Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then (edit: among other things ofc) lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
All the conservative parties in the west seem to be pushing the same thing. It seems pretty co-ordinated which is even scarier. Every country is hearing the same talking points.
Steve Bannon was quoted as wanting to create an “international network of nationalists”
An international group that advocates for not cooperating across international lines?
That (hopefully) seems doomed from the outset.
It does. I think what he really means though is an international group of spin doctors who mobilise nationalist sentiments.
Probably in service to Disaster Capitalism.
Absolutely that, and fascism
It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.
My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
Russia probably saw this weakness
Good ol’ “Foundations of Geopolitics” by Aleksandr Dugin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Free speech is good and must be protected
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It’s not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don’t want to moderate content they don’t have to as long as the material isn’t illegal.
I don’t know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech.
Twitter positions itself as the Internet’s public square, and free speech certainly does apply in an old-fashioned offline public square, so yeah, Twitter kinda does have something to do with free speech. Don’t seek power if you don’t want the responsibility it comes with.
There’s no such thing as “the internet’s public square”. It is the “X-owned public square”. In an offline public square, the government owns the square, so free speech protections apply. But this “square” is privately owned. There’s an incredibly fundamental difference here.
That’s not how it works, what you are talking about is often called freeze peach.
Until Twitter can fine you or lock you up for saying the wrong thing or exercise prior restraint over all your expression, it’s not a free speech issue.
By positioning itself as the Internet’s public square, Twitter seeks a monopoly over public discourse. If it is successful, then yes, it can exercise prior restraint over virtually all of your expression.
It can succeed in that endeavor the moment I become unemployable. I’m not making an account there, never will, and I will die on this hill.
AFAIU this is a result of the wording in the US constitution. The freedom of speech in the US has a stronger legal implication than in other countries, even stronger than western democracies like the UK.
And, then in the civilian level, as you say, US netizens tend to write “you are entitled to your opinion” to basically anybody with any horrible belief as if they were government officials.
The US has limits on free speech in the name of public health and safety. There’s no assumption of limitless free speech in the US. People who cry “free speech” typically have no understanding of its actual legal definition in the country and just want an excuse to be a bigoted asshole without consequences.
Twitter, not being part of the government, gets to decide what content they allow and doesn’t need to worry too much about the legal definition of free speech. But, despite Musk’s claims, Twitter is not actually a space of limitless free speech. They’ve taken plenty of actions since he took over that limit the speech of individuals he disagrees with. Twitter is just interesting in giving a platform to hate. There’s certainly money to be made in monetizing hate (see Trump), but hopefully it doesn’t work out well in the end for Twitter or Musk.
The problem is free speech absolutism is very popular here with dumb dumbs.
Correction: fake free speech absolutionism of Musk where he gets to decide who gets censored for their opinion is very popular with dumb dumbs.
Things are going great, Linda
Also can news outlets please stop referring to Twitter as X? X is the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.
It’s the official name so the news is obliged. Your brain can handle this detail I’m sure.
X is really dumb, and I’m not a fan of Twitter personally… But twitters reputation shouldn’t be completely obliterated because of who now owns it. Not that it matters, I guess, because there’s no way people don’t know X was once Twitter.
So I don’t know, guess I don’t care either way. But X is dumb.
Any proof ?
I go regularly on Twitter/X, I still have to see suggested hate/nazi/whitethingy in my timeline. How people get exposed to this shit ?
I imagine cnn doesn’t want to encourage people to visit the hate account in question by posting a link or screenshot. It doesn’t mean they don’t have proof, it just means they don’t want to drive traffic to hate content. Printing that would be kind of irresponsible. But CNN is known as a pretty reputable news source. I can’t see why they’d lie about it.
If you aren’t seeing any white supremacy on your own timeline, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just means the algorithm isn’t showing it to you, which is a good thing. It might seem surprising, but people do actually search for and deliberately seek out that shit. Hate groups use social media to network, I imagine that’s why CNN didn’t post a screenshot of the account name, or its content.
But that policy creates a window for literally any accusation to be made. “Proof would encourage or glorify the behavior” basically means you get to accuse anyone of anything at any time .
The proof is NCTA and Gilead pausing ad spending. This isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory, hate groups have always been on Twitter and musk’s gutting of the moderation and safety teams certainly didn’t make that better. There’s literally no logical reason to think cnn would lie about this, I’m honestly confused why y’all are being weirdly defensive and contrarian over this.
I’m sorry, but i’m going to have to see this reply as bad faith. There’s no good reason to think the news outlet in question skipped the entire journalistic process and ‘has no proof’, so I can only assume you have another reason for sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the story.
Yeah proof or this didn’t happen. I haven’t seen pro-Nazi content anywhere in existence other than a museum, let alone on twitter.
Take a drive down rural parts of the midwest/south in the US. You’ll spot some content.
Behold, the Media Matters report that was attributed as the source in the CNN article.
I understand wanting to know what evidence someone has for an argument, but when the source is attributed in the posted article then demands for proof come across as sealioning which is very much discouraged on Beehaw.
For those that don’t feel like reading that Media Matters report, the account in question was openly and explicitly neo-nazi, and Media Matters has screenshots of a number of posts with memes praising Hitler, Holocaust denial, and “great replacement” memes. There’s also a meme that just says “It’s okay to be a national socialist” which seems about as pro-Nazi as something could possibly get.
Really? I just spent 5 minutes searching for the fourteen words, and found a bunch of openly white supremacist/nazi content, with plenty of likes and retweets. Remember, Musk fired/let go most of his content and safety teams after he took the company over. You can report stuff but it won’t get taken down any more.
(Note, I won’t link the content here in case that’s against rules, but it’s really not hard to find. Look at the “ChiefBarony” and “SindriThule” accounts for example)
I mean, I’m sure there’s people’s jobs it is to monitor marketing at these companies? Unlikely they’d go thru the trouble of setting up an ad campaign just to cancel it and claim nazis if it wasn’t true?
I don’t know though, I stay off twitter - especially now.
Unless the calculated they’d get more exposure from a CNN article than they’d get from their twitter ad campaign.
Sure but then they’d also need to calculate the risk of Musk or X exposing the lie that X is allowing pro-nazi content. If it’s such an obvious lie for the exposure in the media then there’s a massive risk of being called out and exposed. The bottom line is X loses revenue and credibility due to this article and now has a huge incentive to blow the lid off this supposed conspiracy to paint X as a bastion of hate. I don’t think two big companies would roll the dice on that at the same time as losing their investment by ending this ad campaign early.
Isn’t that while platform pro Nazi?
Spokespeople for NCTA and pharmaceutical company Gilead said that they immediately paused their ad spending on X after CNN flagged their ads on the pro-Nazi account.
Alt-speak: we only care if the media report that our ad placements were next to questionable contents.
What did they expect when doing business with a #fascist symp?
Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to? Do they think companies are purposely seeking out these bad people to run their ads next to? I never got the whole not wanting your ads next to questionable content thing.
I’m no expert but I think it’s the same reason ads are full of hot people: association. If you see an ad for a Baconator enough times next to a neo-Nazi spewing hate speech you’re going to start to link the two in your mind.
I know I associate Neo-Nazis with Pigs… I wonder why.
Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to?
Where by “people”, we mean “individuals with so little critical thinking, that they might get influenced by an ad”.
Well, that’s why. Companies don’t want easily influenciable people to associate their brand with something they’re likely to view as negative.
Everyone is influenced by ads but the tines you re you view as your choice. Immediate purchases aren’t the goal of most ads, it’s mainly uncaughous influence for the next time you have to choose between a few products!
That’s easy: never make unconscious purchase decisions. Consciously set a list of what you want, and follow it. If you know what you want, there is very rarely more than one product that comes closer to meeting the requirements, whether they be objectively measurable, more abstract like quality and trust, or as simple as price. Generally sellers try to find a distinguishing niche, and stick to it.
Of course this requires knowing and caring about what you’re purchasing. If you have enough money to just go by “ooh, shiny!”, then sure, ads can have an influence.
That’s not the issue, the less you care about the ad itself the more likely you are to process it’s message subcaughously and we simply don’t have the energy actively observe all the ads we are bombarded with…
Subconscious messages are irrelevant if you make your purchase decisions consciously.
“Do you like to drive?”… they can show me beautiful landscapes with nice music and end it with the car maker’s logo all they want, I’m not going to buy a car because I saw the ad, it smells nice, or “has USB”; those are irrelevant parameters that get cut off by my conscious list.
How about those fun fun sweets, foods, whatever, kids like so much these days? I was a kid once, I know I didn’t like all the stuff advertised on TV.
Want to sell me some insurance, telephony, banking, or any other kind of subscription? Good luck showing me people having fun, vacationing or scoring a date, I’m still going to get an online comparator, tick off the things I don’t like, and then compare it to the results of another one or two. Even better luck trying to robocall me; “No, thank you, I’m not interested”, talk to the hand ✋, number blocked.
Same for food (what’s the nutritional list, expiry date, and price/quantity?), hardware (is it the cheapest option meeting my requirements? how easy is it to repair?), clothing (no, I don’t care about being a billboard for your brand), and so on.
If you don’t think you have the bandwidth to watch ads consciously, there are ad blockers for that. For all the rest, there is spending some more time the first time you are about to buy a product you haven’t before.
I am tickled fucking pink to see someone unironically advocating for living life free of the shackles of the unconscious. I’m dying 😂
Missing a spot while wiping your ass, is unconscious. Crossing the street without watching for traffic, is suicidal.
You tell me which shackles are you free of.
Is there a link to the picture of this ad next to nazi content. I couldnt find it in the article.
Edit: I found the sources of the tweets thanks to a comment below. Here is the tweets the ads appeared next to.
Also, was it fascist or nazi?
Both terms have been watered down to mean nothing.
Nazis are just German fascists, so that distinction isn’t particularly meaningful.
A day ago I was talking to a friend about Microsoft and they equated Microsoft to Nazis, I said let’s be realistic, they aren’t Nazis, they said fine the KKK. Watering down these terms to mean someone you don’t like is super dangerous and let’s actual Nazis and KKK just play off the accusations as someone not liking them.
So I agree, it’s been watered down and it’s really a bad thing.
Those who claim that terms like “Nazi” or “fascist” are being watered down are usually Nazis/fascists themselves, and they’re trying to cover it up by convincing everyone that Nazis/fascists don’t exist.
I know a lot of pretty normal people that dont have terminally online views and I think almost all of them would agree with the statement that “nazi” and “fascist” have been watered down. Obviously nazi’s and fascists will say they’re watered down but to lump random people in with them is not doing you any favors.
I know a lot of pretty normal people that dont have terminally online views and I think almost all of them would agree with the statement that “nazi” and “fascist” have been watered down.
Then I question their normalcy.
Well, that or it’s now considered normal to be a fascist. I certainly hope that’s not the case, although sometimes I have to wonder.
Obviously nazi’s and fascists will say they’re watered down but to lump random people in with them is not doing you any favors.
Obviously. I’m not denying that. I’m denying that that’s actually happening to any significant extent.
So what you’re saying is … you know a lot of Nazis!
Making you, in fact, a Nazi!
Get him!
bro this isn’t reddit
you’re being repeatedly antagonistic all over beehaw
this is your warning and reminder to be nice
I always say if you don’t like the idea of corporations having too much power over you, you’ll hate a government that has too much power over you.
Corporations deplatform people and shut off their electricity. Governments drag people into the street and shoot them, and firebomb cities. There’s no comparison.
I hate corporations having power over me, but I don’t mind governments.
Why? Because I get to vote on who is in those governments. I don’t have any input in those corporations.
And corporations only care about profit, with government you can at least sometimes have one that cares about the population.
If we let corporations do their thing, they would bring back slavery since that is much more profitable than paying someone even minimum wage.
Corporations would sell their own mother if they saw it as profitable.
Does the distinction even matter in this context? Neither is good and neither should be permitted.
Whether it was fascist or not matter because the word has lost its meaning. Could be something fairly innocuous really.
neither should be permitted.
lol yeah sounds totally righteous to dictate which opinions others should have
Whether it was fascist or not matter because the word has lost its meaning. Could be something fairly innocuous really.
CNN sources a Media Matters report which goes into detail as to the content of the twitter account. Tl;dr, it’s an explicitly neo-nazi account which regularly posted memes and content praising Hitler and the Nazi party and pushing neo-nazi talking points.
I’m not sure what it accomplishes playing semantic games about whether something fits the technical definition of fascism (Nazi Germany absolutely does, btw) when the commonly understood definition of far-right, ultra-nationalist, authoritarianism is abundantly clear.
lol yeah sounds totally righteous to dictate which opinions others should have
I don’t think anyone is proposing that we dictate others’ opinions. But companies, advertisers, and platforms are under no obligation to be associated with the expression of those opinions, and I have no issue stating that Nazis, Fascists, and their ideological descendants are very unwelcome on Beehaw.
For those who don’t want to read TFA: the brands are Gilead and NYU Lagone Hospital
