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shadowkatI'm up early waiting for an a/c delivery due to arrive in fifteen or twenty minutes. So, passing time posting.
1. Found THIS interesting piece about a mysterious group that is slowly hacking its way through Brietbart's advertising base one tweet at a time. Thanks to conuly for the link.
I found it interesting in regards to the comments about free speech.
Brietbart has decided this is censorship. It really isn't. Nor is it dangerous. Brietbart has incited hate crimes. Sleeping Giants hasn't.
It's not corporate censorship. We have the right to tell someone not to support something and/or boycott it. That's also free speech. That's the double edged sword of most rights, if you can do something, so can someone else. Sleeping Giants has the right to tell people not to support evil Brietbart and make people aware that they are. And the corporations doing ads on Breitbart have the right to remove them. That's not censorship.
It's only censorship if a governmental entity makes it illegal for you to say something. ie. If The US government forced Brietbart to take down their site -- that would be censorship. (If you are interested in reading about censorship laws in the US and how it works here and abroad, I highly recommend this book - The Most Dangerous Book - The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysess -- which discusses the censorship laws in regards to pornography and indecency. ) It's not censorship if someone on DreamWidth deletes your post from their journal or bans you -- because you can still post it on your own. We don't have to give you a platform to irritate us in our own space. We have the right to kick your ass to the curb, like it or not. Nor is it censorship if an advertiser refuses to support your site, your television show, book, whatever. Nor is it censorship if your book club refuses to read a book. Or a friend has banned certain books from their home. I mean we have the right not read or look at things ourselves. Also we have the right to critique, rip apart crap. And to tell others not to look at it or support it. And to remove it from our personal property.
It is censorship when someone in power -- a government leader, official, law-maker, school principal, head of the Association of Libraries, etc --- bans it from all schools, libraries, and from the public, and punishes you with a fine or imprisonment for publishing or presenting the work. (Again read the Most Dangerous Book for a historical perspective.)
Removing ads from a web site isn't censorship -- the owners can still post their material, they just aren't getting paid for it. We don't have to pay you to post stuff. Nor does anyone including corporations have to financially support your site.
Another example of censorship... The banned 1910 Magazine that started a feminist movement in Japan.
Continuing on the thread of the First Amendment and Censorship...
Views Among College Students Regarding the First Amendment.
Sort of surprised me. We had more rights in college regarding expression in the 1980s. And a lot of discussion about it. The Author is John Villasenor - Nonresident Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation. Apparently college kids can now post research thesis on the internet.
[ETA: Apparently this is junk science and not verified with facts...according to an article in the UK Guardian. Which by the way throws a whole new angle on the whole free speech bit...do we have the right to spread false information on the internet or poorly researched data? OR should we have the right to do that? Should that be stopped? Well, you do run into the slippery slope of what constitutes false information and who should be the judge. Right now the alt-right lead by Trump is claiming any news that disagrees with or disparages their message is fake news. Anything that calls their information into account or questions it. Which is a bit...well, telling in of itself and definitely censorship. By labeling news that questions you as fake news or critiques you, or fact-checks something you said as fake news...you are attempting to censor your opposition and that's dangerous. That is censorship. So the Guardian questioning this student's thesis is correct. They are fact-checking him. While Trump telling people not to watch say CNN or refusing to provide information to news sources that have critigued him the past as an attempt to shut them down is censorship, because he's the President of the US (like it or not). If he was a private citizen with no power over the media, he could say whatever he damn well pleased. But as President, what he states... is a whole other matter. ]
And this is another example of infraction of Free Speech, where the news media is forced to support a governmental objective or regime...
Sinclair Broadcasting is forcing all 174 stations that they own across the country to air daily pro-Trump propaganda segments..
See this is why I ignore broadcast news, and only watch NY1 (Time Warner) or NY Times and check sources.
Good news? The a/c came. Bad news? Have to get super to install. Good news? Current A/C appears to be sort of working at the moment. Which made me question decision to get new one. Have decided to treat it as a gift. It's working until I install new one. And it's not really working -- only the fan, and it won't go below 75 degrees effectively.
1. Found THIS interesting piece about a mysterious group that is slowly hacking its way through Brietbart's advertising base one tweet at a time. Thanks to conuly for the link.
I found it interesting in regards to the comments about free speech.
Sleeping Giants’ basic approach is to make Breitbart’s advertisers aware that they are, in fact, Breitbart advertisers. Many apparently don’t know this, given that Web ads are often bought through third-party brokers, such as Google and Facebook. The brokers then distribute them to a network of websites according to algorithms that seek a specific target audience (say, young men) or a set number of impressions.
As a result of such “programmatic” buying, advertisers often are in the dark about where their ads end up. Advertisers can opt out of certain sites, of course, but only if they affirmatively place them on a blacklist of sites.
So when an ad appears on Breitbart, Sleeping Giants or one of its 109,000 Twitter followers and 35,000 Facebook followers flag the advertiser, often accompanied by an image of the sponsors’ ad next to a Breitbart story.
The other day, for example, a Sleeping Giants follower tweeted at Country Inns, informing the hotel chain that it was advertising on “the racist Breitbart site.” Within a day, the company tweeted back: “Thank you for your concern. . . . We have added Breitbart to our blacklist of ads.”
Brietbart has decided this is censorship. It really isn't. Nor is it dangerous. Brietbart has incited hate crimes. Sleeping Giants hasn't.
Breitbart, based in Los Angeles and Washington, says it doesn’t know how many advertisers have blocked it, nor has it calculated how much revenue it has lost as a result. But the financial impact appears to be significant enough for Breitbart to take the group seriously.
“What they’re doing is a very dangerous thing,” says Alexander Marlow, Breitbart’s editor in chief. “They are trying to impose corporate censorship and corporate segregation on us, and they’re doing it anonymously.” He disputes the group’s underlying claim, calling it “a lie” that Breitbart promotes hate speech of any kind.
Marlow also takes issue with the group’s mysterious origins, suggesting that it could be funded by a “left-wing [political] group or a foreign entity.” But he acknowledges he doesn’t know. It might just be “a bunch of trolls obsessed with Breitbart typing away in their basements,” he says.
It's not corporate censorship. We have the right to tell someone not to support something and/or boycott it. That's also free speech. That's the double edged sword of most rights, if you can do something, so can someone else. Sleeping Giants has the right to tell people not to support evil Brietbart and make people aware that they are. And the corporations doing ads on Breitbart have the right to remove them. That's not censorship.
It's only censorship if a governmental entity makes it illegal for you to say something. ie. If The US government forced Brietbart to take down their site -- that would be censorship. (If you are interested in reading about censorship laws in the US and how it works here and abroad, I highly recommend this book - The Most Dangerous Book - The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysess -- which discusses the censorship laws in regards to pornography and indecency. ) It's not censorship if someone on DreamWidth deletes your post from their journal or bans you -- because you can still post it on your own. We don't have to give you a platform to irritate us in our own space. We have the right to kick your ass to the curb, like it or not. Nor is it censorship if an advertiser refuses to support your site, your television show, book, whatever. Nor is it censorship if your book club refuses to read a book. Or a friend has banned certain books from their home. I mean we have the right not read or look at things ourselves. Also we have the right to critique, rip apart crap. And to tell others not to look at it or support it. And to remove it from our personal property.
It is censorship when someone in power -- a government leader, official, law-maker, school principal, head of the Association of Libraries, etc --- bans it from all schools, libraries, and from the public, and punishes you with a fine or imprisonment for publishing or presenting the work. (Again read the Most Dangerous Book for a historical perspective.)
Removing ads from a web site isn't censorship -- the owners can still post their material, they just aren't getting paid for it. We don't have to pay you to post stuff. Nor does anyone including corporations have to financially support your site.
Another example of censorship... The banned 1910 Magazine that started a feminist movement in Japan.
She led the men through the large house and down the long corridor to the rooms that served as the magazine’s headquarters. The men looked around and spotted just a single copy of the magazine’s latest issue. They seized the publication and, as they were leaving, finally told the surprised young woman why they had come. This issue of Seitō had been banned, they told her, on the grounds that it was “disruptive of the public peace and order.”
The young women who had created the magazine less than a year before had known it would be controversial. It was created by women, to feature women’s writing to a female audience. In Japan in 1911, it was daring for a woman to put her name in print on anything besides a very pretty poem. The magazine’s name, Seitō, translated to “Bluestockings,” a nod to an unorthodox group of 18th-century English women who gathered to discuss politics and art, which was an extraordinary activity for their time.
Continuing on the thread of the First Amendment and Censorship...
Views Among College Students Regarding the First Amendment.
Sort of surprised me. We had more rights in college regarding expression in the 1980s. And a lot of discussion about it. The Author is John Villasenor - Nonresident Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation. Apparently college kids can now post research thesis on the internet.
[ETA: Apparently this is junk science and not verified with facts...according to an article in the UK Guardian. Which by the way throws a whole new angle on the whole free speech bit...do we have the right to spread false information on the internet or poorly researched data? OR should we have the right to do that? Should that be stopped? Well, you do run into the slippery slope of what constitutes false information and who should be the judge. Right now the alt-right lead by Trump is claiming any news that disagrees with or disparages their message is fake news. Anything that calls their information into account or questions it. Which is a bit...well, telling in of itself and definitely censorship. By labeling news that questions you as fake news or critiques you, or fact-checks something you said as fake news...you are attempting to censor your opposition and that's dangerous. That is censorship. So the Guardian questioning this student's thesis is correct. They are fact-checking him. While Trump telling people not to watch say CNN or refusing to provide information to news sources that have critigued him the past as an attempt to shut them down is censorship, because he's the President of the US (like it or not). If he was a private citizen with no power over the media, he could say whatever he damn well pleased. But as President, what he states... is a whole other matter. ]
And this is another example of infraction of Free Speech, where the news media is forced to support a governmental objective or regime...
Sinclair Broadcasting is forcing all 174 stations that they own across the country to air daily pro-Trump propaganda segments..
See this is why I ignore broadcast news, and only watch NY1 (Time Warner) or NY Times and check sources.
Good news? The a/c came. Bad news? Have to get super to install. Good news? Current A/C appears to be sort of working at the moment. Which made me question decision to get new one. Have decided to treat it as a gift. It's working until I install new one. And it's not really working -- only the fan, and it won't go below 75 degrees effectively.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 09:23 pm (UTC)I think I'll go back and qualify the link with yours.
Sinclair Broadcasting
Date: 2017-09-24 02:21 pm (UTC)Incidentally I quit watching ABC national news during the campaign because the guy reporting on the Trump campaign was a big supporter of Trump and I couldn't stand to listen to him.
Re: Sinclair Broadcasting
Date: 2017-09-24 09:21 pm (UTC)I stopped watching "broadcast news" and specifically ABC during the election. If I have to watch broadcast news, I'll watch NBC. Maybe CBS. I miss Peter Jenner.
But mainly I just rely on the NY Times and NY1 which seem to be relatively unbiased in their reporting. Also not supporters of Trump. I can't abide anyone who supports the Doofus.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 10:08 pm (UTC)On that university free speech thing, it's interesting that the "survey" was such rubbish. Because reading the linked article, it made me think that a lot of people panicking about lack of "free speech" and "intellectual openness" in universities are equally shocked to realise that certain types of people are now allowed to be students. I think we need a pushback in universities against the idea that students from disadvantaged groups are expected to react with perfect politeness and logical arguments when people turn up to "dispassionately raise the interesting intellectual question" of whether they should be tortured and/or killed.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 11:15 pm (UTC)Why I found the study interesting...
Because reading the linked article, it made me think that a lot of people panicking about lack of "free speech" and "intellectual openness" in universities are equally shocked to realise that certain types of people are now allowed to be students.
True. But that's always been a problem.
I think we need a pushback in universities against the idea that students from disadvantaged groups are expected to react with perfect politeness and logical arguments when people turn up to "dispassionately raise the interesting intellectual question" of whether they should be tortured and/or killed.
Have you seen the television series Dear White People? It sort of addresses this topic from the various points of view. Rather good actually, at least in places. Strident in others.