Tech Groups Step Away From Gab Network After Shooting (ft.com) 631
Tech companies including PayPal and Stripe have suspended their services from Gab, a social network catering primarily to US conservatives that had been used by the man accused of killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. From a report: The moves are likely to reopen the debate about the limits of free speech online and the potential for social networks to radicalise users. Gab was launched two years ago by tech entrepreneur Andrew Torba, who became frustrated with what he perceived as a bias against conservative views on California-based social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. His site soon attracted controversial rightwing figures, including Richard Spencer and Alex Jones, who had been suspended or banned from other social networks. Robert Bowers, who has been charged over the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, was among Gab's hundreds of thousands of users, the company confirmed on Saturday. Mr Bowers, whose profile on Gab featured images of guns and white supremacist iconography, made anti-Semitic posts and threats on the site just hours before the shooting. Since Saturday's shooting, Gab has been accused of not doing enough to prevent free expression from tipping over into hate speech on its site.
Online payments companies PayPal and Stripe, as well as hosting provider Joyent, all said they would stop Gab from using their services, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled, alternative source] citing violations of their terms of services, which do not allow hate speech. Gab slammed the moves as "direct collusion between big tech giants" against it. This weekend is not the first time that Gab has been sharply criticised for the content it hosts.Last year, after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Google removed Gab from Google Play, its mobile app store, claiming it violated its policy on hate speech.
Online payments companies PayPal and Stripe, as well as hosting provider Joyent, all said they would stop Gab from using their services, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled, alternative source] citing violations of their terms of services, which do not allow hate speech. Gab slammed the moves as "direct collusion between big tech giants" against it. This weekend is not the first time that Gab has been sharply criticised for the content it hosts.Last year, after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Google removed Gab from Google Play, its mobile app store, claiming it violated its policy on hate speech.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png (Score:4, Insightful)
Says it all.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/f... [xkcd.com]
Re: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other side of the spectrum you've got Citi (Score:5, Insightful)
They way I look at it is like this: Police yourselves so the gov't doesn't have to. See here [youtube.com] for a far more amusing take on it though
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They way I look at it is like this: Police yourselves so the gov't doesn't have to.
If corporations ban speech under threat of government coercion, how is that any different than the government directly censoring speech?
Gov't already censors speech (Score:2)
That said, Paypal's a payment processor, not a web forum. I don't think this is pressure from the gov't. It's more likely they're worried about a backlash from their customers.
Goal post moving much? (Score:3)
Re:Goal post moving much? (Score:5, Insightful)
He was an active user of a platform.
He was also an active user of other platforms, such as Facebook.
He also shopped at certain supermarkets and wore clothes of a given brand.
Maybe - just maybe - that doesn't make him belong to any of them. Maybe - just maybe - you're the person trying to shift the narrative and damn Gab by association.
Stop it. You're being a cunt.
Re:Goal post moving much? (Score:5, Informative)
he was an active member of a community that in turn actively encourages folks like him to come to their side. You know this. You're trying to shift the narrative. I don't think anyone's gonna fall for it though. At least not anyone who doesn't _want_ to fall for it. Flag as Inappropriate
This is disengenuous AF. They actively encourage everybody to join their service. Is there something wrong with your brain?
You (and OP) make it sound like Gab is a "conservative" forum. It isn't. It's about free speech for everybody, not just a few.
Re:Goal post moving much? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Funny, because I was going to chime in to comment about the whole Visa/Amazon/etc dropping the ability to support Wikileaks which definitely came from a push from government legislators. I was against it then, and I am against it now with this. This also extends to the treatment of sex workers and swingers through websites on the claims of traffic. "Self-policing" of others is mostly something I don't want to see with business. The sort of crap I want to see is companies self-policing their own behavior
Re: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I had noticed people feeling censored on Twitter and considering the move to Gab. This is an excuse to demonetize Gab. I don't know Gab (not a social media user) but it's likely that it's not just far right wing people who move there.
I think there's a major censorship operation going on but this is not simple to prove because one person's false positives are another person't real targets. There is so much crap on the web that anyone targeting 'serious' dissident content only has to bundle sufficient crap into each censoring operation to stay under the radar.
Real freedom of speech protects against this so you don't even have to know which of the two scenarios apply.
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Operation Chokepoint and it's constant expansion for instance.
You might have a point if not for the fact that Operation Choke Point was ended in August 2017 [wikipedia.org] and had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of speech and everything to do with fraud.
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Yeah, unless of course you're hating on the right people, then suddenly the deplatform attempt becomes 'oppression.'
Re:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png (Score:4, Insightful)
Your image is shit. [magaimg.net] That isn't free speech, that's speech controlled by a person/people who's sensibilities are offended.
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How is the fact that people are saying "we won't use you as an ad platform anymore" controlling someone's speech?
Let's look at this history of this shall we?
People are banned because of neboulous reasons, like posting milquetoast memes. Or for directly quoting 'blue checkmark' people who attack others race, spew open misandry, and promote open sexism. The original people who've posted this don't get even a slap on the wrist, the people who pointed it out - get banned. People get upset.
Progressives state: If you don't like it build your own platform.
People build their own platform, setup their own network, servers, ge
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Just be happy (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Enterprise (Score:4, Insightful)
These are all non-government corporations making these decisions. If Gab is free to conduct their service how they wish without government intervention, so is PayPal and Stripe. Simple as that.
I'm not opposed to politics as a protected class (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I don't think they do. The right wing own all 3 branches of government and nearly all of the media (they dominate talk radio, Fox News' ratings are much higher than MSNBC and, well, as a lefty I can safely say that MSNBC is right wing on economics, just go watch some of their coverage of Orcass
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The right wing own all 3 branches of government
Republicans do. Conservatives don't. It's still mostly the Establishment Uniparty in charge, which is why so little changes.
and nearly all of the media (they dominate talk radio, Fox News' ratings are much higher than MSNBC and, well, as a lefty I can safely say that MSNBC is right wing on economics
You're very high right now.
Isn't a lack of change the point (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're mixing up the radical right (alt-right?) with actual Conservatives. But even then the radical right wing is doing pretty well for themselves. There's been a massive and successful attack on gov't regulation. Much of Dodd Frank has been repealed. Most of the Obama era EPA guidelines have been eliminated or toned back. Net Neutrality is dead putting control of the internet in the hands of private industry. Mitch McConnell is even able to talk openly about ending Social Security and Medicare. These are policies the far right has wanted for decades and had to back down on.
Meanwhile the left can't get any tracking on Medicare for All, even though a majority of Republicans [nymag.com] support it (let alone Democrats). The left are completely on the defensive in all respects. The right is winning on all fronts.
Re:Isn't a lack of change the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Horseshit, they haven't been careful about evaluating change in the Trump era, they plowed ahead with changes at a speed the left could only envy. That's because conservatism is actually about the domination of society by an aristocracy. [ucla.edu] This can be mistaken for resistance to/caution toward change in a society that was recently or is dominated by an aristocracy if you don't look too closely.
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There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong.
-- Henry Louis Mencken
Phil Agre is a nut on the level of Timecube's Gene Ray. By his definition, Stalin was a conservative by preserving and elevating an elite at the expense of the masses.
Then it's not conservatism (Score:3, Interesting)
Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them. Folks who get it with a n
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Republicans haven't been conservative in their actions since the 90s. The Establishment, most Dems and Most Republicans, is a small group of huge donors who always gets their way. Democrats and the GOP put on this kabuki theater ritualized show where they make a very public show of disagreeing on things like gay marriage, things with no financial consequence to the big donors, but they agree on everything important. (And even on issues like gay marriage, the outcome is as scripted as professional wrestli
No, they wouldn't (Score:3)
Now, a libertarian would have let the banks fail. But not a Conservative.
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In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. When there's no meaningful space between corporate power and government power, it doesn't make much difference whether the guy silencing your dissent is Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Sessions. America most definitely has such a system.
And when independent candidates run for office and can't get their message out for being shadow banned, and the corporatist candidates are always the number one trending subject, you'll be there to fi
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PayPal is a monopoly? What about Apple Pay? What about Google Pay Send?
Free markets at work (Score:3, Insightful)
Torba can whine all he wants, but in the free market one is free to associate, or not associate, with who they want. No one says PayPal or Google have to deal with Gab.
As to Gab being a "conservative" social network, if conservatives believe saying Jews should die, that only white men should be in power, that women deserve to be raped, then sure, why not. Because that is what you'll find there.
This is almost as hilarious as white supremacist Robert Rundo fleeing the country he complains is being taken over by foreigners, and being arrested in Central America. If he didn't like people who weren't white, why would he try to hide in a country where his white skin would stand out?
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Neoliberal free markets are only free for corporate business. The rest is just free to leave or shut up.
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In the free market, the government bails out companies that are too big to fa... wait, something's wrong here.
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If PayPal can make it effectively impossible for Gab to operate, then anti-trust laws come in to effect.
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Because a free market is established wherever willing buyers and sellers are prevented from completing transactions by middlemen with monopoly positions. Right. We get it.
Re:Free markets at work (Score:5, Insightful)
So why is it that conservatives are big supporters of Israel?
For many, it's a religious thing for bringing about the "end times" from the Bible's Revelations. For the end times to come, all the Jews have to go back to Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, before Jesus will come back for his second-coming.
It's not that these religious conservatives like Jews or Israel in themselves. Supporting Israel is a means to an end, and they're gleeful at the idea of Jews (and all the rest of the heathens) being cast into lakes of fire if they don't convert to Christianity.
For the rest, it's a geo-political power play.
In two minds... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, banning such networks only drives them underground where no one can monitor them, creating an even bigger louder more resonant echo chamber.
If it is possible for such people to openly express their views, however disturbing they might be, while at the same time remove the perverse incentives for others who make money or leverage political power off them it would be better than banning them outright.
But it is very difficult to come up with such a solution where there are so many different players and enforcement is very difficult.
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Sorry for the Indianism. No, It did not help them. I meant "I agree, it did not help them". But "I agree" = "Yes" is imprinted more strongly in my mind than the concordance rule between Yes+affirmative sentence and the No + negative sentence. This probably would explain the inconsistent nodding/head shake of Indians. We nod to agree even on negative sentences, and shake the head to disagree even on positive sentences. Confounding western audience.
Can't see the forest! (Score:4, Insightful)
All these damn trees are in the way!
All these virtue signalling assholes have lost the plot. WE dont need to be saved, we want free speech.
If you can't see the vile disgusting edges of speech, then you dont know where the middle is. When you hide, curtail, restrict, and lie about speech then the publics perception of it over time becomes warped and allows for true evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Let the other assholes say their stupid and vile stuff and we are big enough to point our fingers and laugh at them or even take them seriously and fix it ourselves.
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Many of hitlers earliest moves were to control the media, which was much easier to achieve back then. During the worst of it he had total control over all public speech formats.
It may even be possible to argue that had he not controlled the media as early and as well, allowing for actual info to reach them that the public would have rejected him or at least his worst ideas let alone the actions that followed.
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Hardly, it is the bedrock of Western Civilization, it underpins everything.
While you are specifically correct in the literal, in practice its not important that its not a government thing, pointing out those groups are assholes for actively attempting (at the very least) to restrict speech is exactly the kind of thing we all need to do.
The fact that free speech is embedded in a government structure is not the be all end all of the point, we collectively instantiate in law(especially and maybe specifically i
Is the mainstream news any different ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Watch CNN and it is nothing but hate towards all things Republican.
Watch Fox and it is nothing but hate towards all things Democrat.
The only thing that differentiates them from Social Media is they have total control of the narrative.
That's not quite true (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Consume or Die (Score:5, Interesting)
This.
The reason things are so fucked up is because we, the consumers, are served content that we ask for.
We hate one news outlet and love the other. The providers don't give a flying rat's ass as to how we got there, they just want more of us.
There is a middle ground of sorts with PBS and NPR, but notice that we are not rushing to those sites.
America has two races: Republicans and Democrats.
Free Market, RIGHT? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here comes the flood of free market conservatives mad at private companies for making private decisions. LOL.
Re: Free Market, RIGHT? (Score:2)
The big multinationals have the media channels sewn up.
It has nothing at all to do with a free market.
Re:Free Market, RIGHT? (Score:5, Insightful)
A free market is when willing sellers and willing buyers are prevented from doing business by middlemen with a monopoly position?
Abandon everything then (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no service that has been created that cannot and has not been used for evil. But don't think for a moment that certain groups are not quick to recognize when one group uses the actions of the few to imply support similar desire by the whole.
It has taken some time, but many have managed to make even liberty look like it is only a tool used for oppression.... my my my how much work must have gone into convincing people that you cannot be allowed to manage yourself and must instead have your liberties managed for you. All in the name of keeping you safe.
Tyranny is usually though of as a problem brought on by Government agency... yet the control businesses have gained over our lives it has become clear that economically assaulting another group is more than enough to provide it's own form of tyranny.
Perhaps other businesses should start to refuse to do business with banks that do this as well... or do they too not fear reprisal? All it takes for a business to become suspect is by mere associate with something now... whether that associate is properly represented or not. We are only going to see more and more of this as we continue down this, "those that do not think like me are evil" path. This is the mindset that gets people to agree with mass genocide of entire groups of people and when those groups feel oppressed, no matter the form that oppression takes they will discover now that when avenues of diplomacy or discussion are taken away, they become isolated... and many unfortunately feel that violence is the final resort of regaining any attention for their cause... no matter how terrible other think of them for it.
And Big Tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not censorship from the perspective of PayPal and Stripe. It's good business. Gab doesn't make PayPal and Stripe enough money to qualify for exemption to ToS.
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You cannot be serious.
There's precedent (Score:2)
It's just like the way Facebook got shut down when Facebook user Alex Minassian ran over a bunch of people with a van.
Free association, not free speech (Score:2)
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True,
And the expression, "free speech," applies only to suppression by a governing agency.
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That depends, if they are all Creativity members talking about their church doctrine and how it relates to current affairs they are protected from discrimination.
US Civil Rights Act and protected classes trump freedom of association after all.
False dichotomies are bad for you, mmkay? (Score:3, Insightful)
> catering primarily to US conservatives
1. That's only seen as the case because they've been systematically deplatformed by twitter.
2. The idiotic notation that there are only two political perspectives is literally six times dumber than astrology.
I'm strongly left leaning, but more anti-authoritarian than left, so I'm seen as right wing buy left wing useful idiots because I oppose their aspirations of authority, and seen as left wing by right wing useful idiots because I oppose most of their social policy.
Gab is laudable for their free speech support. Smearing them is more reprehensible than being the mere host of speech you don't like will ever be.
>The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
—H. L. Mencken
You forgot one thing (Score:5, Informative)
From: https://medium.com/@getongab/gab-com-statement-on-the-tree-of-life-synagogue-shooting-a6c1de715b39
"Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence. This has always been our policy."
They have had this policy for a while: https://medium.com/@getongab/gab-disavows-all-political-violence-cc4031b4899d
Re: You forgot one thing (Score:2)
He said hate speech. Including speech that threatens and purports violence to groups or individuals like the guy who just acted out on his groups violent fantasies. Or like the dude who killed Heather with his car, also sharing similar violent fantasies in social groups. Gab believes these types of communications OK.
Re:In before someone says it (Score:5, Insightful)
it would be pretty bad if banks started booting customers who said things they didn't like.
That may be where we are headed. Conservatives and liberals once talked to each other. Then they started reading different newspapers, watching different TV channels, and moved to different forums on social media. Then forums got banned, and they moved to different social media platforms. Now platforms are being banned, so the next step may be for different ideological groups to have their own app-stores, payment processors, etc.
What is next? "Conservative" and "liberal" grocery stores? Conservatives banned from Whole Foods, and liberals banned from Walmart? Where will Libertarians shop?
All this polarization can't be good for our society.
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The problem is that any genuine "conservatives" are so bloody bad at drawing the line between themselves and the racist, hate spewing, violent Nazis out there.
They are so similar in many cases that the temptation for "conservatives" is to think that they are the same, only that the nazi scum is a bit more "dedicated", and in any case "better dead than red". Which becomes a particularly thorny problem when you define anything to the left of hard core reactionarism as "socialism" or "communism".
And you're rig
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What is next? "Conservative" and "liberal" grocery stores? Conservatives banned from Whole Foods, and liberals banned from Walmart? Where will Libertarians shop?
Progressives already openly support segregation of students based on race. Seems to me the problem with extremism is fairly easy to find.
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Leftists have little use for free speech and will happily silence those with whom they disagree. As is happening here.
Wrong. Gab hasn't been silenced, they can still happily Gab away at whatever "thinly-veiled-racism masquerading as a nationalist agendas" trips their trigger. They may have to find another web host or plug their own server hardware into the internet, and accept cryptocurrency instead of PayPal.
When you start telling business they can't choose to act on their own morals, you might end up telling Christian bakers they've gotta bake that gay wedding cake, too. I've always said it must take a lot of cognitiv
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In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. If Paypal had any competitors, they could be used. There aren't any that I've ever heard of. It's not a free market.
You might not have sympathy for Gab as an individual, but I'd still be worried about the legal precedence this sets. You might not presently live at the cliff edge yourself, but the gradual erosion of liberty will certainly ensure that you eventually do.
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This partitioning is being driven by progressive extremists, for the express purpose of destroying America.
I think that's taking it a bit far and probably attributing reasons to most of the people who fall into that group that don't exist. In reality, the explanation is much more banal: They're doing it because they think it will impress other people like them. It's as simple and stupid as that. It's not really different than conservative Christians that try to take tough moral stances against homosexuality so that they can show everyone how Christian and moral they are.
Naturally this attracts a lot of sleazy
Re:In before someone says it (Score:4, Informative)
When liberals hate conservatives, it is because they do not understand what conservatives believe, nor do they care to learn. When faced with questions such as "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or "Justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. [theindependentwhig.com]
Jonathan Haidt's experiments ask liberals and conservatives to fill out questionnaires about their values, then to predict how someone from the opposite tribe would fill out the questionnaire. He finds that conservatives are able to predict liberals' answers just fine and seem to have a pretty good understanding of their worldviews, but that liberals have *no idea* how conservatives think or what they value. [aei.org]
One of the most telling discoveries was that conservatives tend to be curious about what liberals think and why, while liberals see conservatives as inferior "other," inherently incapable of thought. The slur as substitute for argument is glaring on this website.
One only needs to utter the name "Sarah Palin" to see how interested liberals are in women's rights, or "Clarence Thomas" to see how interested they are in racial equality.
Re: In before someone says it (Score:3)
That's interesting. Is like to learn more. Neither link was to the actual study (methodology, numerical results, ...) - only to takeaways. Do you have any idea where to find out about the actual study?
I'm curious because the guy said he asked 2000 "visitors" to fill out his questionnaire. I wonder which visitors? To where?
Re:In before someone says it (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they haven't also banned Twitter is that Twitter has a policy of not allowing that kind of thing on its network.
That's complete BS. Twitter allows multiple terrorist organizations to operate on there. They even have terrorist groups like the muslim brotherhood verified. It doesn't get much further in terms of extremism when you're talking about a group that wants to commit genocide because religion tells them to.
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> Twitter allows multiple terrorist organizations to operate on there.
Not the least of which is the leadership of the United States...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/world/middleeast/trump-threatens-iran-twitter.html
A political leader making inflammatory (and often empty) threats is not terrorism.
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They call for genocide all the time. Against jews.
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No, the issue is that Gab takes the platform / common carrier position while facebook and twitter exercise a degree of editorial control. This means that Gab is not liable for hosted content while facebook and twitter are.
That might be their official position but a little context is required.
Gab was started as a direct response to alt-right and white supremacist personalities getting kicked off of Twitter, it's the White Supremacist Twitter.
It doesn't really matter what their official policies are, they're a social networking company created to serve an extremely controversial community, they can't pretend extremists on their platform are some random unfortunate situation no one could have predicted.
Re:In before someone says it (Score:5, Informative)
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It does not necessarily mean they blame Gab for the shooting.
Could just be the publicity has made people aware of the nasty shit going on there, the hatred tolerated.
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...the hatred tolerated.
there are many forms of hatred; anyone can hate anything else.
hatred is a feeling rising out of some value (usually but not limited to, moral) judgement (irrational, misguided, or not).
not to tolerate hatred of any kind is to create a zombie like slavish society where no kind of free individual judgement is allowed. where only values and judgements allowed are those of the powers that be.
actions against gab indicate, we are heading that way.
personally i think hatreds, of any kind, should be tolerated, and w
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No, you haven't seen those things, you've just heard about it on Fox News.
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big difference between believing tin foil hat nonsense and shooting people.... most the millions in those tin foil hatters aren't doing that.
Re:blame social media (Score:5, Insightful)
In the real world, a "party" is a club of people. These people move around, new people entering, other people leaving, and people changing clubs. And there's an interesting history of how and where the many individuals of the club called "Democrat Party" moved to in the decades since and which people replaced the as those left and where these came from. Google it, and google the same for the club "Republican Party". You'll find all the plot twists quite interesting, if not entertaining.
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Any excuse to de-platform conservatives will be takes.
I'm not conservative, but unlike you I don't hate conservatives, and certainly not nearly enough to equate the whole of conservatism with white supremacy. What I want to know is why you despise conservatives so much? It's not healthy.
That's what happened here, gab hosted white supremacists and one off then went off and did some actual white supremacist sort of things and now lots of people don't want to do business with gab any more.
Bonus points if you
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And once again we see how deeply dishonest the fallacy of "whataboutism" is. If you want to deplatform people you accuse of being violent extremists you don't get to ignore the fact that all of these tech giants are actively defending groups like antifa and even very blatantly antisemitic fanatics like tankies.
When the entire argument is a claimed moral high ground, or the claimed unacceptability of certain things, then it's 100% legitimate and relevant to bring up when they actually do accept and condone t
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Except this isn't "correlation". Using a word that's only used in a certain community is a pretty good reason to believe you have spent time in that community.
Do you have any evidence that the views on Gab are "conservative"?
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Trump is the most pro-Israel president we've had in quite some time. Of course that sparks reaction.
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Political views are something you choose, so they can never be a protected category.
"Protected category" is a legal construct, and includes whatever arbitrary groups the law is written to include. California includes political affiliation as a protected category.
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I guess because it's "conservative" that it's automatically bad.
You're equating a white supremacist who shot up a synagogue with "conservative" (the backlash was for hosting that guy). You must really really despise conservatives.
Re:Great virtue signalling! (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this every day on social networking from my liberal friends.
Historically, conservative leaders took the moral high road and measured their words carefully. But now the conservative standards bearer is saying crap like "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise".
Many more statements called "dog whistles" have been made, such as "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks... Although the Second Amendment people â" maybe there is, I donâ(TM)t know.â
Now you can say this is all just political hyperbole. You might even try to say it's merely coincidence that violent hate crime is up dramatically over the last 2 years.
But the point isn't about "proof" or causality. The point is trying to understand the opinions, rather than merely dismissing them as "must really really despise conservatives". This sort of speech which is likely to incite hate and maybe leads to violence is reckless. Until only 2 years ago, far outside the norm of what anyone would consider acceptable from the president or other elected officials.
Then again, maybe you'd prefer to believe Republican leaders have acted ethically or may be above questioning. In that case, I suppose the only explanation that fits is some folks must just really really despise conservatives.
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No, the backlash is not for hosting that guy. He was on Twitter and Facebook too. No backlash there. The backlash is for not banning conservative speech in general. But that's just an excuse, really.
The is the Silicon Valley Cabal using this shooting as an excuse to destroy the competition - pure business. Gab was starting to get actual traction as a competitor, and there's nothing a monopoly hates more than a competitor!
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I guess because it's "conservative" that it's automatically bad.
No, what made it bad is that it's a platform that designed to create echo chambers. In this instance the echo chamber it created got so bad that lives were lost.
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No, "conservative" just means you can count on violent, willfully ignorant, loudmouth assholes being present in overwhelming numbers. It's not automatically bad, any more than a serious cockroach infestation is automatically bad.
It is, however, symptomatic of a place that lets filthy, loathsome pests take over, so that it becomes uninhabitable for decent people.
I hope this clears things up for you.
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Meanwhile the GOP invites Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, to speak at their events.
In his own words:
“I think there’s not enough violence in today’s day and age. I want violence. I want punching in the face. I’m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough.” - Gavin McInnes
"We do it cause it’s fun. It’s fun beating you up, because you suck s--t." - Gavin McInnes
https://www.salon.com/2018/10/... [salon.com]
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Actually, it is protected in the United States. If it wasn't, people would be getting arrested for it.
Re:Far-right (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're missing the point.
A parallel is the Paula Dean case. She signed an agreement that, to paraphrase reads: "You fuck with our revenue stream, we will fire you."
That's precisely what happened here. Notice Gab is not filing a lawsuit. They signed the ToS that they violated.
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The shooter hated Trump because Trump was racist enough towards the Jewish people. Trump is just racist towards every other non-white ethnicity.
Do you realize just how pathetic that argument is?
Have you seen Trump's racist remarks where he essentially said that he wants all of the people counting his money to be Jewish?
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My 2 top comments in this story have each seen 10+ mod points expended on them, and they're still in rapid motion. And they're both fairly bland. Slashdot has been overtaken by tribalism, with modding going entirely by "are you fer em or agin em". That's exactly what destroyed Digg, and I'm not sure how much life Slashdot has left in it.
Heck, I saw posts downmodded yesterday for suggesting such notions as "the rich use their money to become richer, they don't just sit on it" and "healthcare is really exp
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... NPC style agreement...
Off-topic here: What the hell is NPC in this context? I always read it as "Non-player character," which probably tells you something about me. It is a little fun to imagine people sending you off on a quest to "Collect 5 codes of conduct" or what have you.