You can cut through that if you look at the legal arguments submitted. People can run their mouth and say whatever to the public but when they submit things to law they can not lie and have to provide evidence. Simply put- The things that are being said about fraud happening to the public are not being said at all to judges in courts because there would be legal repercussions.
This lawyer gives a decent breakdown of the majority of cases. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha7iWECm_8E
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Those people running their mouths ought to be thrown in jail for 30-40 years and slapped with life-destroying fines for inciting national-level unrest.
Am I the only one who sees a problem that people are allowed to shoot their mouths off irresponsibly without repercussions?
The whole “freedom of speech I can say whatever I want you can’t do shit to me” system sucks, seriously. People are not held accountable for their words. Talk about a complete lack of responsibility.
Your friendly neighbourhood Asian.
Inciting violence is a crime, and I've seen some things that were really borderline, yeah. Like an article concluding that Americans were legitimate in "resorting to blows in time"...
However, what you're suggesting here seems to be much wider than just jailing for some time those who incite violence; it rather extends to people disagreeing with the "official talk", and that is a very dangerous thing. Plus, as terrible as it is, Trump is still president as of now (and he will remain president until January the 20th)... and he is not making things smoother himself.
I actually quite agree with this for those who are in government/higher positions.
While I cannot agree that free speech should be removed in the majority of cases, I do believe it can be or is a dangerous freedom to give to people who's statements are supposed to be more trustworthy than the general public's.
I could discuss this more, but I don't think I would qualify as an expert or knowledgeable on this topic since I haven't discussed it much; sort of in lieu of what you said earlier in another topic:
I could discuss what I think are the ethics of it or otherwise, but I can't claim to have done much research into the idea.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
IMO, lets momentarily assume the claims of election fraud are true and Trump should've won:
The president of one of the most influential countries in the world rn
He has been complaining about his political enemies (and sometimes demonizing them depending on how one looks at it) for how many years now?
While I don't have an accurate statistic or anything regarding that, but if, for hypothetical example, Trump was aware of a possible future where there is election fraud for the entirety of his presidency
He had 4 YEARS to do something about that......and he still lost lol, despite being the president of the godamm United States of America.
Even if the claims of fraud are 100% true and Trump was supposed to win, I think that's enough to disqualify Trump on the basis of severe incompetence. He's part of the Executive branch of the goverment; protecting the law is one of his fucking jobs (to at least some degree) and he failed to protect election law.
And he failed that test. He's fired.
And if someone (I'm not implying this is you Oberon) is going to counter-argue that "the president isn't strong enough to protect the election", then I guess the position isn't that much of a big deal then, am I right?
On a clarifying note, I don't think significant amounts of election fraud occurred.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
I should also add that if someone says something along the lines of "the legislature didn't support trump in preventing election fraud"
Then I don't exactly see an issue with that because the members of legislature are representatives who were elected just like trump in 2016. Them turning their back on him is, to some imaginable degree, equivalent to the popular vote.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
“REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.” @Chane lRion @OANN
This claim about election fraud is disputed
11:34 AM · Nov 12, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
Like what the fuck, this is what you call credible @Oberon ? Literal fake news, disinformation, propaganda. This is what your undies are in a bunch about?
Elections are all run by local and state governments. The amount of coordination it would take would be massive to pull some shit like this off. I've yet to see a single valid claim of any kind of fraud that isn't from known disinformation agents like OAN and Project Veritas.
Just because Trumpkins are hysterical about Trump losing doesn't validate their hallucinations.
Jeebus.
Last edited by Renegade; November 12th, 2020 at 08:58 AM.
BTW, fraud is actually not as rare as you may think it is and there’s actually been cases in the United States where fraud was widespread enough to significantly affect the outcome of an election... just not on national levels. In North Carolina, for instance, about 2 years ago, a Republican congressman won a district by 907 votes but was disqualified after heavy suspicion of fraud (I believe they even found evidenxe of it although I am not certain). The Electoral Board decided to hold a special election and the Republicans had to select a nee candidate.
Btw, it is believed that the person in question stole ~1,000 votes.
There is zero evidence of massive voter fraud! We won this election fair and square.
I will point out though- The republicans may be protesting and rallied for fake news fraud but they are not lighting shit on fire, looting stores, and attacking cops like the democrats do. Imagine what would be going on right now if Trump had won.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
So do you think riots are coming?
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
I was thinking of the false election fraud accusations actually, some of them being straight-up lies.
These people should not be allowed to go free.
However, I understand the point about “going against the official talk”.
We recently implemented a controversial Fake News Act which gives the authorities the power to remove online content that is deemed as fake news.
Ideally it would be used to only remove content that’s misinformed, misleading or manipulative.
However this power can easily be abused to declare anything as “fake news”.
There is definitely a concern.
However I trust in my government.
As with all ideals, it’s important to also track the actual “performance” of the ideal.
There are many criticisms / concerns about how things are run here, yet the outcome is overall positive (arguably, but to me it is).
That is a good enough start.
Businesses, politicians, celebrities, etc have powerful influence over how the public thinks and feels.
Their words should be kept in check. Not by the public (which would end up with a populist culture where dumb ideas can be propagated as long as they are popular), but by the government.
News companies that publishes sensationalised, misleading or unrest-inciting news? Slap them with hefty fines or completely shut them down.
Celebrities who take a stance on politics in an attempt to sway the lazy masses? Chuck them into jail, penalise them with heavy fines, and ban them from their profession for life.
The public has the responsibility to think for themselves, not be fed thoughts from news outlets and celebrities.
Of course, the outcome is very much dependent on how capable & morally upright the government is.
In the hands of an incompetent or corrupt government, this authority can be easily misused or abused.
Again, ideals can sound great in theory, but it’s also important to evaluate their actual execution & performance.
Any governance style can have its pros and cons.
The question is whether the pros have been realised and the cons have been validated.
Otherwise we could well be promoting the benefits of a system that doesn’t work, and refusing to adopt a system out of paranoia.
Last edited by Exeter350; November 12th, 2020 at 06:27 PM.
Your friendly neighbourhood Asian.
I absolutely hate how support of totalitarian censorship is being normalized in 2020. The answer to free speech you don't like is never censorship. The answer is more free speech. If your idea has more merit than theirs, then it will win out if it is sufficiently backed up by facts and logic. The Streisand Effect is a thing, and whenever Big Brother Twitter, Google and Facebook try to hide a story, they just end up fanning the flames of conspiracy.
I’m European and we do have free speech. The only difference between the US and various European countries is quantitative, not qualitative. Europe most certainly does have free speech, just not quite as much as the US.
The difference is of historical interest though seeing as in the US people have gotten fired for supporting Donald Trump. I have never heard of something like that happening here.
As if Democrats never lie. Remember how Trump only won in 2016 because of Russian collusion? Heck I'm sure there are STILL democrats who are convinced that a few shitty Russian memes on facebook made all of the boomers vote for Trump. Couldn't possibly be because Hillary was an odious and blatantly two-faced candidate. What you're advocating for is selective censorship against only one side, which is extremely dangerous in a democracy. Censorship could be wielded against your political opponents today, and then against causes you support tomorrow. If you restrict someone's right to peaceably voice their opposition and enact change at the ballot box, then you make violence their only possible recourse.
Lel Europe does NOT have free speech. You have the same bullshit hate speech laws we have here in Canada, where you can go to jail just for "misgendering" someone. Just look at this recent story out of Scotland, where even speech in the home is now being prosecuted: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/...private-homes/ I have also heard of far more people losing jobs and being harassed for being Trump supporters than for being Biden/Hillary supporters. There's a reason far less people told the pollsters they were voting for Trump than actually did on election day. Look up social desirability bias. Everyone knows woke fortune 500 companies hate Trump supporters, so they deny it to pollsters, employers, oftentimes even from their own family and friends.
You are taking one case where hate speech is used to stifle free speech and taking to mean that free sperch doesnt exist. Thats blowing it out of proportion and in fact I specifically stated that Europe had LESS free speech than the United States. I’m also not talking about Britain - I am talking about the Netherlands.
I’m not sure what your point about more Trump supporters getting fired is because I literally acknowledged that Trump supporters were getting fired (I am a Trump supporter, btw). It seems asthough we agree on that, and is precisely why the idea of the US having more free speech than Europe is of purely historical interest at this point. I also think our elections are fairer than the US’ (at least here in the Netherlands) simply because voting machines are actually illegal here.
Lastly, I really do wish people were actually capable of debating even to the slightest extent. You don’t tell others how much you hate their political beliefs when debating; you try attack their ideas directly. The fact that you hate their views is something that has to be internalized. All you’re doing is putting more fuel on the fire. And that will only make their convinctions stronger.
That’s the idea, yes.
But it doesn’t work well in reality because of the sheer number of voices.
I cannot imagine a competent, functional government has the time and resources to spend on answering every accusation and challenge. Not to mention the ideal assumes that the public are capable of rational political discourse and proper research.
It is necessary for a government to be accountable to its people, but realistically, they will not be able to answer every single complaint. Attempting to do so will only cripple them and prevent them from focusing on more important issues.
Therefore, they should only address issues that actually have merit.
This is achieved via a formal systemic process that filters out the white noise.
The remaining voices need to be shut down to prevent inflammation. They have already been deemed as invalid, therefore there is no need to pay them further attention.
Letting these invalid voices continue to speak just risks letting them build momentum. Which does not validate their cause - Populism is not necessarily backed by “facts and logic”.
This will only lead to more white noise.
If I only have 24 hours to address public concerns, I would rather address a well-researched issue that is professionally delivered by somebody of credible background, not some crazy nutjob living on the streets who believes in conspiracy theories but have nothing to back his words up.
You would imagine that the nutjob wouldn’t gain much traction from the public, since only ideas “sufficiently backed up by facts and logic” will win out, yet the US is a living example of how that’s not how it really works in reality.
Last edited by Exeter350; November 12th, 2020 at 11:53 PM.
Your friendly neighbourhood Asian.
Totally misread your comment and took it to mean that people are fired for NOT supporting Trump. My bad lol.
And if you view free speech as a gradient then I guess you could say Europe (as well as the rest of the Anglosphere) has "less" free speech than the U.S. Personally, I view free speech as a binary. It either exists or it doesn't. As a Canadian if I, say, argue that gender dysphoria is a mental illness and that trans women are not real women (just a hypothetical, not saying that is my real view), then I could be put in jail. Saying something which was the common view of most of the population just a decade ago could now land you in jail. The laws aren't often enforced because they are ridiculous, but the fact that they exist at all is enough to stifle most people from saying what they really think and unwittingly committing a thoughtcrime.
As for elections in the U.S., they are a complete joke. Aside from all of the ballots submitted by dead people, there were so many duplicate ballots sent out, ballot harvesting by campaign organizers, voting machine "glitches," etc. The fact that mandatory voter ID laws have been politicized by the democrats as "voter suppression" is ridiculous, as is the fact that recounts and ballot audits are being challenged. Both sides should have a vested interest in making sure that only valid votes are counted. It makes you wonder why the Democrats are so afraid of losing votes from dead people and non-citizen voters. They've been preaching for so long that voter fraud is a complete myth, right? Shouldn't they have nothing to fear from an audit of the ballots?
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
I’m concerned with the direction our society is taking. Free speech is increasingly being stifled, as you said (especially in Europe where free speech restrictions are more pervasive than in the US). Recently a Dutch politician was found guilty of hate speech for attacking immigration from Morrocco. He was not punished but the precedent still exists. A much bigger concern is whats currently happening in Britain. I haven’t read the article uou linked though I’m aware of another case (also in Scotland) where a man taught his dog to do the nazi salute as a joke and posted it to YouTube, whereupon he was arrested for (I believe the reason given was ) hate speech. Regardless of if you found that joke funny or appropriate, I think its quite ridiculous how hate speech laws are used to justify the restriction of speech.
I refer to a phrase (I believe it was Lewis Black who said this): when you can’t laugh, the terrorists have won.
Sorry for being so hard on you btw. I’ve had issues online where I was attacked simply for voicing my opinion and I assumed you were doing the same thing ^^
Neither. For an example myself and Oops_Ur_Dead disagree frequently but we have found a way to express it to etch other while also learning from the others viewpoint. I just took issue with you saying "I really do wish people were actually capable of debating even to the slightest extent."
Intellectual growth comes from discussions, not arguments. If you are unwilling to change your position and hear the other persons side you are closed minded and wasting your time.
If you can not clearly explain what the other sides reasoning is you can not disagree with their position because you do not understand it.
I shouldn’t have said that. I just saw what thedougler had to say and saw him stating he hated something Exeter had said and I’ve just had that happen quite a lot to me and because it was coming from someone I figured I would probably agree with, I figured I was somewhat justified in calling it out.
I am probably more sensitive to this kind of stuff than is otherwise normal so forgive me if I overstep my boundaries, I sometimes react with my heart first and with my head second precisely because of this
This thread is performance art.
Spoiler : Exeter long post :
Ahh, so that's the fundamental point we differ on: the inherent trust in our government. I believe in some sort of "power corrupts" reality, for the simple reason that if people can do something that benefits them without getting in trouble for it, they will most likely go for it. Hence why democratic tradition is extremely important.
For example, in the UK, since there is no unified written Constitution, the Parliament could (in theory) revoke laws that guarantee British citizens' freedom. Their extremely long-standing democratic tradition (under an extremely large meaning, it stems from as far as the Magna Carta (1215), putting limits encoded in laws to the absolute royal power) protects them from such a thing: it would never be accepted by the people, and the power in place would be overthrown. That is the power of democratic tradition: protecting from power abuse by the "power of the people", which would revolt if its rights were to be taken away; this, in turn, makes governments stop considering blatant authoritarianism as something even possible when the country's democratic tradition is strong.
The USA's democratic tradition (which has been strongly present ever since the country's foundation, despite the significant flaws in its democratic system) seems to have severely declined over the last decades, and I'm honestly unsure of what has caused this. Perhaps the end of the Cold War removed "the enemy" against which the nation was united in its ideology, although that is only a theory of mine.
I completely agree with this. It's sad how people aren't learning from the lessons of the past on this point: making the State (or any entity) almighty is never good.
That being said, it becomes necessary at some point to stifle "free speech" when it crosses a basic line, which is the line of threats, violence and oppression (grosso modo).
Of course you can, you can say whatever you want. That's what free speech is.
I'm fully free to tell you you're a fucking dumbass and that your views are straight up retarded. I could even ban you from the site if I wanted to, just for being a Trump supporter.
Then you and others are free to respond however you want to me doing that, including calling me a libtard snowflake and leaving the site in mass.
That's what freedom is. Not your pussified hugbox elementary school "everyone's opinions matter " bullshit.
Yeah but the point is that you shouldn't do that.
Edit: Actually banning someone from the site isn't freedom except in the sense that legally speaking it is totally your right to do that. Nobody in their right mind would argue that that is fair and not 'oppressive', however.
Also, in a free society, everyone's opinion DOES count. It's just that people are free to discard them. And the idea is that people should be courteous to one another when having a discussion; there's a moral argument here in that if one side happens to win, that side ought not to be a sore winner and label the other's opinion 'retarded' just because (there's evolutionary reasons for that as well, btw), because, then two things can happen:
a) the next time you debate that person, if they win, they will rub it in your face, and rub it in 'BIGLEY', as Renegade put it
b) the person will simply avoid discussion with you in the future.
The utilitarian argument would be that injecting emotion into a discussion naturally means people will be less likely to be reasonable and reach a consensus.
So if you're saying that not every opinion is worthy of respect, I can agree with that. If on the other hand you're saying that people should not be awarded common human courtesy just because you feel/think/proved that 'their opinions are retarded', then I couldn't disagree more.
Last edited by Oberon; November 13th, 2020 at 02:33 AM.
No, you shouldn't do that. That's why you're free to react however you want to someone doing something like that to you.
Banning someone from the site for expressing their views is exercising freedom of property. Nobody is obligated to provide resources for another to express their opinions, allowing them to do so is at the discretion of whoever is providing those resources. You are free to make your own site where you don't ban people, or ban people you disagree with.
There is a difference between what "should" happen and what should be forced to happen. Yes, people should be awarded courtesy. You are also free to criticize those who don't provide courtesy, though some might make fun of you for bitching over it, maybe you have a point anyway. But none of that is against the principle of free speech. Complaining that someone is suppressing your free speech by saying your views are stupid and you're a dumbass, or even banning you from a site, is pretty bitchmade imo. And I'll vehemently oppose anyone that tries to restrict the right for people to use their property and words as they see fit.
Based and redpilled.
Seriously though, I agree with most of what Oberon has said. And if a backwater little internet forum like this with at most a few thousand users bans or censors someone that the administrators don't like, then it isn't that big a deal. The problems arise when forums which have become the de facto "digital commons" like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. start banning speech that the administrators don't like, all the while pretending that they aren't acting as publishers under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. When enough of these big players adopt woke ideologies and speech codes, you can't just pack up and exercise your right to free speech elsewhere. There is no elsewhere. Those sites represent a giant chunk of the internet.
If Facebook, Twitter, etc. don't want to be seen as publishers, then they should be forced to act as dumb pipes for the free speech of others, just as they wanted ISPs to act as "dumb pipes" for the transmission of data under net neutrality. Exceptions can be made for blatantly illegal content like CP and death threats, but as a general rule if speech would be permitted under the first amendment, then that speech should be permitted on most web platforms.
I did not make the claim that 'saying that someone's views are stupid' suppresses free speech. It depends on who says it.
If Distorted says someone's views were stupid (assuming that someone were THERE, on the discord, and assuming that it was intended to reach that someone), it is pretty evidently made to stifle speech.
If I say it? Who gives a shit? But it's a completely different matter when someone 'in charge' does it. Imagine if Justin Trudeau went ahead and said "oops is a retard and nobody should listen to him". How would you feel?
Also, you're still talking about legal issues lol when I already agreed that from a legal standpoint you are totally in your right to ban someone from your site for being a Trump supporter. Just remember that when Slaol swung his admin dick around, he got demoted. For admin abuse. You or anyone, for that matter, hypothetically banning Trump supporters would fall in the same scenario for me.