I’m okay with algorithms not recommending certain posts. I just don’t like shadowbans because the platform is lying to the user, the user interface is essentially telling the user “your post is available for viewing and is being treated like any other post” when it really isn’t.

There’s a balance between the free speech of individuals and the free speech of the company. I think a fair balance between the two is, once a company is big enough to control a significant percentage of the entire nation’s discourse, the company at least has to be up front and avoid deceptive practices like shadow-banning. (This should only apply to large companies, once a company is large enough it has a responsibility to society.)

Speaking of Valve games, why did I ever stop playing Left 4 Dead? I need to play that again.

I don’t appreciate being called out like that!

Yet another tool that uses “freedom of speech” incorrectly

Often freedom of speech is a moral ideal, a moral aspiration, and dismissing it on legal grounds is missing the point.

If I say “people should have a right to healthcare”, and you respond “people do not have a legal right to healthcare”, you are correct, but you have missed the point. If I say people should have freedom of speech and you respond that the first amendment doesn’t apply to Facebook, you are right, but have again missed the point.

In general, when people advocate for any change, they can be countered with “well, the law doesn’t require that”. Yes, society currently works the way the law says it should. But what we’re talking about is how society should work and how the law should change.

Somehow Trump returned… 🫠

A problem is that social media websites are simultaneously open platforms with Section 230 protections, and also publishers who have free speech rights. Those are contradictory, so which is it?

Perhaps @rottingleaf was speaking morally rather than legally. For example, I might say “I believe everyone in America should have access to healthcare”; if you respond “no, there is no right to healthcare” you would be right, but you missed my point. I was expressing an moral aspiration.

I think shadowbans are a bad mix of censorship and hard to detect. Morally, I believe they should be illegal. If a company wants to ban someone, they can be up front about it with a regular ban; make it clear what they are doing. To implement this legally, we could alter Section 230 protections so that they don’t apply to companies performing shadowbans.

Maybe he was speaking morally rather than legally.

For example, if I said “I believe people have a right to healthcare”, you might correctly respond “people do not have a legal right to healthcare” (in America at least). But you’d be missing the point, because I’m speaking morally, not legally.

I believe, morally, that people have a right to be heard.

Yes, because Americans would never consider electing a President with health issues.

Careful, the 100,000 kg of pizza will turn into manure.

This is so stupid. Isn’t this a free-to-play game? With one-time-purchase games you can try to fool people, then take your money and leave while people complain about the game behind you.

But this is a free-to-play game, they intend to make money by gradual ongoing revenue from in-game purchases, etc. You can’t fool people who are actively playing the game.

The contract hurts their image, and prevents them from receiving critical feedback.

“Good game, but the company behind it is shit and required me to sign this contract. <Insert contract clause>. Remember this whenever your reading the totally honest reviews about how good the game is.”

US auto makers were like “we love the free market”, then people bought cheaper cars from China and they said “wait, not that free!”

You can tell how important working from the office is by the fact that they can’t tell whether or not people are working from the office.

Maybe people need to start talking about unionizing while in the office.

I’ve always felt the nation of Israel is squatting on the name. Like, aren’t there people outside of Israel-the-nation that also claim to be Israel (in the Biblical sense)?

The government certainly does have the right to protect citizens and make whatever laws are necessary. In this case, the government can do so by amending the constitution. Until then, the 1st Amendment applies to all citizens, non-citizens, and business entities operating in the United States.

Criticizing the Israel government is okay (until our government outlaws it at least). Suggesting the people of Israel are some special kind of corrupt is not okay. Our corruption is our own.

I once thought of a movie while coughing into a microphone. I opened the recorded cough with VLC and it played the movie.

Not always. As John Carmack said:

The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.

Many people have created things entirely from their own mind, and then find that they’re violating IP law.

Even things like Calculus were invented simultaneously in different parts of the world. I mean, think about it, Calculus allows us to solve all kinds of problem that humankind had spent thousands of years thinking about and being unable to solve. Then, independently, in separate parts of the world 2 people invent / discover Calculus around the same time. If world wide IP law had existed, it might swoop in and tell one of them their thoughts were not legal.

And blackjack?

IP law is all about telling people what they can’t create.