bigger than 9/11…” You have compared a disaster with an attack, or have you inadvertently pointed out that both incidents are attacks? Certainly 9/11 was an attack, but to believe the CCP Virus was an attack you have to believe the ChiComms are smart enough to have anticipated it. Smart enough to think that the inter-species petri dish they call a food supply might might lead to viral outbreaks every 10 years or so, that they could control the information flow and the population associated with an outbreak, to let the virus spread within one province, and once they understood the likely outcome of releasing it (possibly a million deaths worldwide, but not 100M), let it rip. They didn’t have to manufacture the virus to do this; in fact the “naturally occurring” (nothing natural about a wet market) path is better since you don’t have to think about how to expose the population. I’m not saying this is true, it’s something like what you’d have to believe to think CCP responsible. But I do think there’s enough here that stinks that an investigation is needed, but there is no international agency that has the power to compel the ChiComms to cooperate and no agency that wants to do it. So, we’ll have to do it ourselves (US and its friends).
But you wrote something else that caught my eye: disasters. It’s true we just experienced something, at the very least a self-inflicted wound (the non fatal effects of our COVID response), with a death toll, 15 times bigger than 9/11. Of course, we experienced the same thing last year, multiple times: flu (24,000-62,000 CDC estimate for 2019-2020), car accidents (39,000 in 2019 and in 2018; source: ABC News, sorry did not look for a reliable source), etc. Car accidents could be reduced without shutting down the economy, just reduce the speed limit! Flu deaths could be reduced, probably not much since most of those who die probably have other underlying health issues like COVID-19 deaths, but probably could save 10,000 lives each year with better intervention and awareness? Even if it’s one life saved, can we put a price on that? (trigger question, short answer is yes). So, maybe the thing to notice is we are willing to tolerate preventable sources of deaths that are ~10x 9/11, every year. That might be worth discussing.
Something else worth discussing: the culpability of “the experts” in this, the government officials who followed their obviously ludicrous advice (well obvious as of at least a few weeks ago–time to reopen immediately and fully!), and how we’re going to prepare for the next outbreak.
Sorry for the double posting (I must not have pressed the right button), but it allows me to the rest of this post, this bit: COVID won’t even make the top 10 list of things that kill people in the US this year! And while there’s probably not much we can do about most of those 2,800,000 deaths, the USG just printed a couple trillion dollars and borrowed (from China?) a couple trillion more to deal with COVID. Had that money been spent on cancer research, heart disease prevention and treatment, and, and, or, I’m absolutely confident more lives could be saved than are involved in COVID.
@NiV 11:53am, “The USA has just experienced a disaster with a death toll more than 15 times bigger than 9/11…” You have compared a disaster with an attack, or have you inadvertently pointed out that both incidents are attacks? Certainly 9/11 was an attack, but to believe the CCP Virus was an attack you have to believe the ChiComms are smart enough to have anticipated it. Smart enough to think that the inter-species petri dish they call a food supply might might lead to viral outbreaks every 10 years or so, that they could control the information flow and the population associated with an outbreak, to let the virus spread within one province, and once they understood the likely outcome of releasing it (possibly a million deaths worldwide, but not 100M), let it rip. They didn’t have to manufacture the virus to do this; in fact the “naturally occurring” (nothing natural about a wet market) path is better since you don’t have to think about how to expose the population. I’m not saying this is true, it’s something like what you’d have to believe to think CCP responsible. But I do think there’s enough here that stinks that an investigation is needed, but there is no international agency that has the power to compel the ChiComms to cooperate and no agency that wants to do it. So, we’ll have to do it ourselves (US and its friends).
But you wrote something else that caught my eye: disasters. It’s true we just experienced something, at the very least a self-inflicted wound (the non fatal effects of our COVID response), with a death toll, 15 times bigger than 9/11. Of course, we experienced the same thing last year, multiple times: flu (24,000-62,000 CDC estimate for 2019-2020), car accidents (39,000 in 2019 and in 2018; source: ABC News, sorry did not look for a reliable source), etc. Car accidents could be reduced without shutting down the economy, just reduce the speed limit! Flu deaths could be reduced, probably not much since most of those who die probably have other underlying health issues like COVID-19 deaths, but probably could save 10,000 lives each year with better intervention and awareness? Even if it’s one life saved, can we put a price on that? (trigger question, short answer is yes). So, maybe the thing to notice is we are willing to tolerate preventable sources of deaths that are ~10x 9/11, every year. That might be worth discussing.
Something else worth discussing: the culpability of “the experts” in this, the government officials who followed their obviously ludicrous advice (well obvious as of at least a few weeks ago–time to reopen immediately and fully!), and how we’re going to prepare for the next outbreak.
OK, as a libertarian on the other side of this situation, let me state the case of the communications platforms.
I run a web hosting company. We’re tiny by comparison to YouTube etc, but someone can put up a website for very little money and there are way too many sites being created and updated per day for us to police. The other day, someone who was paying us $5/month put up a site, let’s say it was http://www.fred-bloggs-is-a-murderer.com. Fred Bloggs wrote to us and asked us to take it down. We did.
Should we have done differently? Should we have left ourselves open to enormous legal fees for the sake of $5/month?
The right to free speech means that you do have the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. But it also means that if you did so falsely, the families of those killed in the ensuing stampede have the right to sue you to oblivion.
In the case of YouTube, or my own company in the situation above, the person who published the message might be right, they might be wrong. But one thing is sure, if they’re wrong, the publishing platform will be named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
So if you provide an online publishing platform, should you be forced to publish everything that people submit? Should Samizdata be forced to publish every comment that some rando posts here, no matter how libelous? If they take a view on how libelous a given comment is and choose to publish or not based on that, have they then accepted legal responsibility for every other comment that they do let through?
The concept of a common carrier is nonsense when it comes to any online publishing system, because it happens over a period of time. The postal service transports a given package once and then they’re done; the telephone company handles a call once and then that’s it. An online publishing platform can have content submitted once, then have it sent to thousands of people over a long period of time. At some point later they might be informed that it’s legally dubious. Prior to that point their situation might be be similar to the traditional common barriers. But after that point they need to balance up the risks — what will they lose in a lawsuit about this — with the rewards — what are they making in ads/hosting fees/whatever.
If YouTube host a video that challenges the mainstream view on CV19, and people watch it and believe it, and then it turns out to be mistaken and they die as a result, who do you think they’re going to sue? The doctors who published it or the billion dollar corporation? Do you think that the shareholders of Alphabet, who ultimately own YouTube, should be on the hook for insane legal costs for a thousand dollars revenue tops for that number of views?
Platforms ultimately will be held responsible for what they continue to publish after they have been informed about it. Even if it’s not in the courts, it will be reputational.
They should not censor stuff up front (beyond the normal stuff to stop spam), simply because sane content moderation at scale is impossible, but once something has been pointed out to them, they have every right to take it down if the potential downside of keeping it up outweighs the upside to their bottom line. Or indeed to their personal ethics.
Isn’t YouTube’s defence the same one we bloggers have when it comes to libelous comments in the comment zone? I know I’ve missed a hefty bullet or two on that count. If we got rid of that protection, I’m pretty sure I’d have to close down shortly after.
Isn’t YouTube’s defence the same one we bloggers have when it comes to libelous comments in the comment zone?
Sort of, Mick, but…
I know I’ve missed a hefty bullet or two on that count.
… I am also quick to take down manifestly defamatory comments. But I also take down comments that exceed my personal “what an utter cunt” test. I do that unapologetically & not infrequently, which brings me to suggest both YouTube & I might have difficultly claiming to be analogous to a common carrier as we take stuff down for purely editorial reasons, which it to say, we disdain certain lines of discussion, not just in cases where said discussion might lead to defamation or other forms of legal liability.
No one seems to be suggesting the medical discussion YouTube removed was defamatory or fraudulent or even fell foul of various national “hate speech” laws that assorted nations have on their books (& talk of “1st Amendment” is only relevant within the USA, whereas YouTube has global exposure). No, it seems that these particular medical professionals had their content taken down entirely because it contested a mainstream opinion advocated by a great many governments & NGOs like WHO (whatever WHOs opinions is today, a moving target for sure). So it seems to me this might greatly weaken an argument in court that YouTube are acting as anything even remotely analogous to a common carrier, with all that then implies.
It’s very selfish of me, and I wouldn’t want to see this site or Perry get sued, but to see that test judicially adopted and recited by lawyers and judges across the Common Law legal world would be ‘to die for’. 🙂
“Should we have done differently? Should we have left ourselves open to enormous legal fees for the sake of $5/month?”
The issue is that if you’re a common carrier, then only the person who put it up is responsible for the content, and only they can be sued, because you make it clear to everyone that you are not policing it. The carrier is not open to huge legal fees, because they are given immunity to prosecution regarding the contents.
If you police it, even if only some of the time, then *you* are responsible for the decision to leave some things up and take other things down, so you can be sued for your decision to take it down, or not, to police it or not. If you make it known that you’ll take down misinformation or libel, then people reading it have an expectation that what they read isn’t misinformation or libel based on *your* reputation and brand. If everyone knows it’s not policed, then people know to beware.
Common carrier immunity is a good idea both from the point of view of free speech, and also for enabling new communication technologies at scale for the public benefit. But the price of it is that you have to leave it unpoliced. If you want only the person who put the words up to be entirely responsible, then you have to give them full control. If you take partial control of what they say, then you have partial responsibility for what they say.
Moreover, if you take it down on the grounds of it being libel or misinformation, that itself could be taken as a libel – you are in effect calling them a liar or criminal, and it can have a direct financial impact on them if they lose advertising revenue or sponsorship as a result.
In the case of YouTube, or my own company in the situation above, the person who published the message might be right, they might be wrong. But one thing is sure, if they’re wrong, the publishing platform will be named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Certainly worth pondering. However, these chaps are essentially advocating the policies implemented by the Swedish government. But you or me advocating such policies is not the same as implementing them, which only a government can do. So even if the Swedish/Anti-Lockdown approach to this pandemic ultimately proves to be a disastrous failure, it’s really hard to see how mere advocacy can lead to legal liability.
Say some government policy is introduced, one that I as a private person happened to advocate online in the past, which is then widely thought to have caused economic woe or an uptick of the murder rate in Bognor Regis, can I be sued in court for having suggesting such policies on YouTube or a blog? Can I sue people pushing the Catastrophic Global Warming narrative in 5 or 10 years if their predictions are falsified by reality? Somehow I doubt it. This is not the same as defamation or criminal fraud.
Well, well, well. Isn’t this topical. If the article at the link’s to be believed, one of Australia’s wig and gown set has just ruled that Google is a publisher.
“You have compared a disaster with an attack, or have you inadvertently pointed out that both incidents are attacks?”
No, I’ve pointed out both incidents are disasters, one deliberately instigated, one not. Intent makes no difference to the cost.
My point was that the USA took the deaths on 9/11 very seriously, despite it being a lot fewer deaths than a bad flu season. The *political* impact of those deaths was huge. So in the current situation, where a lot of people are counting and seeing those COVID-19 deaths as an unfolding national tragedy bigger than 9/11, the *political* impact can be proportionately greater. And people will no more take your argument comparing it to flu seriously than Americans in 2001 would have taken such comparisons being made about 9/11.
“Of course, we experienced the same thing last year, multiple times: flu (24,000-62,000 CDC estimate for 2019-2020), car accidents (39,000 in 2019 and in 2018”
You can’t compare a year to a month.
And you can’t use the mild results that happened as a result of slamming the brakes on to argue that you shouldn’t be slamming the brakes on. Even with the lock-down, late and inadequate as it was, you had 50,000 deaths. Without the lock-down, you could easily be on your way to north of two million deaths.
Flu doesn’t cause many deaths because most of us are already immune to most varieties. It spreads a little until it runs out of susceptible people to infect, and then fizzles out. So far as can be determined, virtually nobody is immune to SARS-CoV-2. If it is allowed to proceed to herd immunity, but where everyone who needs one gets a hospital bed, about 2 million people will die. If it is allowed to rip through the population so fast you run out of hospital beds, then up to ten times that many could die. The fact that hasn’t happened (yet) because you *did* lock down is not a sane reason for thinking that measures to stop transmission are unnecessary. You can certainly argue about whether lock-down is the *only* or *best* way to do so, but if you don’t start at least taking it seriously you may well end up paying the political price next November.
GregWA – you are putting the cart before the horse.
You write about what President Trump and a Republican Senate can do if they are reeleted – but THEY WILL NOT BE REELECTED unless they act now.
We witnessed this in 2018 – Facebook sabotaged the “Walk Away” (walk away from the Democrats) movement and Google (which bases its entire business on its legal claim to be an unbiased search engine) directed searches to sources that were hostile to Republican candidates and supportive of Democrat candidates.
Result – a Democrat House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. If this is repeated in 2020 the Dems will control the Presidency and the Senate – and that means they will control the courts (including the Supreme Court -John Roberts being hopelessly weak) and then the BILL OF RIGHTS WILL BE DEAD.
There will be no “freedom of speech” or “right to keep and bear arms” these and all other fundamental restrictions on government will be “interpreted” away.
The tech companies have all formally, multiple times, denied they have a political bias – but it is clear that they do, and that they act upon it.
These denials have often been given on oath to Congress (so Mark Z and the others have all committed perjury – and yet they are NOT punished for it) and in formal legal statements to government officers – there is (I believe) a five year prison sentence for lying to Federal officials – yet the heads of the Tech companies lie in every formal legal statement they make (to Congress, to Federal officials, and to the courts) and never serve a day in prison.
Remember – Google claims to be a neutral objective search engine, its whole business is based upon this FRAUD, yet the fraud goes unpunished.
The Social Media companies (Twitter, Youtube [Google again], Faeebook…..) all make the FORMAL LEGAL CLAIM to be “neutral public platforms” – NOT publishers.
Their formal legal claims are LIES – yet they go unpunished.
If the Republicans just carry on doing nothing they will lose in November – ad they will DESERVE to lose in November.
My Grandmother (mother’s side) had ischaemic heart failure put on her death certificate. They’d done a post-mortem exam (I read it) and all that and it was true for a certain value of true. She was also dancing the last tango with Alzheimer’s. This was not officially mentioned. When I heard of her death and saw her (still warm) on the bed I was quite emotionally conflicted. We’d been very close* but the last years… She wasn’t my Gran. She was borderline human. She couldn’t speak and just sat there. She didn’t even eat. She had been taken into the QE Hospital umpteen times for re-hydration. She was old, malnourished (she weighed next to nothing in the end). My Mum was force-feeding her and she hardly moved. So she had a heart attack and that finally did for her. The ultimate cause of this (and I’m quoting the GP, her consultant, umpteen nurses…) was Alzheimer’s. But that was not officially recorded. Did I mention her kidneys were on the way out and she had type II diabetes because she hadn’t eaten or drunk normally for nearly ten years…
Yeah, it’s a very sad story (though not, alas, unusual) so what is the point. COVID-19 mainly seems to kill the old and unwell so do we really know the full score here? We have remarkably different death rates from different countries. Including countrires that have roughly comparable health-care systems. Woud it be fair to suggest my Gran not exactly dying of what, technically, officially, killed her is atypical? I kinda suspect a lot of people go that way. kill’d by many accidents. So, when we have a novel disease (and no, it ain’t “bad ‘flu”) which seems to favour the old and presents in ways which aren’t fully understood yet (even by Chris “Gollum” – my preciousss PPEsss… – Whitty) then do we really know how many it kills or is simply the coup de grace? It’s a serious question. It seems to be doing a number in care homes. How many folks in those are going to peg-it in the near future one way or another? Most of them ain’t exactly tickety-boo now are they?
Do we really know what exactly ever kills most people? And I don’t mean what ultimtely puts us out of our misery but all the paths that lead there… For sure – some of us die for obvious singular reasons – but that is no means all of us.
*I owe my love of junk stores and liquorice to her.
More broadly on the First Amendment does not apply to Corporations argument.
Let us be clear what that means.
It means, for example, that if you have ever (in your life) expressed political or cultural opinions that the left does not like (and raises a “twitter storm” about) then you can be denied any job, and denied a bank account, and not be allowed to buy food at the local supermarket.
For example, there are two major “payment processors” – Mastercard and Visa. Mastercard is already controlled by the left – many internal documents have come to light showing its political agenda.
Visa recounts its staff from the same universities – it is only a matter of time before Visa is controlled by the left (if it is not already).
So then someone with “reactionary” political opinions (say they oppose “Gay Marriage” – or once did many years ago, or opposes abortion, or whatever) will not only not be employed by the handful of mega corporations that control most of the economy (thanks to the funny money of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England) – they will not be able to run a business of their own either, and they will not be allowed to have a bank account or have payments processed.
How will people with the “wrong” political and cultural opinions live? Will they have to become muggers and house breakers? Perhaps they will be allowed to live out in the hills – but I do not see how that would work for large numbers of people.
And in the future “cashless economy” beloved by governments and mega corporations even begging in the streets will not help.
The person denied employment (perhaps because they once mentioned, many years before,that they did not believe that Martin Luther King was a saint) will present his card (his electronic begging card) to the supermarket – and they will decline it, because of his or her vile reactionary opinions.
So we will be free – free to be dead. And, no doubt, there will be mental tests to make sure that people are not SHAMMING their support for “Diversity” and so – just pretending to believe in the doctrines of the left will-not-be-enough, one will have to really believe in them (although there will be “classes”, as Conservative Central Office points out in their charming way, to help people with reactionary beliefs adopt, truly believe, the Progressive doctrines of the Frankfurt School of Marxism – “Diversity” and all).
Of course in a libertarian society the economy would not be controlled by a handful of mega corporations joined at the hip with the Progressive elite and dependent on funny money from the Central Banks. Money would be actual gold and silver (perhaps specs of gold or silver in clear plastic – to prevent wear and tear) and there would be many different business enterprises.
But we do not live in a libertarian society – society is what it is, and in this society such things as the 1st Amendment are becoming a dead letter. Eve in the United States – in the United Kingdom it is the central principle (taught by Sir Francis Bacon, Sir William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham – and all the other thinkers taught now, with their opponents flushed down the “Memory Hole”) that there are no rights AGAINST the state. The central modern British doctrine is that there is nothing (nothing at all) that the government may not do, and that there is no right of resistance (none) against the government – regardless of what it does.
Look at the Chinese “Social Credit” system – where people with the “wrong” opinions are systematically excluded from life. That is what most of Big Business wants in the West – they do not even hide it anymore.
The “education system” (the schools and universities) produces the Corporate bureaucrats (for example the bankers) just as much as the government bureaucrats – and there is no great difference in beliefs and attitudes. And the mega corporations depend on the funny money of the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve and-so-on.
This has never been a pure capitalist society, but now it is further away from capitalism than ever.
I do not believe that it is useful to describe such places as the United Kingdom and the United States as “capitalist” any more.
How can a country where most big “business” enterprises depend on government (are joined at the hip with the funny money of the Central Bank) and where your cultural and political opinions (not your talent or hard work) determine your position in life, be called capitalist? Capitalism without Real Savings? Capitalism without real Capital? And capitalism where all that matters is being WOKE? In supporting the “social responsibility” and “social justice” that the Business Schools (yes the Business Schools) teach?
Yes this is NOT entirely true yet – but it is becoming true, and there is little resistance to it.
We can point at a few flashes of good in a vast tempest of evil – for example Hillsdale Collage refusing government student “loans”, and the Governor of South Dakota opposing “Lockdown” Fascism (the Fascism that is beloved not just by most governments – but by every commercial advertisement on television, ALL of the Mega Corporations are supporting lockdown Fascism), but such drops of good in a vast ocean of evil are not enough.
I’m not sure the likes of Google know they are biased. Obviously a lot of their stuff isn’t. I don’t think they are biased over finding a taxi company or a pizza. But, when it is political it’s all a viewpoint. If you think being neutral means being “in the middle” then it really depends on where you place that “middle”. I know people who think Tony Blair was (and I quote), “An extreme right-winger”. They think Margaret Thatcher murdered babies and bathed in their blood. They think of Tony Benn as a “moderate” who, if anything, never went far enough…
It is all a matter of where you position yourself. I, for example, would never spend more than GBP150 (and that’s top end) on a phone – yes, even if I won the lottery. But today’s Guardian has this to say…
“Apple’s latest iPhone SE is a surprise cut-price marvel that revives a classic iPhone design and trounces every other mid-range phone in the process.
The £419 iPhone SE…”
They give it 5/5. Sorry Guardian but GBP419 is not cut-price for a phone in my Universe and it certainly isn’t “mid-range”.
See my point? It is where you position yourself. Whether it is political viewpoints or the price of a phone… And I don’t even think it is to do with wealth per-se. I have happily spent much more than that on things that matter to me but a phone? Behave!
If anyone doubts any of the above – then look at the television advertisements in the United Kingdom.
Not the ones by the government (one would not expect them to be pro freedom) – but the ones paid for by the various Big Business Corporations and supposedly about selling commercial products.
All of them are pro lockdown – none of them are opposed to lockdown.
Why do commercial television advertisements raise this political dispute at all? And why are they all on the same side of the political divide?
The megacorpotations might has as well be taking part in the mass clapping events, waving rainbows.
The thinkers that are now taught in the education system (their opponents having been flushed down the Memory Hole) Sir Francis Bacon, Sir William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and so on – all had one great thing in common.
Their doctrine that there were no rights AGAINST the state, and that one should never (under circumstances) come to the aid of anyone else being attacked by the state.
Thomas Hobbes admitted that a person could themselves struggle against being burned alive (or whatever) by the state – but this is pointless if no one is going to help you (and people who follow Thomas Hobbes are never going to risk their lives fighting to defend someone else against the state).
The doctrines that are now taught in the education system (the “education” that produces such creatures as the Governor of Maine and the Governor of Michigan) hold that there is nothing (nothing) that that government may not do – and that there is no right of resistance against the government (regardless of what it does).
Ironically such doctrine-of-non-resistance types call themselves the “resistance” to President Trump – but only because they see him not as the head of the government, but rather as some sort of rebel against the government (if only he was).
In the United Kingdom such doctrines have total control of the education system.
The closest thing to a pro liberty work taught in the schools or universities (with the exception of the University of Buckingham) is “On Liberty” by J.S. Mill – and I can see no rights against the state, or principle of resistance against the state in this work (Ayn Rand may have been too harsh in her account of the book – but not by much). Mr John Stuart Mill may have moved away from the utilitarianism of his father James Mill and family mentor Jeremy Bentham, but he never really broke with it.
And Big Business? They have “internalised” the “ideology” that the state can do whatever it likes – and they support (actively support) the most extreme “Progressive” statism.
After all if they opposed statism (rather than supported the Progressive “lockdown” and so on), “Ofcom” would ban their advertisements. And the public would (most likely) support the censorship – “how dare these Big Business fat cats mock our beloved NHS – no sacrifice is too great to Protect The NHS!” The Cult like mass clapping events may be declining, and the rainbows in the windows may be getting a little less common – but it would be a very serious mistake to think the public are starting to have non Progressive thoughts. People who have been trained all their lives (by their schools, and the television stations and so on) in a certain world view, do not tend to suddenly adopt a different view of the world. Even if they see failure, right in front of their eyes, it is explained away as the result of the “cuts”. Totally mythical “cuts” – but a myth that many people devoutly believe in.
And how can the corporations oppose Big Government – when they depend on its “cheap money” from the Bank of England and the commercial “pet” banks?
And they have been dependent on this for many years – the virus has just made obvious what was already the case.
Big Business types are also welfare claimants – they just get their welfare a different way (but,in the end, from the same source – the funny money of the Bank of England and so on), they are just welfare claimants in thousand Pound suits.
Trevor Philips has, at times, expressed doubts (just mild doubts) that “racism” is the cause of all the problems of black and Asian people (who are now called BAME people – “black and minority ethnic”).
Perhaps because he is himself black Mr Philips has not yet been sent to prison -but he has been thrown out of the Labour Patty and is not a popular figure with the Frankfurt School of Marxism left. I doubt “Central Office” would allow Mr Philips to be a member of the Conservative Party.
When one “Googles” the name of Republican candidates in Congressional elections and one is sent to hostile sites, and then one “Googles” the name of Democrat candidates in the same Congressional elections and one is sent to admiring sites …… well the bias is obvious.
So yes they do know they are being biased – it is textbook fraud, pretending to run an unbiased search engine, whilst actually running a political campaign.
They have dropped the slogan “do not be evil” – the modern slogan of Google is “be good”.
They are clear in their documents and internal discussions that “be good” means the serve the Progressive (Collectivist) cause.
It is not a straight party political thing – for example Tulsi Gabbard is a Democrat, but Google did not consider her Progressive (because of her rejection of Frankfurt School of Marxism Identity Politics – the “Diversity” Agenda and all that) so they sabotaged her campaign.
Central Office would strongly approve of Google.
Perhaps Central Office would offer Tulsi Gabbard “classes” so that she came to believe in the Frankfurt School of Marxism “Diversity” Identity Politics Agenda – just pretending to believe in such Collectivism is not enough, one must really believe in it (hence the “classes”).
Perhaps in the future technological means will be found to make sure that people have Progressive beliefs. Removing Reactionary (i.e. Conservative) beliefs from the brains of humans. The People’s Republic of China Dictatorship would be very happy with such a development – as would, sadly, many (most?) of the “educated” people of Western Big Business.
Some people have suggested that economic collapse might smash the Progressive “education system” and the funny machine of the Central Banks (and the commercial banks and corporations that depend on it).
However, I fear that economic collapse will make the forces of tyranny even stronger.
The leading researcher into Progressive Conditioning (what the vulgar call brain washing) by the Social Media companies is Dr Robert Epstein – not to be confused (as I have sometimes mistyped) with Richard Epstein.
Robert Epstein is a live long Democrat – but has the old fashioned view that one should win people over in free and open debate, rather than by psychological conditioning.
So yes Nick M. they do know what they are doing.
The constant “Progressive” lies by the “mainstream media” are obvious – even in 2016 many Americans were already discounting it.
But what the Social Media companies are doing now is much more subtle.
Remember anything, anything at all, is justified if it is for the Progressive cause – this is the higher morality that both the people of the government bureaucracies and the corporate bureaucracies were taught during their time in the education system – and the message is constantly reinforced in their work environment and social environment.
“The thinkers that are now taught in the education system (their opponents having been flushed down the Memory Hole) Sir Francis Bacon, Sir William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and so on – all had one great thing in common. Their doctrine that there were no rights AGAINST the state, and that one should never (under circumstances) come to the aid of anyone else being attacked by the state.”
Citations needed.
I’ve read Bentham’s views on natural rights – and he does say that rights can only be granted by law. But this is more a question of semantics. There are rights people want and think they ought to have, but wanting it doesn’t mean you have got it. To say you have rights, they’re just not respected is to say you’ve got wealth, you just can’t spend it. He’s not arguing that you shouldn’t have those rights you want, only that in practice you don’t have them unless the common code by which the society you live in collectively agrees to behave respects them. ‘Rights’ are the things society’s rules allow you – its law. By declaring for yourself new ‘rights’ that society doesn’t recognise (or hasn’t previously recognised), all you’re doing is declaring new laws. The debate on what rights we should have is the same thing as the debate on what the law should be – it is part of the process of government we are collectively taking part in.
It’s a question of definition. Bentham doesn’t include “rights you ought to have but in practice don’t” under his definition of “rights you have”. But that doesn’t mean he disagrees that you ought to have them.
“The closest thing to a pro liberty work taught in the schools or universities (with the exception of the University of Buckingham) is “On Liberty” by J.S. Mill – and I can see no rights against the state, or principle of resistance against the state in this work”
How about…?
“There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”
or
“There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the propriety or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested. People decide according to their personal preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human interests amenable to governmental control. And men range themselves on one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree of interest which they feel in the particular thing which it is proposed that the government should do; or according to the belief they entertain that the government would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere, as to what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me that, in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side is at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of government is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly condemned.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
or
“The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed–the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads with which to work it.”
The entire point of the essay is to define the principle justifying restricting society’s (including but not solely the state’s) interference in individual freedom.
NickM: Regarding what really kills a person – I was reminded of bit from a comedy routine from a long time ago and a country far, far away (clumsy translation deliberate, in order to preserve the flavor). “Comrade corporal, I am in a state of heavy mental anguish. My wife is sick – double appendicitis, hair loss, myopia, and kicked in the forehead by a horse.”
“When one “Googles” the name of Republican candidates in Congressional elections and one is sent to hostile sites, and then one “Googles” the name of Democrat candidates in the same Congressional elections and one is sent to admiring sites …… well the bias is obvious.”
Yes, but is it Google’s bias?
The Google page rank algorithm basically judges the importance of pages by the number of times they’re linked to, and the importance of the pages linking to them. So if most people, when they’re trying to provide evidence or references, point their links to big media sites with lots of “authority”, then those sites will have a disproportionate effect on the importance of their sources, and so on. Mutual webs of links are self-reinforcing.
So it’s quite possible that it is not Google that is biased, but the internet itself.
I’ve read Bentham’s views on natural rights – and he does say that rights can only be granted by law. But this is more a question of semantics.
You might be interested — and that is an understatement — in David D. Friedman’s tri-chotomy between positive rights, normative rights, and legal rights. Here is a brief account.
As for JS Mill, you have stimulated my interest and i am re-reading the 1st chapter of On Liberty. I might comment on it later.
“You might be interested — and that is an understatement — in David D. Friedman’s tri-chotomy between positive rights, normative rights, and legal rights.”
Indeed! Very interesting!
My first thought on a quick reading of it is that in my view there is considerable overlap between the concepts. Social animals need a common set of rules and constraints to behaviour, to enable to live together without stepping on one another’s toes. Non-human animals have largely fixed, hard-wired rules (although even in this there is fuzziness). Humans can collectively develop them adaptively, a much more flexible and powerful system. Morals are our instinctive recognition of the rules. Law is a (necessarily approximate) attempt to fix and formalise them, and to agree on ambiguous cases and make the boundaries more precise. Positive rights seem to describe the effect. It’s like language. Animals communicate, but humans have a more powerful and adaptive system. Law is like the grammar and style books legislating on split infinitives and double negatives and so on – always a crude approximation to a living language. Morals are analogous to the feeling that a particular grammatical construct feels ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – something we often can’t explain easily. And then there is the language as it is used in practice – usages that are left to personal idiosyncrasy or dialect, and usages that are strictly enforced. And by analogy with dialects and jargon, we can also observe that society and law are not monolithic, but have sub-cultures in which the rights and rules are different.
Thus, I’d disagree with Bentham in identifying the formal law as the root of rights, but if you extend the term ‘law’ to mean the rights collectively agreed by the society you live in, and allow that you can live in many intersecting sub-cultures simultaneously each with its own definitions, I’d say he has a point.
They’re not precisely different sorts of right, but different viewpoints on and aspects of the same complex thing. But that’s a personal opinion. 🙂
“The Google page rank algorithm basically judges the importance of pages by the number of times they’re linked to, and the importance of the pages linking to them.”
That is so obviously false. Just one example:
“Epstein’s testimony links up with earlier observations such as that “searches for Hillary Clinton did not autocomplete to words that were popular searches if they reflected negatively on the Democratic candidate .”
All you’ve offered is an example of the same issue. There’s a bias in the outcome, but no evidence offered of where that bias comes from.
There are people out there who find it amusing to manipulate the search results in various ways – googlebombing as they called it. If you set up thousands of instances of links containing a particular word or phrase (like “idiot”) that all link to the same page (like Trump’s), then the PageRank algorithm will count them up, and when you type “idiot” into the search Trump’s page will come up. It’s not a bias in the algorithm, it’s a bias deliberately engineered into the contents of the internet. If you have an autocomplete function that simply counted up popular searches, someone would simply set up a network of bots to automatically make millions of specific searches, to get their favoured topics into the top ten. Google say they’ve changed the algorithms to try to stop this sort of thing happening, but of course for any tactic there’s a counter-tactic.
It’s like the time Microsoft put a chat-bot capable of learning from past conversations on the internet, for the public to talk to, and then had to take it offline when the users taught it to support the Nazis.
Now, I’m not saying Google *aren’t* biasing the results – whether deliberately or unconsciously. I don’t know if they do or not. I’m just pointing out that collecting statistics on the results of searches doesn’t prove it one way or the other. It might just mean that most of the people using the manipulation techniques for political purposes are left-wing.
It’s like the time Microsoft put a chat-bot capable of learning from past conversations on the internet, for the public to talk to, and then had to take it offline when the users taught it to support the Nazis. (Nullius in Verba, May 3, 2020 at 11:43 am)
It is indeed difficult to know what part of Google’s outcome bias is effected by Google and what part is the effect merely of unfiltered bias in its sources, but it is not difficult to apply the penultimate clause of your example to the situation. Microsoft “had to take it offline”. If Google’s output were as biased towards praise of Trump and the right as it is the reverse, Google would have ‘had’ to react to that situation – would have ‘had’ to ‘correct’ it.
That – and what it says about Google – is something difficult not to know.
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Thank you Perry.
Trump has appointed a LOT of judges. He will hopefully be re-elected and keep the Senate (and take back the House!? I can dream) which means a LOT more judges. Maybe, just maybe, we can win at least some battles, if not the war, against censorship by Big Tech, main stream media, et al. They are attacking the 1st Amendment in a serious, republic threatening way. We can’t just blog about this…their attack on us must have consequences, personal and costly. Am I still allowed to say I don’t trust Google?
This is not a first amendment issue. This is private censorship, not government. It needs to be stopped legally by challenging the assumption that these are unbiased utilities, but actively prohibit certain content. Therefore, they are liable for the content they do permit, just like newspapers are liable for letters to the editor that they print. Sue them all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
I have been saying this for a long time now. Either these communications platforms are more like a phone company, incapable of exercising editorial control over the communications that happen on their property, or they are more like a newspaper which can manage and curate the information that passes through their hands.
One or the other, not both. And I contend that if a platform is capable of, and in the habit of, removing “offensive” content, then they are clearly responsible for the rest of the content that appears on that platform. Legally, fiscally responsible.
While I am not usually a fan of legislation to fix problems, in this case I think a Federal law specifying that companies can either assert their property rights to their communications platforms, or their immunity to libel suits, but not both at the same time, is in order.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I contend that if a company claims to be a common carrier, the threshold for removing content from their platform should be a court order. Nothing less.
Mostly agree with your comment, but with one small quibble.
They’re not attacking anything. They’re merely exercising the power that We The Stupid People gave them when our elected representatives conferred immunity upon them without removing their viewpoint discretion.
And now it’s time to change that one small aspect of the development of the internet in the USA. Let them meet the same burden the electric company would face if it denied me service because of my politics.
The same broad principle needs to be applied to banks and payment processors. The financial services sector cannot be allowed to continue denying service as a means of persecuting people for their political views.
GregWA: “Trump has appointed a LOT of judges. He will hopefully be re-elected and keep the Senate (and take back the House!? I can dream) which means a LOT more judges.”
If I had planned it, I would have devised a plan that would lock up Trumps supporters at home and away from his rallies, put many of them out of work and destroyed their businesses. What better way to demotivate them and make sure more Democrats turn out in November?
How could I do that?
How about I promote influenza into a horror bug. Then the MSM drums up a hysteria, which the ‘deep state’ obsequiously runs with. And as and when anything contradictory appears on google or Youtube, my chums in ‘Big Tech’ purge it immediately.
Sounds like a plan?
Anybody got a link to the original doctors video?
APL–Yes but a dumb plan. One likely to backfire on the leftists implementing it.
Consider though that platforms cite “community standards” when banning. If that were true, that they banned purely on complaints from other users, would that get them off the hook?
Link to the original video:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/NkiM9fo1Ba0h/
“If I had planned it, I would have devised a plan that would lock up Trumps supporters at home and away from his rallies, put many of them out of work and destroyed their businesses. What better way to demotivate them and make sure more Democrats turn out in November?”
You’ve got that the wrong way round. I can’t think of any better way to motivate Trump voters than to make them angry and feel threatened. The danger to Trump’s re-election is not the base, who by now would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump, but the waverers – the people in the middle who switched from Obama to Trump. The danger is not that the threat is exaggerated, but that it isn’t.
The USA has just experienced a disaster with a death toll more than 15 times bigger than 9/11, and they’re only at the start. (Even in New York, the worst hit, only 20% have had it so far. You need to get to 60-80% before it stops on its own.) If they take the brakes off now, as many seem to want to, they could end up multiplying that death toll by 10. And that will mean that the campaign at the next election won’t be the economy and the wall, it won’t be trade and China, it won’t even be Russian dossiers and sex scandals, the headlines will be about how Trump killed half a million Americans because he couldn’t let go of the politics. And while his core base won’t believe it and wouldn’t care if he did, the former blue states who turned red for Trump will switch back. They’re already in virtual rebellion, with state governors refusing to open up in defiance of Trump’s edicts, and their people support that. Those people who Trump ‘abandoned to die’ and who lost family members won’t forget.
Trump’s position should have been that American lives are his top priority, that even if the science is uncertain that the risk of such a catastrophe is unacceptable and he is going to act to prevent even the possibility, that because of his success with the economy that they are starting off better placed to weather the economic storm, and more capable of bouncing back quickly after its over, and that American ingenuity will find ways to adapt. Seize the agenda. Seize the initiative. See where you’re going, get yourself out in front of the pack, and lead. An external threat against which the nation can unite usually leads to a huge boost in a leader’s popularity. (As with the effect of 9/11 on Bush’s popularity.) Partisan attacks against the leader then backfire, being seen as attacks against the national interest. If he’d done that, and found a way to take his base with him, he might have got the biggest majority ever at the next election.
A large part of his problem was the divided nature of American politics at the moment. Because he has been so continually attacked about everything, any adversity now gets automatically identified and interpreted as a partisan political attack. Because he had planned the coming election campaign around his success with the economy, an event that threatened to wreck the economy was seen as an electoral threat, (rather than as a massive opportunity, if he had the wit and agility to change emphasis). The behaviour of epidemics is counter-intuitive. They sneak up on you – they initially look less dangerous than they actually are, and if you manage to stop them before they take off it makes it look like a huge fuss made about nothing. Given that American politics for the last four years has all been a huge fuss about nothing, there was naturally a lot of suspicion that this was all some veiled partisan attack on Trump’s success, as if the rest of the world was in on it too. And instead of leading, Trump listened to his base and their suspicions and fears, and wavered, and dithered, and tried to pull back. And gave a lot of people the strong impression he didn’t understand the problem and wasn’t in control.
I suspect Trump will still win, but because of his lack of leadership against the virus it will be a lot closer than it might have been. The pandemic itself, and any damage it might do to the economy, was not a threat to Trump – it was a natural external threat which he could neither have foreseen nor prevented. His base wouldn’t care about missing rallies, and they’d figure they’d get their jobs back a lot faster under Trump than Biden. But if hundreds of thousands of people see half their family die around them in a matter of days, and can be sold the story that it is Trump’s fault, that’s a hell of a lot better for the Democrats’ prospects than anything they had before this.
Trump’s situation is actually quite similar to the one Boris Johnson had found himself in. Boris won the election with grand plans for an economic revival, rebuilding science, education and infrastructure, and opening up free trade with the rest of the world, and had his plans cut out from under him by the pandemic. Once he understood the full gravity of the situation, he instantly switched course, seized the leadership role on the response, and now his trust and popularity scores are through the roof. For an incumbent leader, it’s a huge opportunity.
Not fisking any more of your million word missives NiV–but the only person Johnson has to blame for his now reduced circs is Johnson and his own LMF.
I don’t know about Trump–he needs to reign in these shite-sucking democrat Guv’nors and end the LD quick–but it is now obvious that despite your claims of 2-3 weeks ago the mega-deaths aren’t arriving. Half of peoples families AREN’T going to die around them and voting for tyrannical marxistic scum isn’t going to resurrect either people or jobs.
“You’ve got that the wrong way round. I can’t think of any better way to motivate Trump voters than to make them angry and feel threatened.“
It’s not hard to imagine that a group of people who think their opponents are idiots would attempt a plan that requires its opponents to be idiots.
Which isn’t to say I believe it, but I can see how it could happen.
@NiV 11:53am, “The USA has just experienced a disaster with a death toll more than 15 times bigger than 9/11…” You have compared a disaster with an attack, or have you inadvertently pointed out that both incidents are attacks? Certainly 9/11 was an attack, but to believe the CCP Virus was an attack you have to believe the ChiComms are smart enough to have anticipated it. Smart enough to think that the inter-species petri dish they call a food supply might might lead to viral outbreaks every 10 years or so, that they could control the information flow and the population associated with an outbreak, to let the virus spread within one province, and once they understood the likely outcome of releasing it (possibly a million deaths worldwide, but not 100M), let it rip. They didn’t have to manufacture the virus to do this; in fact the “naturally occurring” (nothing natural about a wet market) path is better since you don’t have to think about how to expose the population. I’m not saying this is true, it’s something like what you’d have to believe to think CCP responsible. But I do think there’s enough here that stinks that an investigation is needed, but there is no international agency that has the power to compel the ChiComms to cooperate and no agency that wants to do it. So, we’ll have to do it ourselves (US and its friends).
But you wrote something else that caught my eye: disasters. It’s true we just experienced something, at the very least a self-inflicted wound (the non fatal effects of our COVID response), with a death toll, 15 times bigger than 9/11. Of course, we experienced the same thing last year, multiple times: flu (24,000-62,000 CDC estimate for 2019-2020), car accidents (39,000 in 2019 and in 2018; source: ABC News, sorry did not look for a reliable source), etc. Car accidents could be reduced without shutting down the economy, just reduce the speed limit! Flu deaths could be reduced, probably not much since most of those who die probably have other underlying health issues like COVID-19 deaths, but probably could save 10,000 lives each year with better intervention and awareness? Even if it’s one life saved, can we put a price on that? (trigger question, short answer is yes). So, maybe the thing to notice is we are willing to tolerate preventable sources of deaths that are ~10x 9/11, every year. That might be worth discussing.
Something else worth discussing: the culpability of “the experts” in this, the government officials who followed their obviously ludicrous advice (well obvious as of at least a few weeks ago–time to reopen immediately and fully!), and how we’re going to prepare for the next outbreak.
Sorry for the double posting (I must not have pressed the right button), but it allows me to the rest of this post, this bit: COVID won’t even make the top 10 list of things that kill people in the US this year! And while there’s probably not much we can do about most of those 2,800,000 deaths, the USG just printed a couple trillion dollars and borrowed (from China?) a couple trillion more to deal with COVID. Had that money been spent on cancer research, heart disease prevention and treatment, and, and, or, I’m absolutely confident more lives could be saved than are involved in COVID.
@NiV 11:53am, “The USA has just experienced a disaster with a death toll more than 15 times bigger than 9/11…” You have compared a disaster with an attack, or have you inadvertently pointed out that both incidents are attacks? Certainly 9/11 was an attack, but to believe the CCP Virus was an attack you have to believe the ChiComms are smart enough to have anticipated it. Smart enough to think that the inter-species petri dish they call a food supply might might lead to viral outbreaks every 10 years or so, that they could control the information flow and the population associated with an outbreak, to let the virus spread within one province, and once they understood the likely outcome of releasing it (possibly a million deaths worldwide, but not 100M), let it rip. They didn’t have to manufacture the virus to do this; in fact the “naturally occurring” (nothing natural about a wet market) path is better since you don’t have to think about how to expose the population. I’m not saying this is true, it’s something like what you’d have to believe to think CCP responsible. But I do think there’s enough here that stinks that an investigation is needed, but there is no international agency that has the power to compel the ChiComms to cooperate and no agency that wants to do it. So, we’ll have to do it ourselves (US and its friends).
But you wrote something else that caught my eye: disasters. It’s true we just experienced something, at the very least a self-inflicted wound (the non fatal effects of our COVID response), with a death toll, 15 times bigger than 9/11. Of course, we experienced the same thing last year, multiple times: flu (24,000-62,000 CDC estimate for 2019-2020), car accidents (39,000 in 2019 and in 2018; source: ABC News, sorry did not look for a reliable source), etc. Car accidents could be reduced without shutting down the economy, just reduce the speed limit! Flu deaths could be reduced, probably not much since most of those who die probably have other underlying health issues like COVID-19 deaths, but probably could save 10,000 lives each year with better intervention and awareness? Even if it’s one life saved, can we put a price on that? (trigger question, short answer is yes). So, maybe the thing to notice is we are willing to tolerate preventable sources of deaths that are ~10x 9/11, every year. That might be worth discussing.
Something else worth discussing: the culpability of “the experts” in this, the government officials who followed their obviously ludicrous advice (well obvious as of at least a few weeks ago–time to reopen immediately and fully!), and how we’re going to prepare for the next outbreak.
OK, as a libertarian on the other side of this situation, let me state the case of the communications platforms.
I run a web hosting company. We’re tiny by comparison to YouTube etc, but someone can put up a website for very little money and there are way too many sites being created and updated per day for us to police. The other day, someone who was paying us $5/month put up a site, let’s say it was http://www.fred-bloggs-is-a-murderer.com. Fred Bloggs wrote to us and asked us to take it down. We did.
Should we have done differently? Should we have left ourselves open to enormous legal fees for the sake of $5/month?
The right to free speech means that you do have the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. But it also means that if you did so falsely, the families of those killed in the ensuing stampede have the right to sue you to oblivion.
In the case of YouTube, or my own company in the situation above, the person who published the message might be right, they might be wrong. But one thing is sure, if they’re wrong, the publishing platform will be named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
So if you provide an online publishing platform, should you be forced to publish everything that people submit? Should Samizdata be forced to publish every comment that some rando posts here, no matter how libelous? If they take a view on how libelous a given comment is and choose to publish or not based on that, have they then accepted legal responsibility for every other comment that they do let through?
The concept of a common carrier is nonsense when it comes to any online publishing system, because it happens over a period of time. The postal service transports a given package once and then they’re done; the telephone company handles a call once and then that’s it. An online publishing platform can have content submitted once, then have it sent to thousands of people over a long period of time. At some point later they might be informed that it’s legally dubious. Prior to that point their situation might be be similar to the traditional common barriers. But after that point they need to balance up the risks — what will they lose in a lawsuit about this — with the rewards — what are they making in ads/hosting fees/whatever.
If YouTube host a video that challenges the mainstream view on CV19, and people watch it and believe it, and then it turns out to be mistaken and they die as a result, who do you think they’re going to sue? The doctors who published it or the billion dollar corporation? Do you think that the shareholders of Alphabet, who ultimately own YouTube, should be on the hook for insane legal costs for a thousand dollars revenue tops for that number of views?
Platforms ultimately will be held responsible for what they continue to publish after they have been informed about it. Even if it’s not in the courts, it will be reputational.
They should not censor stuff up front (beyond the normal stuff to stop spam), simply because sane content moderation at scale is impossible, but once something has been pointed out to them, they have every right to take it down if the potential downside of keeping it up outweighs the upside to their bottom line. Or indeed to their personal ethics.
Isn’t YouTube’s defence the same one we bloggers have when it comes to libelous comments in the comment zone? I know I’ve missed a hefty bullet or two on that count. If we got rid of that protection, I’m pretty sure I’d have to close down shortly after.
Sort of, Mick, but…
… I am also quick to take down manifestly defamatory comments. But I also take down comments that exceed my personal “what an utter cunt” test. I do that unapologetically & not infrequently, which brings me to suggest both YouTube & I might have difficultly claiming to be analogous to a common carrier as we take stuff down for purely editorial reasons, which it to say, we disdain certain lines of discussion, not just in cases where said discussion might lead to defamation or other forms of legal liability.
No one seems to be suggesting the medical discussion YouTube removed was defamatory or fraudulent or even fell foul of various national “hate speech” laws that assorted nations have on their books (& talk of “1st Amendment” is only relevant within the USA, whereas YouTube has global exposure). No, it seems that these particular medical professionals had their content taken down entirely because it contested a mainstream opinion advocated by a great many governments & NGOs like WHO (whatever WHOs opinions is today, a moving target for sure). So it seems to me this might greatly weaken an argument in court that YouTube are acting as anything even remotely analogous to a common carrier, with all that then implies.
It’s very selfish of me, and I wouldn’t want to see this site or Perry get sued, but to see that test judicially adopted and recited by lawyers and judges across the Common Law legal world would be ‘to die for’. 🙂
“Should we have done differently? Should we have left ourselves open to enormous legal fees for the sake of $5/month?”
The issue is that if you’re a common carrier, then only the person who put it up is responsible for the content, and only they can be sued, because you make it clear to everyone that you are not policing it. The carrier is not open to huge legal fees, because they are given immunity to prosecution regarding the contents.
If you police it, even if only some of the time, then *you* are responsible for the decision to leave some things up and take other things down, so you can be sued for your decision to take it down, or not, to police it or not. If you make it known that you’ll take down misinformation or libel, then people reading it have an expectation that what they read isn’t misinformation or libel based on *your* reputation and brand. If everyone knows it’s not policed, then people know to beware.
Common carrier immunity is a good idea both from the point of view of free speech, and also for enabling new communication technologies at scale for the public benefit. But the price of it is that you have to leave it unpoliced. If you want only the person who put the words up to be entirely responsible, then you have to give them full control. If you take partial control of what they say, then you have partial responsibility for what they say.
Moreover, if you take it down on the grounds of it being libel or misinformation, that itself could be taken as a libel – you are in effect calling them a liar or criminal, and it can have a direct financial impact on them if they lose advertising revenue or sponsorship as a result.
Certainly worth pondering. However, these chaps are essentially advocating the policies implemented by the Swedish government. But you or me advocating such policies is not the same as implementing them, which only a government can do. So even if the Swedish/Anti-Lockdown approach to this pandemic ultimately proves to be a disastrous failure, it’s really hard to see how mere advocacy can lead to legal liability.
Say some government policy is introduced, one that I as a private person happened to advocate online in the past, which is then widely thought to have caused economic woe or an uptick of the murder rate in Bognor Regis, can I be sued in court for having suggesting such policies on YouTube or a blog? Can I sue people pushing the Catastrophic Global Warming narrative in 5 or 10 years if their predictions are falsified by reality? Somehow I doubt it. This is not the same as defamation or criminal fraud.
Well, well, well. Isn’t this topical. If the article at the link’s to be believed, one of Australia’s wig and gown set has just ruled that Google is a publisher.
“You have compared a disaster with an attack, or have you inadvertently pointed out that both incidents are attacks?”
No, I’ve pointed out both incidents are disasters, one deliberately instigated, one not. Intent makes no difference to the cost.
My point was that the USA took the deaths on 9/11 very seriously, despite it being a lot fewer deaths than a bad flu season. The *political* impact of those deaths was huge. So in the current situation, where a lot of people are counting and seeing those COVID-19 deaths as an unfolding national tragedy bigger than 9/11, the *political* impact can be proportionately greater. And people will no more take your argument comparing it to flu seriously than Americans in 2001 would have taken such comparisons being made about 9/11.
“Of course, we experienced the same thing last year, multiple times: flu (24,000-62,000 CDC estimate for 2019-2020), car accidents (39,000 in 2019 and in 2018”
You can’t compare a year to a month.
And you can’t use the mild results that happened as a result of slamming the brakes on to argue that you shouldn’t be slamming the brakes on. Even with the lock-down, late and inadequate as it was, you had 50,000 deaths. Without the lock-down, you could easily be on your way to north of two million deaths.
Flu doesn’t cause many deaths because most of us are already immune to most varieties. It spreads a little until it runs out of susceptible people to infect, and then fizzles out. So far as can be determined, virtually nobody is immune to SARS-CoV-2. If it is allowed to proceed to herd immunity, but where everyone who needs one gets a hospital bed, about 2 million people will die. If it is allowed to rip through the population so fast you run out of hospital beds, then up to ten times that many could die. The fact that hasn’t happened (yet) because you *did* lock down is not a sane reason for thinking that measures to stop transmission are unnecessary. You can certainly argue about whether lock-down is the *only* or *best* way to do so, but if you don’t start at least taking it seriously you may well end up paying the political price next November.
GregWA – you are putting the cart before the horse.
You write about what President Trump and a Republican Senate can do if they are reeleted – but THEY WILL NOT BE REELECTED unless they act now.
We witnessed this in 2018 – Facebook sabotaged the “Walk Away” (walk away from the Democrats) movement and Google (which bases its entire business on its legal claim to be an unbiased search engine) directed searches to sources that were hostile to Republican candidates and supportive of Democrat candidates.
Result – a Democrat House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. If this is repeated in 2020 the Dems will control the Presidency and the Senate – and that means they will control the courts (including the Supreme Court -John Roberts being hopelessly weak) and then the BILL OF RIGHTS WILL BE DEAD.
There will be no “freedom of speech” or “right to keep and bear arms” these and all other fundamental restrictions on government will be “interpreted” away.
The tech companies have all formally, multiple times, denied they have a political bias – but it is clear that they do, and that they act upon it.
These denials have often been given on oath to Congress (so Mark Z and the others have all committed perjury – and yet they are NOT punished for it) and in formal legal statements to government officers – there is (I believe) a five year prison sentence for lying to Federal officials – yet the heads of the Tech companies lie in every formal legal statement they make (to Congress, to Federal officials, and to the courts) and never serve a day in prison.
Remember – Google claims to be a neutral objective search engine, its whole business is based upon this FRAUD, yet the fraud goes unpunished.
The Social Media companies (Twitter, Youtube [Google again], Faeebook…..) all make the FORMAL LEGAL CLAIM to be “neutral public platforms” – NOT publishers.
Their formal legal claims are LIES – yet they go unpunished.
If the Republicans just carry on doing nothing they will lose in November – ad they will DESERVE to lose in November.
My Grandmother (mother’s side) had ischaemic heart failure put on her death certificate. They’d done a post-mortem exam (I read it) and all that and it was true for a certain value of true. She was also dancing the last tango with Alzheimer’s. This was not officially mentioned. When I heard of her death and saw her (still warm) on the bed I was quite emotionally conflicted. We’d been very close* but the last years… She wasn’t my Gran. She was borderline human. She couldn’t speak and just sat there. She didn’t even eat. She had been taken into the QE Hospital umpteen times for re-hydration. She was old, malnourished (she weighed next to nothing in the end). My Mum was force-feeding her and she hardly moved. So she had a heart attack and that finally did for her. The ultimate cause of this (and I’m quoting the GP, her consultant, umpteen nurses…) was Alzheimer’s. But that was not officially recorded. Did I mention her kidneys were on the way out and she had type II diabetes because she hadn’t eaten or drunk normally for nearly ten years…
Yeah, it’s a very sad story (though not, alas, unusual) so what is the point. COVID-19 mainly seems to kill the old and unwell so do we really know the full score here? We have remarkably different death rates from different countries. Including countrires that have roughly comparable health-care systems. Woud it be fair to suggest my Gran not exactly dying of what, technically, officially, killed her is atypical? I kinda suspect a lot of people go that way. kill’d by many accidents. So, when we have a novel disease (and no, it ain’t “bad ‘flu”) which seems to favour the old and presents in ways which aren’t fully understood yet (even by Chris “Gollum” – my preciousss PPEsss… – Whitty) then do we really know how many it kills or is simply the coup de grace? It’s a serious question. It seems to be doing a number in care homes. How many folks in those are going to peg-it in the near future one way or another? Most of them ain’t exactly tickety-boo now are they?
Do we really know what exactly ever kills most people? And I don’t mean what ultimtely puts us out of our misery but all the paths that lead there… For sure – some of us die for obvious singular reasons – but that is no means all of us.
*I owe my love of junk stores and liquorice to her.
More broadly on the First Amendment does not apply to Corporations argument.
Let us be clear what that means.
It means, for example, that if you have ever (in your life) expressed political or cultural opinions that the left does not like (and raises a “twitter storm” about) then you can be denied any job, and denied a bank account, and not be allowed to buy food at the local supermarket.
For example, there are two major “payment processors” – Mastercard and Visa. Mastercard is already controlled by the left – many internal documents have come to light showing its political agenda.
Visa recounts its staff from the same universities – it is only a matter of time before Visa is controlled by the left (if it is not already).
So then someone with “reactionary” political opinions (say they oppose “Gay Marriage” – or once did many years ago, or opposes abortion, or whatever) will not only not be employed by the handful of mega corporations that control most of the economy (thanks to the funny money of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England) – they will not be able to run a business of their own either, and they will not be allowed to have a bank account or have payments processed.
How will people with the “wrong” political and cultural opinions live? Will they have to become muggers and house breakers? Perhaps they will be allowed to live out in the hills – but I do not see how that would work for large numbers of people.
And in the future “cashless economy” beloved by governments and mega corporations even begging in the streets will not help.
The person denied employment (perhaps because they once mentioned, many years before,that they did not believe that Martin Luther King was a saint) will present his card (his electronic begging card) to the supermarket – and they will decline it, because of his or her vile reactionary opinions.
So we will be free – free to be dead. And, no doubt, there will be mental tests to make sure that people are not SHAMMING their support for “Diversity” and so – just pretending to believe in the doctrines of the left will-not-be-enough, one will have to really believe in them (although there will be “classes”, as Conservative Central Office points out in their charming way, to help people with reactionary beliefs adopt, truly believe, the Progressive doctrines of the Frankfurt School of Marxism – “Diversity” and all).
Of course in a libertarian society the economy would not be controlled by a handful of mega corporations joined at the hip with the Progressive elite and dependent on funny money from the Central Banks. Money would be actual gold and silver (perhaps specs of gold or silver in clear plastic – to prevent wear and tear) and there would be many different business enterprises.
But we do not live in a libertarian society – society is what it is, and in this society such things as the 1st Amendment are becoming a dead letter. Eve in the United States – in the United Kingdom it is the central principle (taught by Sir Francis Bacon, Sir William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham – and all the other thinkers taught now, with their opponents flushed down the “Memory Hole”) that there are no rights AGAINST the state. The central modern British doctrine is that there is nothing (nothing at all) that the government may not do, and that there is no right of resistance (none) against the government – regardless of what it does.
Look at the Chinese “Social Credit” system – where people with the “wrong” opinions are systematically excluded from life. That is what most of Big Business wants in the West – they do not even hide it anymore.
The “education system” (the schools and universities) produces the Corporate bureaucrats (for example the bankers) just as much as the government bureaucrats – and there is no great difference in beliefs and attitudes. And the mega corporations depend on the funny money of the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve and-so-on.
This has never been a pure capitalist society, but now it is further away from capitalism than ever.
I do not believe that it is useful to describe such places as the United Kingdom and the United States as “capitalist” any more.
How can a country where most big “business” enterprises depend on government (are joined at the hip with the funny money of the Central Bank) and where your cultural and political opinions (not your talent or hard work) determine your position in life, be called capitalist? Capitalism without Real Savings? Capitalism without real Capital? And capitalism where all that matters is being WOKE? In supporting the “social responsibility” and “social justice” that the Business Schools (yes the Business Schools) teach?
Yes this is NOT entirely true yet – but it is becoming true, and there is little resistance to it.
We can point at a few flashes of good in a vast tempest of evil – for example Hillsdale Collage refusing government student “loans”, and the Governor of South Dakota opposing “Lockdown” Fascism (the Fascism that is beloved not just by most governments – but by every commercial advertisement on television, ALL of the Mega Corporations are supporting lockdown Fascism), but such drops of good in a vast ocean of evil are not enough.
I’m not sure the likes of Google know they are biased. Obviously a lot of their stuff isn’t. I don’t think they are biased over finding a taxi company or a pizza. But, when it is political it’s all a viewpoint. If you think being neutral means being “in the middle” then it really depends on where you place that “middle”. I know people who think Tony Blair was (and I quote), “An extreme right-winger”. They think Margaret Thatcher murdered babies and bathed in their blood. They think of Tony Benn as a “moderate” who, if anything, never went far enough…
It is all a matter of where you position yourself. I, for example, would never spend more than GBP150 (and that’s top end) on a phone – yes, even if I won the lottery. But today’s Guardian has this to say…
“Apple’s latest iPhone SE is a surprise cut-price marvel that revives a classic iPhone design and trounces every other mid-range phone in the process.
The £419 iPhone SE…”
They give it 5/5. Sorry Guardian but GBP419 is not cut-price for a phone in my Universe and it certainly isn’t “mid-range”.
See my point? It is where you position yourself. Whether it is political viewpoints or the price of a phone… And I don’t even think it is to do with wealth per-se. I have happily spent much more than that on things that matter to me but a phone? Behave!
Paul,
BTW, what has Baroness Warsi got her knickers twisted over Trevor Phillips about?
If anyone doubts any of the above – then look at the television advertisements in the United Kingdom.
Not the ones by the government (one would not expect them to be pro freedom) – but the ones paid for by the various Big Business Corporations and supposedly about selling commercial products.
All of them are pro lockdown – none of them are opposed to lockdown.
Why do commercial television advertisements raise this political dispute at all? And why are they all on the same side of the political divide?
The megacorpotations might has as well be taking part in the mass clapping events, waving rainbows.
The thinkers that are now taught in the education system (their opponents having been flushed down the Memory Hole) Sir Francis Bacon, Sir William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and so on – all had one great thing in common.
Their doctrine that there were no rights AGAINST the state, and that one should never (under circumstances) come to the aid of anyone else being attacked by the state.
Thomas Hobbes admitted that a person could themselves struggle against being burned alive (or whatever) by the state – but this is pointless if no one is going to help you (and people who follow Thomas Hobbes are never going to risk their lives fighting to defend someone else against the state).
The doctrines that are now taught in the education system (the “education” that produces such creatures as the Governor of Maine and the Governor of Michigan) hold that there is nothing (nothing) that that government may not do – and that there is no right of resistance against the government (regardless of what it does).
Ironically such doctrine-of-non-resistance types call themselves the “resistance” to President Trump – but only because they see him not as the head of the government, but rather as some sort of rebel against the government (if only he was).
In the United Kingdom such doctrines have total control of the education system.
The closest thing to a pro liberty work taught in the schools or universities (with the exception of the University of Buckingham) is “On Liberty” by J.S. Mill – and I can see no rights against the state, or principle of resistance against the state in this work (Ayn Rand may have been too harsh in her account of the book – but not by much). Mr John Stuart Mill may have moved away from the utilitarianism of his father James Mill and family mentor Jeremy Bentham, but he never really broke with it.
And Big Business? They have “internalised” the “ideology” that the state can do whatever it likes – and they support (actively support) the most extreme “Progressive” statism.
After all if they opposed statism (rather than supported the Progressive “lockdown” and so on), “Ofcom” would ban their advertisements. And the public would (most likely) support the censorship – “how dare these Big Business fat cats mock our beloved NHS – no sacrifice is too great to Protect The NHS!” The Cult like mass clapping events may be declining, and the rainbows in the windows may be getting a little less common – but it would be a very serious mistake to think the public are starting to have non Progressive thoughts. People who have been trained all their lives (by their schools, and the television stations and so on) in a certain world view, do not tend to suddenly adopt a different view of the world. Even if they see failure, right in front of their eyes, it is explained away as the result of the “cuts”. Totally mythical “cuts” – but a myth that many people devoutly believe in.
And how can the corporations oppose Big Government – when they depend on its “cheap money” from the Bank of England and the commercial “pet” banks?
And they have been dependent on this for many years – the virus has just made obvious what was already the case.
Big Business types are also welfare claimants – they just get their welfare a different way (but,in the end, from the same source – the funny money of the Bank of England and so on), they are just welfare claimants in thousand Pound suits.
Nick M.
Trevor Philips has, at times, expressed doubts (just mild doubts) that “racism” is the cause of all the problems of black and Asian people (who are now called BAME people – “black and minority ethnic”).
Perhaps because he is himself black Mr Philips has not yet been sent to prison -but he has been thrown out of the Labour Patty and is not a popular figure with the Frankfurt School of Marxism left. I doubt “Central Office” would allow Mr Philips to be a member of the Conservative Party.
Nick M.
When one “Googles” the name of Republican candidates in Congressional elections and one is sent to hostile sites, and then one “Googles” the name of Democrat candidates in the same Congressional elections and one is sent to admiring sites …… well the bias is obvious.
So yes they do know they are being biased – it is textbook fraud, pretending to run an unbiased search engine, whilst actually running a political campaign.
They have dropped the slogan “do not be evil” – the modern slogan of Google is “be good”.
They are clear in their documents and internal discussions that “be good” means the serve the Progressive (Collectivist) cause.
It is not a straight party political thing – for example Tulsi Gabbard is a Democrat, but Google did not consider her Progressive (because of her rejection of Frankfurt School of Marxism Identity Politics – the “Diversity” Agenda and all that) so they sabotaged her campaign.
Central Office would strongly approve of Google.
Perhaps Central Office would offer Tulsi Gabbard “classes” so that she came to believe in the Frankfurt School of Marxism “Diversity” Identity Politics Agenda – just pretending to believe in such Collectivism is not enough, one must really believe in it (hence the “classes”).
Perhaps in the future technological means will be found to make sure that people have Progressive beliefs. Removing Reactionary (i.e. Conservative) beliefs from the brains of humans. The People’s Republic of China Dictatorship would be very happy with such a development – as would, sadly, many (most?) of the “educated” people of Western Big Business.
Some people have suggested that economic collapse might smash the Progressive “education system” and the funny machine of the Central Banks (and the commercial banks and corporations that depend on it).
However, I fear that economic collapse will make the forces of tyranny even stronger.
Oh I forgot…..
The leading researcher into Progressive Conditioning (what the vulgar call brain washing) by the Social Media companies is Dr Robert Epstein – not to be confused (as I have sometimes mistyped) with Richard Epstein.
Robert Epstein is a live long Democrat – but has the old fashioned view that one should win people over in free and open debate, rather than by psychological conditioning.
So yes Nick M. they do know what they are doing.
The constant “Progressive” lies by the “mainstream media” are obvious – even in 2016 many Americans were already discounting it.
But what the Social Media companies are doing now is much more subtle.
Remember anything, anything at all, is justified if it is for the Progressive cause – this is the higher morality that both the people of the government bureaucracies and the corporate bureaucracies were taught during their time in the education system – and the message is constantly reinforced in their work environment and social environment.
“The thinkers that are now taught in the education system (their opponents having been flushed down the Memory Hole) Sir Francis Bacon, Sir William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and so on – all had one great thing in common. Their doctrine that there were no rights AGAINST the state, and that one should never (under circumstances) come to the aid of anyone else being attacked by the state.”
Citations needed.
I’ve read Bentham’s views on natural rights – and he does say that rights can only be granted by law. But this is more a question of semantics. There are rights people want and think they ought to have, but wanting it doesn’t mean you have got it. To say you have rights, they’re just not respected is to say you’ve got wealth, you just can’t spend it. He’s not arguing that you shouldn’t have those rights you want, only that in practice you don’t have them unless the common code by which the society you live in collectively agrees to behave respects them. ‘Rights’ are the things society’s rules allow you – its law. By declaring for yourself new ‘rights’ that society doesn’t recognise (or hasn’t previously recognised), all you’re doing is declaring new laws. The debate on what rights we should have is the same thing as the debate on what the law should be – it is part of the process of government we are collectively taking part in.
It’s a question of definition. Bentham doesn’t include “rights you ought to have but in practice don’t” under his definition of “rights you have”. But that doesn’t mean he disagrees that you ought to have them.
“The closest thing to a pro liberty work taught in the schools or universities (with the exception of the University of Buckingham) is “On Liberty” by J.S. Mill – and I can see no rights against the state, or principle of resistance against the state in this work”
How about…?
or
or
The entire point of the essay is to define the principle justifying restricting society’s (including but not solely the state’s) interference in individual freedom.
NickM: Regarding what really kills a person – I was reminded of bit from a comedy routine from a long time ago and a country far, far away (clumsy translation deliberate, in order to preserve the flavor). “Comrade corporal, I am in a state of heavy mental anguish. My wife is sick – double appendicitis, hair loss, myopia, and kicked in the forehead by a horse.”
“When one “Googles” the name of Republican candidates in Congressional elections and one is sent to hostile sites, and then one “Googles” the name of Democrat candidates in the same Congressional elections and one is sent to admiring sites …… well the bias is obvious.”
Yes, but is it Google’s bias?
The Google page rank algorithm basically judges the importance of pages by the number of times they’re linked to, and the importance of the pages linking to them. So if most people, when they’re trying to provide evidence or references, point their links to big media sites with lots of “authority”, then those sites will have a disproportionate effect on the importance of their sources, and so on. Mutual webs of links are self-reinforcing.
So it’s quite possible that it is not Google that is biased, but the internet itself.
Off topic, but this has gone off topic quite a while ago.
Two of the greatest minds of our time agree: the Swedish approach is a failure.
But make no mistake: i agree with Perry in the OP.
Nullius:
You might be interested — and that is an understatement — in David D. Friedman’s tri-chotomy between positive rights, normative rights, and legal rights. Here is a brief account.
As for JS Mill, you have stimulated my interest and i am re-reading the 1st chapter of On Liberty. I might comment on it later.
“You might be interested — and that is an understatement — in David D. Friedman’s tri-chotomy between positive rights, normative rights, and legal rights.”
Indeed! Very interesting!
My first thought on a quick reading of it is that in my view there is considerable overlap between the concepts. Social animals need a common set of rules and constraints to behaviour, to enable to live together without stepping on one another’s toes. Non-human animals have largely fixed, hard-wired rules (although even in this there is fuzziness). Humans can collectively develop them adaptively, a much more flexible and powerful system. Morals are our instinctive recognition of the rules. Law is a (necessarily approximate) attempt to fix and formalise them, and to agree on ambiguous cases and make the boundaries more precise. Positive rights seem to describe the effect. It’s like language. Animals communicate, but humans have a more powerful and adaptive system. Law is like the grammar and style books legislating on split infinitives and double negatives and so on – always a crude approximation to a living language. Morals are analogous to the feeling that a particular grammatical construct feels ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – something we often can’t explain easily. And then there is the language as it is used in practice – usages that are left to personal idiosyncrasy or dialect, and usages that are strictly enforced. And by analogy with dialects and jargon, we can also observe that society and law are not monolithic, but have sub-cultures in which the rights and rules are different.
Thus, I’d disagree with Bentham in identifying the formal law as the root of rights, but if you extend the term ‘law’ to mean the rights collectively agreed by the society you live in, and allow that you can live in many intersecting sub-cultures simultaneously each with its own definitions, I’d say he has a point.
They’re not precisely different sorts of right, but different viewpoints on and aspects of the same complex thing. But that’s a personal opinion. 🙂
“The Google page rank algorithm basically judges the importance of pages by the number of times they’re linked to, and the importance of the pages linking to them.”
That is so obviously false. Just one example:
“Epstein’s testimony links up with earlier observations such as that “searches for Hillary Clinton did not autocomplete to words that were popular searches if they reflected negatively on the Democratic candidate .”
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/07/google-engineer-reveals-search-engine-bias/
“That is so obviously false.”
All you’ve offered is an example of the same issue. There’s a bias in the outcome, but no evidence offered of where that bias comes from.
There are people out there who find it amusing to manipulate the search results in various ways – googlebombing as they called it. If you set up thousands of instances of links containing a particular word or phrase (like “idiot”) that all link to the same page (like Trump’s), then the PageRank algorithm will count them up, and when you type “idiot” into the search Trump’s page will come up. It’s not a bias in the algorithm, it’s a bias deliberately engineered into the contents of the internet. If you have an autocomplete function that simply counted up popular searches, someone would simply set up a network of bots to automatically make millions of specific searches, to get their favoured topics into the top ten. Google say they’ve changed the algorithms to try to stop this sort of thing happening, but of course for any tactic there’s a counter-tactic.
It’s like the time Microsoft put a chat-bot capable of learning from past conversations on the internet, for the public to talk to, and then had to take it offline when the users taught it to support the Nazis.
Now, I’m not saying Google *aren’t* biasing the results – whether deliberately or unconsciously. I don’t know if they do or not. I’m just pointing out that collecting statistics on the results of searches doesn’t prove it one way or the other. It might just mean that most of the people using the manipulation techniques for political purposes are left-wing.
It is indeed difficult to know what part of Google’s outcome bias is effected by Google and what part is the effect merely of unfiltered bias in its sources, but it is not difficult to apply the penultimate clause of your example to the situation. Microsoft “had to take it offline”. If Google’s output were as biased towards praise of Trump and the right as it is the reverse, Google would have ‘had’ to react to that situation – would have ‘had’ to ‘correct’ it.
That – and what it says about Google – is something difficult not to know.