Patterico's Pontifications

12/3/2019

Yes: People Should Be Able To Judge For Themselves

Filed under: General — Dana @ 10:28 am



[guest post by Dana]

When asked about removing political advertising on Facebook that contains misinformation, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated his belief that individuals should be allowed to draw their own conclusions about elected officials because they actually have brains:

It’s really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments. And, you know, I don’t think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news.

Zuckerberg remains firm in his position in spite of “nearly two hundred” Facebook employees complaining that “free speech and paid speech are not the same.”

The Facebook CEO acknowledged that it’s not an easy situation, but he gave people the benefit of the doubt for their intelligence and ability to ferret out truth:

… “At the end of the day, I just think that in a democracy, people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”

Pressed by King on whether that still applied in cases when the ads were spreading false claims, Zuckerberg repeated, “I think that people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians.”

Of course, as more Americans (especially millennials), social media gurus and Democratic lawmakers believe speech should be limited, Zuckerberg’s view is not a popular one. And it goes without saying that Zuckerberg’s motive is certainly suspect in this, but does that really matter when issues of speech are on the line? Anyway, for your perusal, here are a few comments at the linked piece:

Should private enterprise be allowed to refuse to sell food to blacks?

How about refuse to sell food to Democrats?

How much discrimination are you going to allow in the markets?

If you cannot justify refusing to sell food on those grounds, you cannot justify refusing to sell ads.

You are hypocritically and speciously praising market discrimination solely because it is discrimination you approve of and feel will advantage you.

And…

Oh FFS. It’s a bulletin board, not a part of the 4th estate.

A telephone pole papered over in I’m the Greatest posters.

There is no existential gooberness in danger of anything.

Here’s a good discussion about the issue.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

19 Responses to “Yes: People Should Be Able To Judge For Themselves”

  1. Good morning.

    Dana (6fefe0)

  2. Just noticed on FB that a funny I posted a while back showing a guy tied to the roof of his truck and three other guys in the truck wearing moose heads with a headline something to the effect of the car having been pulled over for DUI in Wisconsin or some such, an obvious joke, was flagged by FB as fake “news”. Zucker is totally believable, tho.

    PTw (894877)

  3. The news agencies that want Facebook to fact check millions of ads can’t even fact check their own articles.

    I watched some of 60 Minutes’ expose’ and it was basically just agitprop to minimize ads they don’t like. No one asked Leslie Stahl if they should police articles where Dems say incarceration rates are based on race and not on crime or that AGW will kill everyone in a few years.

    harkin (337580)

  4. Some things ought to be mandatory. Immunizations for one.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/measles-outbreak-spurred-by-anti-vaxxers-shuts-down-samoan-government/

    Out of a total population of 200,000, 53 have died in the last two months from measles, 48 of them young children. Immunization of infants dropped from 90% in 2013 to just 31% today. Anti-vaxx advocates have been active in Samoa.

    If you scale the population, this is like 80,000 Americans (72,000 children) dying of measles in a couple of months. There would be an outcry and “choice” would get a short shrift.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  5. But still, Jenny McCarthy’s page should not be blocked. Nor should she be able to block others from making civil comments on it.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  6. I read today about a general sort of store, owned by the grandfather of the woman who wrote that (who got shot by some unknown assailant – a bullet still stays in her arm – nothing happened after her incidennt but after Parkland, her grandfather decided to stop selling AR-15s to peope under the age of 21 in spite of the fact that someone warned him he might get sued.,

    He didn’t stop selling them altogetehr because he found the majority were bought by farmers with a wild hog problem. They travel in packs, and this semi-machine gun was the best way to get rid of them.

    The locus classicus seems to be here:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/the-bullet-in-my-arm/568369

    I think I read this in the Reader’s Digest.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  7. Mark Z made a cool thing that people like to use. He ought to be free to run it as he sees fit. Looks like the marketplace has a lot of alternatives from anything goes to a gated community. Go capitalism. I expect we’ll find that some moderated experience is preferable, but lets allow those the built it to run their property as they see fit.

    GAB: Nazis are welcome. Anything goes.
    FB: Let people decide (But Nazis aren’t welcome) and we don’t care about micro-targeting BS adds to rile up the base.
    Google: NOK with micro targeting, if you want to say something nutso it get’s a wider audience which means turning off people that aren’t nuts.
    Twitter: No Political adds and they will decide what that means.

    Time123 (797615)

  8. So, if a gun dealer in the inner city refused to sell to gang members and this had an disparate impact on people of color, would that discrimination run afoul of the law?

    Kevin M (19357e)

  9. should probably point out that anti-discrimination laws exist for a reason and I’m not proposing that we eliminate those protections. Not selling adds is different than not selling add space to black people.

    Time123 (797615)

  10. #7: In some places a shopping center, even though it’s private property, must allow petitioning and similar politicking so long as no one’s movement is blocked. The “market square” theory.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  11. Not selling adds is different than not selling add space to black people.

    But there are grey areas. Google won’t sell ad space to some advertisers based on fairly subjective rules.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  12. There was a whole Op-ed piece in the New York Times today about false advertising in the British election. Now they end by telling you that none of these lies have moved the needle.

    All in all it doesn’t seem that serious (to the voters – it’s bad commentary on the politicians)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/opinion/britain-election-disinformation-johnson.html

    LONDON — Pity British voters.

    Not because they face a choice between two historically unpopular candidates for prime minister — the Conservative incumbent, Boris Johnson, and Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn — on Dec. 12. Nor because they are being forced to trudge to polling stations for the third general election in five years, this time in the depths of the miserable British winter.

    Pity British voters because they are being subjected to a barrage of distortion, dissembling and disinformation without precedent in the country’s history. Long sentimentalized as the home of “fair play,” Britain is now host to the virus of lies, deception and digital skulduggery that afflicts many other countries across the world.

    What are the lies?

    1. The Conservative Party renamed its Twitter account factcheckUK (meaning some people might mistake it for an indepemdent, even if partisan, fact checker.

    2. The Conservatives set up a fake website for those looking for the opposition Labour Party’s manifesto. It’s obviously not the Labour website, but it used a Google ad to attract clicks, resulkting in people clicking (first) on this and not the real one when using Google.

    3. Anti-Brexit tactical voting sites have been accused of misleading voters in crucial constituencies.

    4. The Liberal Democrats — pitching themselves as the party of “Remain” — have distributed election pamphlets that look like real local newspapers. (would that fool anyone?)

    5. Someone in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office (probably Dominic Cummings) is the source of anonymous leaks about the opposition which this op-ed says is false (they are accused of dishonesty, of “foreign collusion” and of leaking top-secret government documents)

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-journalists-have-become-part-of-johnsons-fake-news-machine/ is cited online

    6. Pro-Labour groups that are officially separate from the campaign have spent heavily on often aggressive digital ads.

    They complain this is evading a lot of campaign regulations. A leaflet pushed through a voter’s door has to say who paid for it. But online political ads do not even have to carry an identifying imprint.

    That’s it.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  13. 8. Kevin M (19357e) — 12/3/2019 @ 12:45 pm

    , if a gun dealer in the inner city refused to sell to gang members and this had an disparate impact on people of color, would that discrimination run afoul of the law?

    What if agun deaker outside of a city (there are probably none inside a city) demanded extra checks to make sure women accompanying young black men were not straw buyers? I mean even checking where the young black men lived.

    I don’t know if any are truly afraid of being sued.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  14. I have some things related to impeachment. Zelensky has been trying to cover up prior pre-August 28 knowledge of the hold because he doesn’t want to appear to take sides in the U.S. I have Trump afetr this came out still calling for an investigation of Biden – and saying he saw the video – at a press conference he ahd with Zelensky in New York. with Zelensky not quite agreeing.

    Again, I think, Trump didn’t try a quid pro quo for the military aid – he was holding it up because of Giuliani’s report about bad people who were against him in 2016 who might have some influence in the Ukraiaian government – not what anybody is saying.

    The problem is that either party’s scenario doesn’t make sense and people alter facts to make them make sense. The Democrats are not being honest. The Republicans mostly have limited honesty in defense.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  15. Lying on Facebook isn’t a crime. Nor should it be. Lying on Twitter and FoxNews isn’t either.

    That’s why the Trump Administration is showing up there all of the time, of course. It’s easier than lying to other news outlets. And it’s a whole lot easier than lying to Congress. That…. is a crime.

    And that should be anyone’s response when they refuse to testify or turn over documents in an investigation. “That’s right…. run to FoxNews…. you won’t commit a crime when lying to them.”

    noel (f22371)

  16. So, if a gun dealer in the inner city refused to sell to gang members and this had an disparate impact on people of color, would that discrimination run afoul of the law?

    Kevin M (19357e) — 12/3/2019 @ 12:45 pm

    IANAL but It’s amazing how many color blind rules just so happen to work out worse for non-whites. Because of that when a ‘whatever’ seller coincidentally has a disparate impact on non-whites it brings extra scrutiny and a potential legal challenge.

    Time123 (ea2b98)

  17. “Should private enterprise be allowed to refuse to sell food to blacks?
    How about refuse to sell food to Democrats?”

    Actually, in a truly free society — the kind of freedom America used to value — the answer to those hypothetical questions, and any others like them, would be, “Yes, of course!”

    It’s called private property. It is, in the language of modern political philosophy, a natural right, grounded in the natural right of self-ownership. The fact that I own something gives me liberty to determine how that thing will be disposed of, and this liberty is not sacrificed just because the thing I own happens to be a private business. And my right to use and dispose of my property as I see fit includes the liberty to be a jerk about refusing access to my goods or services on irrational or offensive grounds.

    The claim that people have a “right” not to be discriminated against in this way, i.e., denied access to a private company’s goods or services on grounds that we find irrational or offensive, is equivalent to nullifying the right to private property. If a restaurant owner is not legally permitted to deny his food to blacks, Democrats, whites, Republicans, or whomever he wishes, then he no longer truly owns his own “property,” which means he no longer owns himself. The founding principle of practical freedom has been violated.

    There can be no right not to be “treated unfairly” in the private sphere, because that would imply that freedom is not a natural right, but only a gift granted by society to those who think and act in ways that “we” believe are acceptable and fair.

    Do you want to live in a society in which self-ownership is merely a gift granted to you for proper actions and correct attitudes, as defined by majority opinion — and therefore a gift which can be rescinded whenever majority opinion disapproves of your private choices and attitudes?

    Daren Jonescu (2f5857)

  18. @17 There is no “truly free society”. Every society operates with rules and conditions to their freedom. Even at a tribal level, people have rules that limit certain of their freedoms. It’s the agreement that we make in order to live together as a society of whatever size. In “old” America, the rules included things like having to belong to the right religion or being tossed out of the colony or belonging to the right race or being a slave. The slaves didn’t have the option of being not-property. In a lot of old west towns you couldn’t carry your gun in town, you had to turn it in to the sheriff. The death penalty, the ultimate removal of self-ownership, has existed for the entire history of the country.

    Nic (896fdf)

  19. There can be no right not to be “treated unfairly” in the private sphere, because that would imply that freedom is not a natural right, but only a gift granted by society to those who think and act in ways that “we” believe are acceptable and fair.

    Do you want to live in a society in which self-ownership is merely a gift granted to you for proper actions and correct attitudes, as defined by majority opinion — and therefore a gift which can be rescinded whenever majority opinion disapproves of your private choices and attitudes?

    Daren Jonescu (2f5857) — 12/3/2019 @ 2:47 pm

    Very good comment. You strike very close to what is an eternal struggle. Who owns us? God, or the state? In Christianity, in particular, a being is owned by God, a creator who endows each created being with free will. Man’s will to power manifests itself in many ways, with the formation of government as a current example.

    If a duly formed government can somehow banish God from the public sphere, then power over the people can run wild as a result. Before government can pretend to own the people, by taking away the “gift of self-ownership,” it is necessary to first convince them that they, not God, own them selves.

    When the ruling class realized that there was no taking away the right to own things, they decided to regulate the things people own, and became able, more or less, to exert power over property. The same goes for the people’s ownership of themselves.

    Case in point:

    1 God gives beings free will
    2 A being can chose to throw that life away
    3 Alarmed, Government outlaws suicide
    4 Beings still exercise free will
    5 Government grants “right to die”
    6 Government grants euthanasia
    7 A Government makes “right to die” an obligation. (Down Syndrome anyone?)

    See what they did there? But wait, there’s more!

    felipe (023cc9)


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