Frothers Unite! UK

[quote="Guest"]I think you're wrong on this.[/quote]
Good for you, I approve of independent thought[quote]

You used an important word: PRIVATE.
News for you - this is the 21st century, not 19th. One word: internet.
News and information is more democratic than it ever has been.[/quote]

I know other words :Monopoly and Cartel for example.[quote]

I don't see why a PRIVATE company should allow people who break its rules. If you owned a shop and someone kept coming in and nicking stuff you'd soon tell them to fuck off.[/quote]Perhaps but if I ran Tesco and Sainsburys and I refused to serve you food because you didn't like beans, you'd be a tad pissed off. Especially is the nearest Lidl was forty miles away.[quote]

If a private company doesn't want someone coming along and saying X, Y, or Z then that person is NOT being silenced. They can go off and start their own website and make whatever claims they want[/quote]Yeah, sure, and everyone can grow up to the Queen.[quote]
No one is controlling access to world news or censoring alternative opinions.[/quote]Okay maybe you can let the US Govt know not to bother with its antitrust suit against Google.[quote]
You need to remind yourself that you are not George Orwell and this is not the 1940s any more, because you seem to think it is[/quote]My dear chap, if only it were, we could exchange letters in The Times over this.

Hey, John the OFM will you get any gaming in now that you have some free time???

It might be an objectionable personal attack to question Scott Atlas's intelligence, but it's only "political" if he is a political appointee. Of course, he is a political hack, but we are all supposed to pretend otherwise. Who knew hypocrisy was so complicated?

I believe it genuinely takes the power of a government to truly try (and still mostly fail) to corral the internet. The Great Firewall of China leaks fairly badly and every dipshit that gets kicked off Facebook or Instagram ends up on 4Chan and then 8Chan and then Telegram and whatever comes next. I certainly think limiting the aggregating power of Big Tech to where a Google purchase of YouTube gets little scrutiny or of Trump to force a divestiture of Tik Tok to his fan at Oracle is probably not in the public interest and may violate certain monopoly and trust aspects. Truly censoring the internet is a lot like nailing pudding to the wall, pretty much everything slides around.

Scott Atlas may or may not be a full on moron but anyone who leans on a radiologist as his key advisor for an epidemiological crisis is.

[quote="Bronshtein"]This hurts me beyond the telling to say, but USAFwilly has a point.

When we meekly allow four or five private companies who control access to world news to censor alternative opinions, we are in big fucking trouble.[/quote]

I think you're wrong on this.
You used an important word: PRIVATE.
News for you - this is the 21st century, not 19th. One word: internet.
News and information is more democratic than it ever has been.

I don't see why a PRIVATE company should allow people who break its rules. If you owned a shop and someone kept coming in and nicking stuff you'd soon tell them to fuck off.

If a private company doesn't want someone coming along and saying X, Y, or Z then that person is NOT being silenced. They can go off and start their own website and make whatever claims they want.
No one is controlling access to world news or censoring alternative opinions. That's hyperbole on your part.
Have a look on the internet - there's a wealth of bullshit and opinions on it where anyone can opine to their heart's content.
And they do.
You need to remind yourself that you are not George Orwell and this is not the 1940s any more, because you seem to think it is.

Well, John got doghoused for: "By the way, Scott Atlas is a moron."
Hardly seems political to me, particularly given the rest of the discussion (eyeroll).

I agree. There is a problem with a few companies monopolizing what is after all a public space. It needs to be taxed and regulated far more than it is.
That said it's a slippery slope argument to equate "can't shout COVID in a crowded theater" to wholesale censorship.

The world is going all dystopian.

Oh no, Bronny's gone all dystopian.

And arseholes can be found on many sides of an argument.

This hurts me beyond the telling to say, but USAFwilly has a point.

When we meekly allow four or five private companies who control access to world news to censor alternative opinions, we are in big fucking trouble.

It might only be someone saying the evidence on mask wearing is 'nuanced' today, but once the principle is surrendered what next?

Why, the CPC may demand a games company excise shots of the Tiananmen Square Massacre from its promo footage because it 'never happened'. I mean that's impossible, and if it happen did the company would resist, wouldn't it? Oh wait...

Winston Smith (the 'real' one not ours) would be unemployed now. Who needs someone to continually rewrite history on bits of paper when an algorithm can do it digitally in milliseconds?