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Did you miss the part where the Government is working with private companies to silence voices? Or is government censorship something you’re cool with?

Dude, we are not talking about a legal case or the requirements that a law team is bound to abide by in a court of law. We are talking average and normal people posting on social media that may have the government flagging their speech as not correct. That is a problem. The fact that you don’t see that as a problem is very telling. Like I said, I don’t care if they are spewing BS about COVID, saying the earth is flat, or even hate speech. The fact is, the government has no legal right to play any part in deciding what is allowed to be said and what is not. https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/what-type-of-speech-is-not-protected-by-the-first-amendment-34258 “What Type of Speech Is Not Protected by the First Amendment?” Saying you got 5G from a Covid vax, no matter how wrong that is, is not in there.

Hope this blows up on social media and this OG/CC gets publicly raked across the coals and fired by ACC leadership backed up by the CSAF. No offense to my ABM bros but is this OG/CC an ABM that has zero concept of aviation hazards and fatigue? Unless you’re in combat, an ABM not being able to do their job doesn’t kill lives.

You guys are all smart people. Many of you even have security clearances and access to more detailed reports on weaponized misinformation and it’s effects on the U-S-of-A. You know that there are concerted attacks on the Information sector of America designed to cause turmoil, polarize folks, or get people elected who are in the best interests of our adversaries. From that standpoint, I’d hope you wouldn’t take such a black and white view on how to combat this adversarial disinformation, because it’s not helpful in making our nation strong or unified. From a grand strategy DIME perspective, many will even argue that the I (information) is becoming the most impactful way to fight the US for many adversaries. This is because many in the US will, ironically, fight to freely allow and maintain misinformation under the guise of liberty. It’s a tough problem, because it really is a Liberty vs security discussion. Maybe we should bring back the feel good official government propaganda machine that made people in the fifties to 2000 hate things like the concept of socialism so much? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Information_Agency You think it’s a coincidence that the US disbanded its official information propaganda around the same time that those ideals started picking up more (1998)? The pragmatic truth is that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you embrace free information - regardless of veracity - you open up a giant attack vector. And for almost no benefit other than the dumbing of society. People just don’t have the time or effort to trudge through misinformation, so we’re left with it having a profound impact on us at a national scale. This includes those from every spectrum: those that blindly call things socialism, q-anon folks, people who think it’s racist to require a voter ID just cause they’ve heard it is, people who think that Trump won the election, folks that think there is significant evidence of surface transmission of COVID, people who think that COVID isn’t real, people who think it is extremely deadly, etc. Disinformation is bad in our society and for our nations national security. If something is patently, provably false, why should that message not be stopped? The concern, of course, is who in government determines “the truth.” You can take two stances here: be a fatalist, accept misinformation, and say you could never trust the gov to do it. Or fight to make the government make bounded, reasonable, bipartisan stops against it.

RUMINT is someone recorded some audio.. comacc is visiting early next week, at least a few peeps are expecting some changes.

if donald trump's administration was flagging speech they disagreed with across all social media platforms Sue Sponte and the left would lose a fucking gasket. jesus christ the fact people aren't pissed about this gives me zero hope (among other things) for the survival of our "democracy"

It's a pretty shallow analysis to say that because Facebook (et al) are private companies, when they censor speech, it's not the government doing it. In fact, however, there is established legal precedent which (time and again) has determined that when government pressures or otherwise incentivises a company to act on their behalf, that action has become a de facto governmental action. The reason for this is simple. If it was just as simple as saying "hey private company, restrict this speech we don't like so it's not us doing it and we'll hook you up in some way," would free speech really mean what we all think of it as? Of course not, which is why there have been numerous court cases which have decided that the government cannot use private companies as a proxy to accomplish what they are otherwise forbidden from doing. Which, in this case, is restricting speech. https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-tech-11610387105 For example: "For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action. In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), the Supreme Court found a First Amendment violation when a private bookseller stopped selling works state officials deemed “objectionable” after they sent him a veiled threat of prosecution."

I don’t even know what to say man. Presumably you’re a US Citizen and a military officer, and you are okay with the government of this country having a role in censorship. That’s shocking. I don’t care if they are flagging the most asinine and uneducated COVID conspiracy posts ever, the government has no business deciding what can or cannot be said.

My guess is that the White Cell put the sorties on the schedule, then left it to the squadrons to fill. In all the exercises I planned in the IG, I never told commanders when to start the deployment line. I told them what time their first "deployed" sortie should be in the air and left them to back out the timeline.

Every WO returning from WIC

No. "Otherwise illegal" is talking about the government, not Facebook. i.e. it is illegal for the government to prohibit speech (generally). It is still illegal when they induce a company to do it on their behalf - that's where the 1st amendment violation comes in. *If* Facebook or Twitter took it upon themselves to censor that speech, without government intervention, they are 100% free to do so. As you say, Facebook is not a public space - problem is, it doesn't have to be for a first amendment violation to take place when the government intervenes. For example, the government can't censor your speech on a public sidewalk, why would they be able to censor it in your private home? Ok, so now expressing skepticism over getting a vaccine is akin to yelling 'fire' in a movie theater? I think the difference is that one of those acts is capable of causing acute, immediate panic which leads to injury or death - I'd be interested to see that case made in court, re: COVID vaccines. I fully grant that herd immunity is of public health interest. In any case, are you familiar with the Thalidomide tragedy? What if people had expressed 'doubt' about taking Thalidomide back in the 50s? How would they have fared in our current environment? Point being, the government or PTB don't always know what is best, and mistakes get made. There is no long-term data on COVID-19 or on the side-effects of the vaccine - none. And I think, generally, people can tell the difference between complete and utter BS, and actual healthy skepticism. For example, I got the vaccine - full believer in modern medical tech. Yet simultaneously, I find it much more credible to consider the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of the virus than I do the zoonotic origin - yet I would be labelled 'conspiratorial' in many circles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide Well, as a matter of legal fact, it doesn't have to block anything directly. Merely inducing, promoting, or encouraging, is enough to constitute government intervention and a violation of individuals' rights.

Refresh my memory— why was Trump impeached by the house in 2019? Because I thought democrat arguments were that illegal WH influence was through implied rather than explicit statements. A fundamental problem in our country is political tribes that justify any behavior from “our” guy while condemning all behavior from “their” guy. This is why Hunter Biden isn’t in jail on felony gun charges. And why the obvious C19 lab leak was hidden, etc. The hypocrisy makes compromise impossible. Which is the goal; how do you guys think this ends?

I agree - it's my responsibility. I understand your point. There will always be dumb people. Is your view, though, that if we limit false information everyone is going to have the same set of thoughts and internal representation of how the world is? This is a more complex issue than just saying we need to limit the propagation of bad information. Viewing it as that simple is seductive because it seems like a silver bullet that will just solve the problem in one fell-swoop. I'm saying that the German people didn't just simply "believe a lie" - it was far more complex than that. If the government intervened and outlawed the view that the Earth is flat, would that action create more or less flat Earthers? Since obviously it's not flat. What about no gold at the end of a rainbow? More or less leprechauns?

You guys aren't on the same page. The INTERNET is the new public square, I can make a forum and propagate my ideas with out restriction=screaming from public square. That is an American right. Facebook, Twitter, etc ARE private property. They have the right to decide who uses their forum and how, just like MSNBC has a right to decide who they want to have on a talk show/who they don't. Adding this: I don't think the government should be telling them what acceptable content is tho. That is overreach, that is at the discretion of the owners. Just like the moderators have the discretion to ban people on this forum.

The internet is the new public square. comparing Sunday talk shows to the internet is apples to oranges. Government is limiting the flow of free information they just happen to be doing it online instead of in the physical world. the better example is government taking people off the street corner who are holding signs or yelling information government doesn’t approve of. same difference just doing it online

The government is a reflection of the people tho, not the other way around. If the people in America are caring less and less about their government, getting dumber, not valuing education and science, and becoming so lazy as to get there news off some social media stream, than trying to stop it via government is a lost cause. The crazies can also band together now and find other crazies who will affirm whatever unfounded belief they have. The government is chosen by those same people, so you can't expect the government to be any more capable than they are. This is a problem that needs to be solved at the local level. If you have a buddy who tells you the earth is flat, it cannot be let go. It needs to be shunned in the immediate vicinity. That person needs to be told by the 9 out of 10 people who know it isn't flat, why it isn't flat, and than be shunned until they figure it out.

Hard to refute? You refuted it yourself. Examples of past censorship are exactly why we shouldn't be doing it now. You think propaganda and racist policy is why the US is a global superpower? Not personal and economic freedom? Let's do a little comparison... Which countries have racism and propaganda? All of them. So that's obviously not what made us different. But our system of limited government and unique conception of individual liberty are quite different. As for your many dodges, we can start with your fixed-wealth formulation for billionaire economics. You might have to go back a few pages since Sua Sponte vomited all over the thread.

Nor is anything on social media subject to, or protected by the first amendment. The government is engaging with private companies to get its own messaging out to the public. People will always have freedom to spew whatever bullshit they want from rooftops, street corners, and/or whatever media outlets are willing to host their content. Why should our government not be free to counter speech that is harmful to public health? Why shouldn’t our government encourage social media, as well as other outlets to spin its own agenda? Government officials have been appearing on Sunday morning talk shows for as long as I can remember doing exactly that.

Jury is still out tho, 1776 was like yesterday in terms of history's sake. Powerful empires have come and gone, we cannot take this one for granted and assume that if we leave it on autopilot we'll stay on top just because of our love for freedom and moral compass. At my school in college, which lets just call an MIT for dummies, you know who the top performers were a lot of the time? The kids from China. We watch football and grill our burgers and play beer pong, they're trying to figure out how to build a jet that can maul an F-35. They want the podium, how close they are getting is above my pay grade, but I don't see them letting up any time soon.

Glad to hear hiring is turned back on. Hopefully, the food will be better by the time you get here.

I’m trying to find his official bio online. I’m willing to bet he spent the majority of his career checking boxes as an exec and going towards schools vs. being in an ops squadron hacking the mission.

Well, your arguments are usually weak, so I wasn’t expecting this one to be much different.

Lol, you don’t have to be a WCoS to know that’s a foul. Hell, I’ll bet the LTs in the room knew it was fucked up like polio as soon as it was happening. This is like busting a rule on a checkride; from the WG/CC’s perspective, his hands are probably tied with respect to the outcome at this point.

Kicking the safety team out is a massive red flag. If I’m the wing chief of safety and I hear that, the answer is “Uh, no”

You are declaring this as if it were fact, in the face of actual legal jurisprudence that has been quoted for you in separate posts in this thread. You aren't arguing in good faith, and in fact, you're just plain wrong, from a legal standpoint. You're side-stepping the fact that our government - through the court system - has determined that governmental "persuasion" of private entities to enact policy or act on their behalf to accomplish "things" that the government couldn't do on its own otherwise (because constitution), makes that action governmental (not private). Read: When the government pressures a company to do something, it is government action - directly. Let's get to your question. It was Cedric Richmond and Jerry Nadler in April 2019. Another poster quoted Diane Feinstein for you. Here's the source (https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-tech-11610387105). In any case, here's another quote for you to ignore, or call an echo chamber or whatever. Not expecting actual engagement: "In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they had “better” restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: “We’re going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very accountable.” New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: “Let’s see what happens by just pressuring them.” Hopefully you can let this one rest.

I know the thread has moved on but yes. If you are all for Capitalism and the free market, well than the free market has decided that they were better off tapping the person in China who will assemble your iphone for half the wage (right or wrong) as an any American would be willing to, and you need to stop complaining about how China "stole our jobs" (both sides do this and use it as a political "rile up the masses" and get some votes talking point). They didn't steal it, we served it up on a silver platter the day we walked into harbor freight and started buying socket sets for half what the USA made craftsman set cost. Self-inflicted wound, the American consumer is responsible and needs to own it, both left and right. We torpedoed our fellow manufacturing Americans because a lot of us are assholes and saw "more for less!", nobody put a gun to anyone's head and said "you must buy this discounted Chinese wrench". As to giving a damn, yes you are correct, most Americans probably don't care at all. I don't think there should be people working 60 hour weeks and barely scraping by and have to buy the "cheapest". But there are loads of people who just want the biggest TV they can get for the ball game, their new phone every other year with whatever current gimmick, and don't care how it happens just so long as it does. Oppression in Hong Kong? What's Hong Kong? Let me google it on my iphone.... But American consumption and forced obsolescence is a whole nother tangent..

From Diane Feinstein: “There are going to have to be some controls,” she said. “I’ve said, 'If you don’t control your platform, we’re going to have to do something about it.' I am hopeful that they will." You're not this stupid

“Hey private company, censor this speech for us.” Sounds like the government is indeed 1000% restricting free speech.

Timeline Update: Hired off the street guard fighter: AUG2020 MEPS 1.0: FEB2021 MEPS 2.0 (consult): MAR2021 Cond. Enlistment: JUN2021 FC1: 06JUL2021 FC1 approval stamp/pucker factor going way down: TBD The people at WP are awesome. Hopefully the Gods of the FC1 stamp that FC1 soon. They told me everything went well but I’m not trying to celebrate at the 5 yrd line. Also as a PSA, if you only suspect that you have had covid (i.e. not on your record) then it would be in ones best interest to not write down that you have had it on the medical forms you fill out prior to the FC1— they have to run 4 EXTRA tests on you if you report that you have previously had covid (PFT, 1hr EKG, 24 hr ecg, 6 min walking test). If you are healthy the addition tests should be a non-issue, but why have them take the deeper dive into your innards if they don’t need to?

White House admits to flagging and then working with big tech to eliminate so called “disinformation”. This should be terrifying to everyone.

This illustrates my point even more. If middle class people won’t do it, why would people who actually have no money? In my experience, unless you’re getting significantly better quality for the higher cost, people dgaf where things are produced. They’ll bitch and moan about China, but it is definitely not in the vast majority of American’s minds or capabilities to actually give a damn.

I don’t think they’re lying. It’s the personnel operating the stuff that’s the problem. Put me in front of a piano and it’ll sound like complete shit. Put Mozart there and you’ve got something.

Forgot one...

Fired? Barely. He became Director of Current Ops for the Depity CoS for Ops.

- Justice Dept admitting it covered up the Hunter Biden laptop story which includes them actively investigating him for tax evasion (say, while you're at it, you might want to check on him for lying when purchasing a handgun..) because they "didn't want to seem political during an election." - WH Press Secretary admitting this Administration has been working with various Big Social Media companies to have voices silenced "because they are spreading 'disinformation.'" Say, who decides that anyway? I'd like to be part of the 'in crowd' deciding what the plebes can say or see... - Fulton County had at least 4,400+ illegal votes during the 2020 election. In a state that Trump lost by 12,000-ish votes. So one county had 1/3 of the difference and the only one that had an audit. And this coming from reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about as liberal a paper as there is. - Maricopa County audit looks like 74,000 mail-in ballots received than were sent out officially. Nothing see there, yet Congress wants to investigate the investigators. - The DOJ IG hammers the FBI for missing/covering up for years info on the now imprisoned Olympic Committee doctor who abused young girl athletes. Sure does seem like the FBI's been "missing" a bunch of stuff in the last years - San Bernadino shooter, the Lakeland shooter, the Pulse Night Club shooter, etc, etc. - Groceries and gas seem to be a tad bit more expensive nowadays as well. But twitter has been remarkably upbeat and nice so that's a fair trade.

1. Wasn’t the “laptop story” coming from someone who was recently had their law license suspended in two separate jurisdictions? Hmmm. 2. Who gets to decide what’s said their platform? The owner of said platform. Don’t like it? You’re free to make your own. 3. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/15/georgias-raffensperger-calls-firing-fulton-election-officials/7983338002/ “Three separate audits of Georgia's 2020 election results found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.” 4. https://apnews.com/article/f0c36df59ee1069d65aa6a70a22d88cc “CLAIM: Arizona’s largest county in the 2020 election received and counted 74,000 mail-in ballots that had no record of ever being sent out to voters. THE FACTS: False. The claim mischaracterizes reports that are intended to help political parties track early voters for their get-out-the-vote efforts, not tally mail-in ballots through Election Day. The reports don’t represent all mail-in ballots sent out and received, so the numbers aren’t expected to match up, according to Maricopa County officials and outside experts. “We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent,” Logan said at a meeting livestreamed at Arizona’s Capitol on Thursday. “That could be something where documentation wasn’t done right. There’s a clerical issue. There’s not proper things there, but I think when we’ve got 74,000, it merits knocking on a door and validating some of this information.” Logan based his false claim on two types of early voting reports issued by Maricopa County: EV32 files and EV33 files. He claimed that EV32 files are “supposed to give a record of when a mail-in ballot is sent” and EV33 files are “supposed to give a record of when the mail-in ballot is received.” That’s not accurate, according to Maricopa County officials, who tweeted on Friday that “the EV32 Returns & EV33 files are not the proper files to refer to for a complete accumulating of all early ballots sent and received.” Instead, the EV32 and EV33 files are reports created for political parties to aid them in their get-out-the-vote efforts during early voting, according to Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa County elections official. Arizona law requires county recorders to provide this data to political parties and candidates, Patrick said.” 6. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/04/gasoline-prices-gop-biden-497947 “It’s an old tactic employed by opposition parties to blame sitting presidents when fuel prices rise on their watch — and one that Republicans unsuccessfully tried to wield against Barack Obama during a recovering economy a decade ago. This time, they are pointing to Biden's ambitious climate change plans, his pause on leases for new oil wells on federal lands, and his cancellation of the permits for the Keystone XL pipeline as the culprits, although none of those steps have had any immediate impact on what motorists pay at the pump. Experts largely agree that the White House usually has little to do with short-term moves in gasoline prices, which are a factor of global oil prices, U.S. refinery operations, and — especially this year — a sharp jump in demand from drivers as people emerge from lockdowns and travel resumes.“

Yeah, cause tech companies give a fuck what the Feds want all the time. It’s also not censoring when you’re free to go to another platform and say whatever you want. You know, for the six minutes you guys were on Parler and learned that the tech giants also own all the major cloud hosting services. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/fbi-and-apple-are-poised-for-another-privacy-disagreement.html

By silence you mean telling social media platforms to cutdown on misinformation? It’s not a First Amendment violation since it’s up to the social media platforms to either delete it or not, the government isn’t disposing directly. Suggest you chicken littles focus on the 2024 election. If social media platforms are unfairly targeting conservatives saying they’re the root cause of misinformation, then why are Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, Lauren Boebert, and that CrossFit Nazi from Georgia’s accounts not deleted?

We get it war hawk, America is being eroded. Better buy that ranch in Wyoming and to surround yourself with your conservative Boomer friends.