Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
If all "legitimate" platforms ban hate speech, then users wanting to engage in hate speech will all go to some platform that radically allows all speech with disproportionately this undesirable speech. They will intermingle disproportionately with those spreading sexual abuse images, drugs, insurgent propaganda and instructional material, and other undesirable material. Facebook likely makes the problem worse by forcing these "hate speech" and "disinformation users" to be completely surrounded by people with repulsive content, instead of having their repulsive content critiqued and shamed by other users.

Having people with bad, hateful ideas out in the open I would argue is preferable to concentrating all these bad thoughts together with people that will reinforce that it is normal.

Comment · 5 years ago
I apologize, maybe you are not familiar with the details of the silk road. Ross Ulbricht was the administrator and creator of the silk road, allegedly. It's quite probable that without his arrest, it would have persisted even if on newly acquired hardware. I would argue his arrest was integral in these violent thugs "moderating" silk road away like the mob "moderates" away their competition.

Instead, after his arrest the content ended up on new platforms rather than the Silk Road platform.

> biases from creeping in and causing you to misunderstand posts and/or lash out at others.

Yes my bias is in complete, unrestricted free speech. Every single piece of content, regardless of how damaging or vulgar anyone thinks it is and regardless of if it portrays even the worst of crimes. I admit I am colored by that bias.

> lash out at others.

What are you talking about? You feel attacked because your poorly constructed argument was laid open. Your case is pretty clear. Even if the system of the internet has no useful filter of content (whether that is true or not), if a third party such as DEA comes along and decides to seize equipment and throw the operator in jail, you consider that content moderation. And I'm willing to admit from a practical perspective, that could be considered a form of moderation by a violent third party.

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Edit due to waiting on timeout to reply below:

His arrest is hand and hand with the shutdown. It was integral. You can't say you weren't mentioning Ulbricht's arrest when that arrest WAS, in part, the takedown of Silk Road. The very fact that you said you weren't speaking of the arrest lead me to say you "may not be familiar" (note the uncertain words, that your bias clouds you from understanding did not speak in certainties.)

>s, and then angrily respond to them as such.

I think you're projecting. If there's any anger, it must be yours.

>Yeah, again, you're injecting your own biases as you create assumptions about my comments

Your comment appeared to be a rebuttal to my statement that "The internet itself is unmoderated in any useful sense for conten." If it wasn't actually a rebuttal but actually an agreement, I apologize for misunderstanding you were actually supporting that argument.

>See how I used "moderated" in quotes in my very first response? That suggests that I'm using the term rather loosely.

>If something's illegal - even if you and I think it shouldn't be - then it's typically going to be removed at some point, even if it takes a while because something like Tor makes it difficult. And in that sense, yes, the internet is "moderated" for that content. That's all I've said/argued, and I truly don't understand how that is so difficult for you to grasp.

The illegal content has only progressively proliferated since the advent of the internet, and we've yet to see an effective mechanism to moderate the content of the internet as a whole. Virtually every category of content has not only not been removed but increased.

>That's all I've said/argued, and I truly don't understand how that is so difficult for you to grasp.

Yes and I'm arguing that this is incorrect, it hasn't been moderated. At best it has passed from platform from platform but no effective mechanism has managed to censor the internet as a whole.

Sometimes I wonder with all this speak of anger, misinterpretations, and clouded judgement is just you repeating to me what your own psychologist told you.

Comment · 5 years ago
>Oh hello, strawman.

Glad to know you finally admit that being kidnapped by a 3rd party is not really what most of us think as "moderation", and thus you have made a straw man. Although in the strict sense I guess it is true that moderation could merely mean some 3rd party entity came along and violently kept me away from communicating. If you don't like me posting cat pictures on reddit, you could crack my skull or lock me in a cage and steal my PC and you would have "moderated" me but I wouldn't call that reddit moderation.

Comment · 5 years ago
I suppose in the sense that Gabby Pettito was moderated off the internet, Ross Ulbricht was moderated off of the internet and into a cage permanently for the heinous crime of facilitating voluntarily peaceful trade. Tor marketplaces were definitely not gone for years, the same content just moved under new banners. You can literally find the same content and more on WHM today as you did under Ulbricht's banner before he was kidnapped by government thugs.
Comment · 5 years ago
The internet is not moderated in any useful sense for content. Drug markets like white house market, and before that silk road have perpetuated for years. Tor and other darknet websites host content that is nearly universally disdained by governments and even most individuals, which I hesitate to even name here what that heinous content is (you and I both know some examples).

> We assume NASA's site has NASA-posted content. We assume Apple's site has Apple-posted content.

Trust in identity is not the same thing as useful moderation of content. That's useful moderation of identity.

>Sites with different standards for what they'd publish have been around for decades (for gore, for porn, etc) but many of these still exist in a traditional curated-by-someone fashion, or are more open to UGC but still have some level of moderation.

Those sites _choose_ to moderate their content, that doesn't exclude others that don't.

Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
>Trying to stop sexual abuse and child pornography isn't weird moralization.

How does moderation of content prevent sexual abuse or CP? If anything I'd argue it creates more, because those that seek the images instead have to produce their own if they cannot find them.

Comment · 5 years ago
The internet itself is unmoderated in any useful sense for content, yet it has lived longer than most of these cheesy "moderated" products that seek to impose their morality on you.
Comment · 5 years ago
maybe enough "Notes" to pay my stay out of jail money, and the rest in hard currency :)
Comment · 5 years ago
>This idea has been explicitly stated by those who oppose a $15 federal minimum wage, arguing that people making current minimum wage, or close to minimum wage, are not actually poor,

Again, you claim was that it was said that those who make minimum wage are not actually poor. I am quoting you verbatim. Apparently you suffer from amnesia or disconnection from reality. Cato did not say this.

> People work "gig" jobs (e.g. drive for Lyft) for extremely varied reasons (some even do so in addition to other jobs, in fact, your source says most Uber drives do this).

Ignoring all your disengenous obliviousness to your straw man and refusal or indifference at any source that shows concrete effect of wage regulations, I'm glad at least you've come around to admit that many people working low wage jobs are doing it in addition to other jobs and for extremely varied reasons, one of which may be to use the job as a bridge. Which is exactly what Cato was saying. You've at least admitted now that Cato was correct.

>Preferably, yes. "Concrete examples" are also called "anecdotes," and are not at all convincing of large-scale, job market-wide, patterns or effects.

So where is your citation that minimum wage is good for people who cannot offer value reaching minimum wage? I've seen nothing at all from you showing these people who can't offer enough value to gain a minimum wage job benefit at all from raising the wage.

>That is another assumption. You "presume" that gig workers would choose non-gig work if given the option... With no actual evidence of that being the case at a meaningful level. People work "gig" jobs (e.g. drive for Lyft) for extremely varied reasons (some even do so in addition to other jobs, in fact, your source says most Uber drives do this).

I said I "presume" that many would choose. Not all would choose. In fact, I don't even have to presume at least one would choose because I was a gig worker once that would have liked to make minimum wage but at the time had nothing to offer yet that got me a minimum wage offer. I absolutely would have liked employment protections but did not get them, although after several years I was awarded some money in a class action lawsuit along with many others who made the same claim as me that we wanted and believed we should have been afforded employee status. So I guess I didn't presume at all, as it was born out through claims in the court system. Would you like a picture of my check as part of the class action of the many who wanted to be classified as employees?

Your constant dismissal of evidence whenever it suits you is little more than the dictatorial activity of a narcissist, a lying one at that who makes false claims about the statement of Cato.

Comment · 5 years ago
>It's treated as temporary as part of a justification for lower wages. This idea has been explicitly stated by those who oppose a $15 federal minimum wage, arguing that people making current minimum wage, or close to minimum wage, are not actually poor, or won't be in the long-term, because their current wage is temporary (the Cato Institute makes this exact argument and gives the example of "working students").

In particular, note you said that the Cato makes the argument that those making minimum wage are not "actually poor." In fact they make no such claim that there are not poor working a minimum wage job. Yours was a straw man.

>No, the article you linked is meaningless specifically because it tells you absolutely nothing about those individuals (and also because it's purely anecdotal). When discussing wage increases (or hazard pay in this case), we typically care about the outcomes for workers. Not to mention the fact, as I said, that QFC has a vested interest in blaming regulation.

Only if you're oblivious to the fact it tells you exactly what happened to the individuals, which is that they were forced to either lose their job or compete for hours with the established staff at other locations. Were you looking for a theoretical paper? I found a long one with all sorts of mathematical scribble about probalistic black markets and unemployment but I thought it would bore you and the lack of concrete examples wouldn't be terribly interesting nor convincing.

>Do you have any evidence that this occurs at any meaningful scale? This theory, while occasionally toted by conservative/libertarian think tanks, seems to rely on only 1 example (a New York city car wash that was already cutting jobs through automation), which was covered/written by a libertarian think tank.

One example of those who end up engaging in independent contractor / self employment for less than minimum wage is gig workers, who often earn less than minimum wage and yet voluntarily choose to do so anyway [1]. Presumably if jobs numerous enough for the number of people working these gig jobs existed that offered them employment protections, many would choose that over independent contractor status where they are on their own if anything goes wrong.

[1] https://illinoisepi.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/ilepi-pmcr-o...

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