The Next President is...

[M2]

Didn't take long... 🤣🤣🤣

[uhhello]

2 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

everyone in DC is bought and paid for. doesn't matter the "R" or the "D" (sts). if you think the most powerful government in world history isn't corrupt....we are probably way worse.

WE NEED TERM LIMITS

 

While I agree, we already have the ability to vote out whoever we want.  Nobody does.  

https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-rates

[M2]

Bound to happen! 🤣🤣🤣

[Splash95]

Thoughts on big tech (trying to) cancel Parler? 

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/parler-app-store-number-1-google-suspension

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-suspends-hosting-parler-its-servers-citing-violent-content-n1253648

 

[Kiloalpha]

11 minutes ago, Splash95 said:

Thoughts on big tech (trying to) cancel Parler? 

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/parler-app-store-number-1-google-suspension

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-suspends-hosting-parler-its-servers-citing-violent-content-n1253648

Amazon, Apple or Google can cancel or end whatever contract they like, in my opinion, as long as they’re doing so legally. Parler will have to find someone else, or make their own solution. Such is the cost of business.

[dream big]

On 1/9/2021 at 4:17 AM, Prosuper said:

I believe we will see mass voter non participation in future elections. I'm 58 and finally understand that both political parties are clubs for the sole purpose of getting the made guys elected. It was never about public service, since the Biden's are now in power the big money donors will call all the shots to include military contractors. Those of you still in Afghanistan or on the hook for it, we will be probably be staying now.  Back to the status quo , business as usual.

We spent the last month removing metric tons of equipment and personnel out of an unnamed third world wonder...only to be told we have to prepare to undo that and put everything back in a few weeks..
 

 

[Sua Sponte]

3 hours ago, Kiloalpha said:

This is a really bad analogy. The inverse would have to be true then.

Democrats who have been asking Twitter for months to ban Trump (ie. a business should be able to choose its customers)... therefore should have been ok with the bakery not baking that cake.

The truth is a bakery makes an individualized product for customers, and is a contractor in that regard. They aren’t required to take every job.

Twitter has a platform for everyone to use, and thanks to Section 230/the first amendment, is regulated as if they were a digital public park. They do have to accept every legal customer initially.

For example, you can’t stop someone from walking into a public park and having a discussion. But you can have them kicked out or suspended for inciting violence. 

I personally think Trump being suspended for a period of time is fine legally. But I don’t think the threshold for a ban has been met. Especially when the Ayatollah can post this:

How is Trump banned... but he isn’t?

Your logic is flawed. Twitter is a contractor as well, they provide a product, their social media forum/app/content, that you may use...if you agree to their Terms of Service. If you don’t agree, or adhere, to those ToS, then you aren’t using their service. If you violate the ToS, then you’re gone. It’s really that simple.

Here’s another example. A moderator here limited me posting awhile back because he said something in this thread that wasn’t true, I posted data that proved him wrong, which apparently made him mad.

He didn’t warn me or message me, he just did it. After inquiring why, he just told me when it would expire. Do I think what I said was wrong? No. Do I think he was being a snowflake? Yeah. Do I think he targeted me because he doesn’t like my political stance and got mad I made him look stupid? Yeah, there are people who post worst stuff than I did, but they didn’t have that happen.

However, I could’ve argued what he did wasn’t fair and was bullshit, which would’ve probably done nothing that have him ban me. Or I could just wait for the expiration of the post limit. At the end of the day I don’t have to use the forum and he doesn’t have to let me, I agreed to the ToS when I signed up.

Life isn’t fair, wear a helmet.

[FLEA]

2 hours ago, Kiloalpha said:

Amazon, Apple or Google can cancel or end whatever contract they like, in my opinion, as long as they’re doing so legally. Parler will have to find someone else, or make their own solution. Such is the cost of business.

Sure but the conglomeration is sure indicative that tech has grown into key monopolies and I would say it's time for the Fed to come in and break them up. When you can literally prevent businesses from competing with other businesses you contract with, and there is no meaningful alternative, you are too big and the FTC hammer needs to come down. 

[Sua Sponte]

1 hour ago, dream big said:

We spent the last month removing metric tons of equipment and personnel out of an unnamed third world wonder...only to be told we have to prepare to undo that and put everything back in a few weeks..
 

 

That’s because of some now censored idiot who wanted to show he pulled out of that country before the inauguration to say he did it. Solely due to optics.

[FLEA]

There are some other ties here. 1.) This totally conflicts with principles of net neutrality. The entire purpose of net neutrality was to prevent providers from preventing access to content and 2.) Im curious how the provider, in this case Amazon's, status a s a common carrier factors into this. 

[FLEA]

2 minutes ago, Sua Sponte said:

That’s because of some now censored idiot who wanted to show he pulled out of that country before the inauguration to say he did it. Solely due to optics.

Was still great for the country either way. We have no reason to be there anymore. I dread the thought of us going back. 

[Sua Sponte]

2 minutes ago, FLEA said:

Sure but the conglomeration is sure indicative that tech has grown into key monopolies and I would say it's time for the Fed to come in and break them up. When you can literally prevent businesses from competing with other businesses you contract with, and there is no meaningful alternative, you are too big and the FTC hammer needs to come down. 

Plenty of people who hate liberals on Twitter...errr...sorry display “conservative values.” Just be the idiot who incites a riot to march to the U.S. Capitol and you’ll keep your tweeting privileges.

[Sua Sponte]

3 minutes ago, FLEA said:

There are some other ties here. 1.) This totally conflicts with principles of net neutrality. The entire purpose of net neutrality was to prevent providers from preventing access to content and 2.) Im curious how the provider, in this case Amazon's, status a s a common carrier factors into this. 

Did you miss the part where the idiot FTC Chairman was trying his best to get rid of net neutrality? Which cause some states (e.g. California) to pass their own state law version. Thankfully that will be hopefully corrected once he loses his job in a few weeks.

[Sua Sponte]

3 minutes ago, FLEA said:

Was still great for the country either way. We have no reason to be there anymore. I dread the thought of us going back. 

I agree, but not to just to do it for optics is wrong knowing it’ll go back.

[FLEA]

Just now, Sua Sponte said:

Did you miss the part where the idiot FTC Chairman was trying his best to get rid of net neutrality? Which cause some states (e.g. California) to pass their own state law version. Thankfully that will be hopefully corrected once he loses his job in a few weeks.

No I'm aware. I'm a vocal supporter of net neutrality, but I'm surprised how many people here who advocate net neutrality and then think this is ok. I'm speaking more so about the removal of parler from app stores. 

"Network neutrality, most commonly called net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.^[4][5]"

 

 

 

[FLEA]

6 minutes ago, FLEA said:

No I'm aware. I'm a vocal supporter of net neutrality, but I'm surprised how many people here who advocate net neutrality and then think this is ok. I'm speaking more so about the removal of parler from app stores. 

"Network neutrality, most commonly called net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.^[4][5]"

 

 

 

 

I don't know, I'm really split on this because I hold Trump 95% responsible for what happened. I do think though we need to recognize noone held a gun to the rioters head and told them to do it. But I've read his speech in it's entirety and he never overtly says to commit a crime. His language was aggressive but we tend to allegory politics as a war often, so on its own language wasn't immediately hair raising. What I mean when I refer to allegorizing politics is we refer to swing states as battleground states, etc...

That said, in the position he's in, he needs to recognize his words are amplified. A mentor I knew once told me when a General whispers, the airmen hears megaphone. Ever person down the rank ladder hears a comment slightly louder until your A1C hears it as the most important thing happening in the AF right now. 

I don't know what's bring shit posted on parler but I can't immagine it's that far out of expected norms. Parlers TOS do prevent inviting violence. Based on the comments Twitter banned Trump for which were entirely innocuous, I can only assume people are making huge leaps to assumptions with this. "Oh my God, someone on parler said Republicans have a voice! That is going to spark a riot!" 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by FLEA

[Pooter]

The cancel culture stuff is way overblown. There are huge communities of conservatives on every platform that exist without the threat of bans for one simple reason: they don't go around threatening people and inciting violence. 
 

If cancel culture is such a problem you're gonna have to explain to me how the #4 and #5 podcasts on apple right now are Dan bongino and Ben Shapiro. Seriously.. All of the biggest political channels are conservative.  This is the case across most platforms.  Conservatives are killing it on social media, and this has been the case for a long time. 
 

The problem Parler has is that they are the dumping ground for everyone that got kicked off normal social media for rules violations. This isn't a healthy pool of people from which to draw your user base. Think of it like AETC. It's no wonder the culture is toxic when you're getting the rejects from everywhere else. On top of that they weren't enforcing their own terms of service or maybe the wretched hive of scum and villainy grew too large to enforce, and at some point the hosting companies took notice. Probably doesn't help when a contingent of your nutjob users storms the capitol of the country. 

I actually think social media companies have been handling the delineation between conservative opinions vs things that are actually illegal and dangerous really well. Platforms like YouTube and Twitter keep conservatives around who actively trash them on a daily basis as long as what they're saying isn't incitement. Hell, every Steven crowder episode is basically just 90 minutes of him complaining about the YouTube algorithms. 

 

Lastly, to everyone invoking the section 230 town square argument I have two things:

1. If you go to the town square and try to start an insurrection, you will get arrested.

2. If you want to form your own alternative town square, no one is legally obligated to lease the space they own to you.

 

TL;DR - if you want to behave like sh1t you're probably going to need to build your own infrastructure from the ground up.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Pooter

[pcola]

The problem Parler has is that they are the dumping ground for everyone that got kicked off normal social media for rules violations. This isn't a healthy pool of people from which to draw your user base. Think of it like AETC. It's no wonder the culture is toxic when you're getting the rejects from everywhere else. On top of that they weren't enforcing their own terms of service or maybe the wretched hive of scum and villainy grew too large to enforce, and at some point the hosting companies took notice.

Care to explain how you came to this conclusion?


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

[lloyd christmas]

4 hours ago, Sua Sponte said:

That’s because of some now censored idiot who wanted to show he pulled out of that country before the inauguration to say he did it. Solely due to optics.

No other post on this thread better highlights what is wrong with politics today. This type of response and thought process is exactly why our nation will continue to drift farther and farther apart.  People would rather be intellectually dishonest than give an ounce of credit where credit is due.  

[jazzdude]

No I'm aware. I'm a vocal supporter of net neutrality, but I'm surprised how many people here who advocate net neutrality and then think this is ok. I'm speaking more so about the removal of parler from app stores. 
"Network neutrality, most commonly called net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.^[4][5]"
 

 
 

Twitter isn't an ISP...

Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T blocking or prioritizing packets of data based on where they come from or are going to would violate the net neutrality concept. Net neutrality prevents the ISP from cutting deals to favor certain businesses or ideals/opinions. And this is necessary because they are common carriers for information: ISPs are *infrastructure*.

Apple and Google both are well within their rights to remove any app they believe violates their terms of service (or for any reason): it's their walled garden, and the blocking of an app on an app store has no bearing on the transmission of data. This is just the free market. People can still get unapproved or blocked apps, but have to do it via a third party (side loading). This is not a violation of net neutrality principles. Sure, it's harder to get a blocked app because you don't have the benefit of using the default app store, but the app developer can still publish and distribute their app through other means, and net neutrality allows the same priority of the data packets regardless of the source, whether it's Apple's app store server or a private, third party server.

Twitter, Facebook, app stores, websites, etc aren't common carriers or infrastructure. Being blocked on Twitter does not limit your free speech. You can switch to another service, or build/host your own website/discussion forum to get your message out in the internet. And with net neutrality, packets of data moving to/from your website have the same priority as packets of data from Twitter, and prevents the ISP from blocking out your small service in favor of business interests (like faster connections to business partners).

Net neutrality has zero to do with content or opinions, or ensuring "balanced" viewpoints are represented online, and everything to do with ensuring infrastructure is shared equally and no one gets priority access to the infrastructure.

Separately, section 230 protects online *platforms* (such as twitter or Facebook) from being considered a *publisher*. This distinction prevents twitter/Facebook/discussion boards/etc from having to moderate all content before it is published on their platform. Essentially, without section 230, it breaks how we conduct discussions on the internet. Imagine if the mods on BaseOps had to approve ("publish") every post, because the forum owner was legally liable for any content that appeared on the forum instead of the individual poster. Removing section 230 would completely stifle any discussion, slows down the internet, and would break the fundamental model of social media. But that's not to say that moderation or enforcement of rules can't happen, just that someone can't sue the platform based on a opinion posted by an individual on that platform. It's just like phone companies (infrastructure) not being liable for the text messages you send, but for internet communication.

Section 230 is good, it protects internet businesses from frivolous lawsuits because they have deeper pockets than an individual. For example, it prevents Democrats from suing Twitter for allowing Trump to tweet anything they disagree with. Got an issue with what is said on the platform by an individual? Take it up with the individual.

[Sua Sponte]

2 hours ago, lloyd christmas said:

No other post on this thread better highlights what is wrong with politics today. This type of response and thought process is exactly why our nation will continue to drift farther and farther apart.  People would rather be intellectually dishonest than give an ounce of credit where credit is due.  

Credit for what? Not listening to his advisors, which even drew a rebuke from McConnell, to make a rash foreign policy decision right before the inauguration? Especially as a lame duck president and not just leaving it to your successor. Where was this decision one to four years ago? The only thing I’ll give him credit for is acting in bad faith.

[pawnman]

19 hours ago, Prozac said:

It’s one thing to use something like Twitter to spout your agenda, bullshit ridden as it may be. It’s quite another to use it to incite riots, violence, and insurrection. From a business/market standpoint, I can absolutely understand why Twitter wants nothing to do with it. From a free speech standpoint, what the president did was literally analogous to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Sorry. He doesn’t get a pass on either count. 

Oh, I have zero problem with them banning Trump.  I just think it's disingenuous to pretend they're trying to "prevent violence" when they don't kick terrorists off the platform for actively planning attacks.

Maybe there isn't as much to be gained from the liberal media for kicking radical Islamists...sorry, austere religious scholars...off the site.

[Prozac]

4 hours ago, pcola said:

Care to explain how you came to this conclusion?


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

It’s a pretty well known fact that sites like Parler and BitChute have become repositories for people and groups that have been kicked off more mainstream social media. 
 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/right-wing-social-media-finalizes-its-divorce-reality/617177/

From the article: 

“A different type of influencer, however, was active on Parler: accounts that had been kicked off mainstream social communities because of assorted forms of bad behavior and terms-of-service violations. These included Roger Stone, Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and leading QAnon acolytes.”

[FLEA]

1 hour ago, Sua Sponte said:

Credit for what? Not listening to his advisors, which even drew a rebuke from McConnell, to make a rash foreign policy decision right before the inauguration? Especially as a lame duck president and not just leaving it to your successor. Where was this decision one to four years ago? The only thing I’ll give him credit for is acting in bad faith.

Still doesn't mean it wasn't a good decision for the country. Seriously, you can hate Trump for a lot of things. Please do not hate him for getting us out of all the quagmires Bush and Obama entangled us into. It was the one thing I strongly supported about his Presidency. 

[lloyd christmas]

I know there is a Tulsi thread on BO.net but I think it’s more relevant to the many conversations going on here.  She touches on a lot of topics in this interview and speaks of her personal experiences in DC.  I also applaud her courage to speak like she does.  It can’t be easy.