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Thetexashammer

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I'm a big believer in free speech.

The reason that "software" is so rewarding (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) is that it leads to natural monopolies. Everybody uses Microsoft Office, so you have to use Microsoft Office. WordPerfect need not apply.

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies. And they censor speech. They are not a neutral platform. They bias toward the left. A morally confused media makes both Type I errors and Type II errors. So they are aiming for a "legal" coup d'etat via the 25th Amendment of impeachment, and they ignore the real threat to our democracy, the leftist hegemony. 

We need a level playing field. We don't have one. Fin.

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4 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

I'm a big believer in free speech.

The reason that "software" is so rewarding (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) is that it leads to natural monopolies. Everybody uses Microsoft Office, so you have to use Microsoft Office. WordPerfect need not apply.

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies. And they censor speech. They are not a neutral platform. They bias toward the left. A morally confused media makes both Type I errors and Type II errors. So they are aiming for a "legal" coup d'etat via the 25th Amendment of impeachment, and they ignore the real threat to our democracy, the leftist hegemony. 

We need a level playing field. We don't have one. Fin.

Is this a joke? 

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25 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

The reason that "software" is so rewarding (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) is that it leads to natural monopolies. Everybody uses Microsoft Office, so you have to use Microsoft Office. WordPerfect need not apply.

Google Docs says "Hi".  Surprise, surprise, a shitload of people have moved over to it and don't bother with Office.

And Google Docs is just one example - plenty of my writer friends who used to swear up and down that they could only use Microsoft Word for their manuscripts, novels, etc. have all moved on to better tools.

25 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies. And they censor speech. They are not a neutral platform. They bias toward the left. A morally confused media makes both Type I errors and Type II errors. So they are aiming for a "legal" coup d'etat via the 25th Amendment of impeachment, and they ignore the real threat to our democracy, the leftist hegemony. 

We need a level playing field. We don't have one. Fin.

There is a level playing field, you're just sitting on the bench and refusing to take the field.  There is absolutely nothing stopping you from creating your own social media platform.  

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Yeah.  We have a mentally declining president who is open about his desire to be an autocrat.  He's alienating all of our allies and cozying up to Putin and Kim.  His cabinet is the most ridiculous collection of idiots ever assembled.  His Secretary of Education is anti-public education, for fuck's sake.  He probably colluded with Russia to steal the election.  Oh, and he probably raped 17 women.  He is, without question, a bad guy.  Even his supporters can't argue that he is a good or moral man.

But "leftist hegemony" is the real threat to our democracy.

God damn, the right has gone full stupid.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I underlined the important part there.  Nobody is infringing on free speech; they are private business banning people for violating their terms of service.  That is their freedom at play.  I doubt the framers were torn on forcing newpapers to carry columns opining on gay frogs or alien lizard people.

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24 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Word Perfect?

Are you 100?

 

2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Google Docs says "Hi".  Surprise, surprise, a shitload of people have moved over to it and don't bother with Office.

And Google Docs is just one example - plenty of my writer friends who used to swear up and down that they could only use Microsoft Word for their manuscripts, novels, etc. have all moved on to better tools.

I'd say the Word Perfect comment is an automatic disqualifier for criticizing Silicon Valley.

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It's interesting that Republicans support a Christian cakemaker who wants to keep the gays out of his store.  

But when a "leftist" business owner wants to deny right wingers access to its product, oh no, you commies are censoring his free speech.

It's almost as hypocritical as it is stupid.

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38 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies. And they censor speech. They are not a neutral platform.

I'll use an example I used elsewhere (Alex Jones thread).  Let's say you own a billboard company, and you've got a billboard along a heavily-trafficked highway intersection. The person(s) who owns the land that you are leasing for your billboard happens to own the land for miles up and down the highway, and your's is the only billboard in that stretch.  

Nobody else can put their message up on that part of the highway.  You have the monopoly on that part of the highway.

I come to you with a bucket of cash, and say I want a billboard bitching about high taxes and some proposition.  You're cool with it, maybe even agree with it, but either way it's not too controversial, you take my money, and I get my big-ass sign on the highway.

A few months later, I come to you with a bucket of cash, and say I want a billboard telling everybody that the "Goddess Balal is coming to earth in two months to take the True Believers with her!"  You get antsy. You want the money, you don't really care about my cult and you know that it's fake, but you're worried about the image of your billboard company being associated with a billboard that will be mercilessly mocked on the internet.  You try and shunt me off to a smaller road somewhere, with a billboard where your brand is not very pronounced (if at all).

I bitch, but I still have the opportunity to get my message out there, just not to as many people.

A few months after that, I say I want a billboard back on that piece of heavily trafficked highway.  It says "Bill and Janice Smith of Bum Fuck, Oklahoma did not have a son who was murdered, and they did not bury their son because he was a crisis actor.  HIs murder was faked by the government and anti-gun nuts.  Bill and Janice Smith are damned dirty liars."

You spend a few minutes on Google, you see that their child was a victim of a mass shooter, and you see that my fans have been harassing them, and that I'm constantly calling them liars and actors.

You are going to tell me to go fuck myself, and that you don't want my money or the inevitable lawsuits that will occur.

I can bitch all I want that you have a natural monopoly and that you are censoring me and infringing on my free speech.

But the reality is that because you are not the government, you are not censoring me or infringing on my free speech - nothing (and nobody) is stopping me from taking my message a few miles down the road to another billboard company, or even buying some land down the road and building my own billboard.

Hell, I can rent an 18-wheeler, paint my message on the side, and drive it up and down that highway.  You can't stop me.

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Just now, TexArcher said:

The Alex Jones out front shoulda told ya.

So THAT'S the uproar?  I haven't been paying attention.

Seems to me that "censoring right-wing content" would be a little more universal than banning a hate-speaking jackass.  Maybe I'm wrong.

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1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

So THAT'S the uproar?  I haven't been paying attention.

Seems to me that "censoring right-wing content" would be a little more universal than banning a hate-speaking jackass.  Maybe I'm wrong.

I think there's more.  But they tend to be of the braying jackass variety.  Spencer, Milo, those types.  Of those ilk as ol friend b_t would say.

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17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Software monopolies have proven to be rather fragile.

I was working with Linux software development 15 years ago, and If you told me that a Linux-based operating system would pass up Microsoft Windows, I would have laughed.  But here we are, and ind 2017 it actually happened.

I'm still waiting on my flying car.

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13 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I was working with Linux software development 15 years ago, and If you told me that a Linux-based operating system would pass up Microsoft Windows, I would have laughed.  But here we are, and ind 2017 it actually happened.

I'm still waiting on my flying car.

Yeah, I giggle at myself for being such a Microsoft loather way back when.  I haven't used Word in years, even though Libre/OpenOffice are built on the same basic model.

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1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

So THAT'S the uproar?  I haven't been paying attention.

Seems to me that "censoring right-wing content" would be a little more universal than banning a hate-speaking jackass.  Maybe I'm wrong.

 

Apparently  The Texas Hammer is equating censoring Alex Jones, the hate-speaking jackass, with censoring conservatives.  I didn't make the correlation between Alec Jones and conservatives ... he did.

Ironically, the president of the United States thinks that the hate-speaking jackass -------- whose jackassery was tolerated by those platforms for years before the jackassery accumulation was so great that they were forced to censor him ----- has "an amazing reputation." 

 

 



 

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3 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

I'm a big believer in free speech.

The reason that "software" is so rewarding (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) is that it leads to natural monopolies. Everybody uses Microsoft Office, so you have to use Microsoft Office. WordPerfect need not apply.

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies. And they censor speech. They are not a neutral platform. They bias toward the left. A morally confused media makes both Type I errors and Type II errors. So they are aiming for a "legal" coup d'etat via the 25th Amendment of impeachment, and they ignore the real threat to our democracy, the leftist hegemony. 

We need a level playing field. We don't have one. Fin.

It’s awesome seeing all these alleged, free market anti-big government folks do a complete 180, just so they can justify supporting the biggest piece of trash to ever be President.  L O L 

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I'm not sure if it's the cultural rot around our political discussions (yay team), the madness or Alex Jones, or just the way the issue was framed here, but I can't seem to understand why this issue is so easily laughed off. The information revolution brought about by the internet has been increasingly filtered through a small handful of corporations. If we can recognize this as a problem when looking at Net Neutrality, why does the problem disappear at the next level? Whether the filter is politically motivated, some heartless algorithm seeking profit at the hands of our addictions, or something else, there's a growing problem with the way we understand the world and how we get information. This seems so self-evident that it's baffling that this falls so much on team lines. I don't see how this gets better or how this cultural change is an improvement.

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One team has been screaming free markets and they are now the ones decrying it.   Why can’t free markets solve this, we have been preached to that that is the end all be all.  Anyone opposed is a “socialist.”  Maybe this can get the GOP to admit that they were wrong. 

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5 hours ago, HenryJames said:

You probably used AltaVista to find that information.

 

Earlier this evening I suggested a friend use Yahoo! or AltaVista to find the answer to a point of contention bring discussed among our group in the lead up to our Fantasy Football Draft weekend.

 

 

NOTE: We draft AFTER the Thursday night kickoff game has taken place. (Ajai and his 2 TDS will be moving up, while Ryan and Foles will be dropping like rocks.)

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