I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Richard Hoeg (Virtual Legality) has an analysis of the
mysterious banning of “Dr. Disrespect” (Guy Beahm) by (Amazon-owned) Twitch,
and the lack of explanation from either side (final moments). Sean Hollister has a similar analysis on The
Verge
The general impression is that there was a contractual
issue that would be hard to support with evidence in court, but there is
language in the terms of service and community guidelines that allows Twitch to
remove an account for any reason at its discretion (rather like YouTube’s “Commercial
viability” clause).
I’m reminded of a situation when I was substitute
teaching about my own content, back in 2005, where I had to stop and neither “side”
could admit to what really was going on.(Hint: it happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016).
Platforms have become concerned, partly because of
extraordinary pressure from far leftist activists, that edgy content will
radicalize people and lead to violence, especially now even from the police against
minorities.
They have even been concerned over speculative
statements by speakers, about, for example, China’s responsibility for COVID.
I can remember when David Pakman was livestreaming on Twitch
that he noted that “strikes” could not be repealed, and he got taken down with
false DMCA claims from major networks.
Wikipedia mentions a bathroom incident in Beahm’s
career.I know of a situation where
someone took a self-portrait in a bathroom with unusual mirrors of
himself.There was nothing wrong with
the picture itself (as to what it “showed”). He could have recreated it in his
own home as a physics experiment, probably.But he did have to remove if from Instagram because of where it had been
taken.
There have been several channel removals by YouTube of
“hate” channels, the largest being Stefan Molyneux (Variety story). (I had thought these would be banned in June 2019 after YouTube's policy change a year ago; apparently the unprecedented fallout from Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, etc. gives them more practical impulse to do this now.) I am concerned over removal of any channel
over ideology alone, and I am rather agnostic about Molyneux as I have seen
very little of his material myself.But
I am concerned that some people see merely questioning the increased
identarianism on the Left (as with Black Lives Matter) as itself “white
supremacy” and likely to increase radical violence, either by extremist cells
or by police. Wikipedia (with the SPLC) seems quick to label speakers as "far-right" or even supremacist when that sometimes doesn't seem factually true with some of them if their writings are interpreted carefully. (Look at how SPLC characterizes Charles Murray).
A concern could be that speech is “gratuitous” and now
followed up by action (“skin in the game”, or some sort of indirect oppression by “relative silence”) it
could be seen as harmful to the reputation of the host or platform, and could
lead platforms to non-explained takedowns like Twitch.
For example, Facebook recently asked me if I would run
a “birthday fundraiser”.I don’t run
public fundraisers except when I am involved already (and substantially) with the cause or activity
to be supported based on what I have already done myself.The Facebook plea comes across as a “quid pro
quo”.
The Washington Post has a most welcome editorial
Sunday, June 28, “Section 230 does not need a revocation;it needs a revision”.The URL text says both Biden and Trump want
to repeal this “tech rule” and they’re both wrong.
Trump even tweeted “Revoke 230” last week, as a way to
stop the suppression of the speech of conservatives, as in his two-step Executive
order conscripting both the FCC and FTC.The Post says that Biden has a “better handle” on the problems with 230
without being specific (Biden had apparently told the New York Times in March
he wanted to scrap it).Biden says
platforms don’t remove enough harmful content. Apparently he means content which
intellectually naïve viewers take as calls for radicalization (on the right) or
which experience as a kind of community systemic oppression (on the Left).But that’s compounded by the fact that the
far Left sees speech itself as part of the oppressive system. (As a meme, “Revoke 230” reminds me of “Defund
the Police.”)
I’m reading Kosseff’s book (half way through it) and
finding that there is a big question as to whether 230 has the equivalent of
the DMCA “safe harbor”, especially when it comes to user reviews.I hadn’t thought about it that way before.
Update: Richard Hoeg says that platforms are conducting a political science experiment by canceling politicians, especially with Twitch and Donald Trump, who wants to abolish 230 (along with Biden) (tweet). Also today, several YouTube channels (like Stefan Molyneux) were removed. We'll get to Dr. Disrepect later (it is a mystery now).
It’s a no brainer that this is maybe the most
dangerous period in the past twenty years.
I wanted to call attention to his characterization of
Social Justice as a “quasi-religion”. It seems history as a struggle between
tribes or groups, some of which are oppressors, and others are oppressed – so you
need a change in power.Viewpoints or content
presentations are not about truth, but about staying in power, so in this view,
individualized speech (like mine) is just violence against oppressed classes that
must be stopped, so that members of these (intersectional) classes can be
better off.Pretty much standard
Marxism.
The end result can be a system where at some point
platforms no longer allow individualized self-publishing but require everyone to
join someone’s tribe.
But this is a very different way of thinking – limiting
people based on which tribe they came from – rather than looking at the social
creditworthiness of their own lives as individuals (“pay your dues”).
On the pandemic itself, we have to wonder why a teenager
understood what would happen as early as before Christmas than the CDC did.
Or why a 23-year-old screenwriter rushed himself to
finish a script on an epidemic in early December based on a dream or insight.
Brooks talks about economic dislocation, which could
affect even stable retired people’s accounts.Again, when you see smart 20-somethings advocating cryptocurrency you
now pay attention.
CNBC has a new video “Who Regulates What’s Posted Online?”
The title sounds provocative and focused on today’s
situation with the problems created by COVID.
Actually, it goes back to the early days of Arpanet,
and then the monitoring of the National Science Foundation, which used to be
located downtown DC, then moved to Ballston in Arlington, and recently moved
again to Alexandria. The Internet largely opened up to the public in 1992, and
soon services like AOL and Prodigy were born and email became common (I started
using AOL in 1994). There had been a variety of bulletin boards and services
even in the 80s.
The video then goes on to discuss the Net Neutrality
idea, with the changes in 2016 and then with the Trump administration, where at
least there has been some paid prioritization but no shutoff or payola for
regular websites. A more pressing issue is providing access in rural or
underserved areas, now that so much work and education has been forced online
by Covid and this may remain so well into 2021.
The video discusses the 1996 Communications Decency
Act, with the attempt at censorship, struck down by SCOTUS in 1997, and the
part that survived, Section 230.
It is widely believed that Section 230 is necessary
for platforms and hosts, to operate at
all without liability from posters, but as a Jeff Kosseff explains in a new
book (“The 26 Rules that Created the Internet”) considerable case law involving
bookstores, and then early services like CompuServ and Prodigy, had established
some liability protection (as in Europe). But Section 230 allows platforms to moderate
content or even have a political bias without incurring liability for most
content.A recent controversial
Executive Order by Trump attempts to change that and remove the supposed “bias
against conservatives” (Wordpress post). Another good question would be, may platforms still "not" moderate content?
The video did not cover DMCA safe harbor (corresponds
to 230 for copyright).
The picture above shows the NSF in Ballston before the
Ballston Quarter renovations, which ironically now have to deal with Covid
after being completed.
Seriously, I would be concerned if the tech companies
will be able to able to keep up completely if everyone has to do all school
online next fall, or if there are any more long-lasting complete
lockdowsn.When some people have to work
in grocery stories, YouTube can become a frivolous luxury and that point
worries me.
Some of the proposals probably don’t have direct
effect on others not in minorities.One
of them in particular is interesting, the return of some government lands to descendants
of slaves.
We do have a long history of policies based on
ancestry with regard to Native Americans.I became more aware of this when living in Minneapolis 1997-2003, often
going to the Mystic Lake casino on Highway 161 south of the city, sometimes for
Libertarian Party events. I’ve also driven
through reservations in northern Minnesota.
None of this changes the idea of individual responsibility
in personal encounters (like how the media got everything wrong in the
Covington Kids incident).
So one cannot dismiss this idea out of hand, as there
is a precedent for it.
But it is obviously potentially very arbitrary how to
define who would be eligible.Is it just
one ancestor?Should there be a means
test for someone trying to use such a reparative benefit?Probably yes.
What seems more objectionable is re-dividing people up
into groups and apportioning benefits and possibly expropriation on people
based on their group or tribal membership.History does this all the time.But, outside of the Native American issue, approaching assessment of
benefit this way strictly based on racial or ethnic definition is unheard of in
this country.
Furthermore, we are noticing people want to make tribal
(ethnic or racial or otherwise manufactured) identity more important than who
they are as individuals, because they have trouble competing as individuals.
So, what if I were to get a jury summons now? The NYTimes does have an exposition.
I had in Arlington, before I sold the house and moved across
the Fairfax County line by about 1000 feet.
But there are real problems now with social distancing
and holding jury trials properly, as Shaila Dawan writes in the New York
Times.
In Texas, when I lived in Dallas in the 80s, I got
summoned four times, because they have a one day one trial system. I got picked
twice, although one case was settled out of court immediately.
Having people sit in a selection room will be
difficult, as would be deliberations.You could set up plexiglass barriers, but masks for jurors will seem
distracting.
It might result in a lot more use of hotel
sequestration even in shorter cases, where jurors don’t have to travel and risk more exposure. Remember that sequestration would be a threat to my keeping my own sites up as I might not be allowed internet access during it and could lose the accounts. In the past, this has only been viewed as a remote "threat" for very unusual trials (like terrorism). COVID could change this. I don't think anyone has thought about this very well yet.
Virginia apparently allows those over 70 to "get out of" jury duty (Fairfax County rules), which I do not like, but I might have to use that until the end of 2021, due to issues I have explained elsewhere (when there is to be a big change in how I do things).
Update: June 26
The Wall Street Journal, in an article June 16 by Daniella Hernandez, Sarah Toy, and Betzy McCay, also discuss the jury duty issue in an article "How exactly do you catch Covid-19?".
In an “as is” condo you take the appliances, and
there’s always a chance of going through replacing one (even if you buy the
warranty).There are some issues with
the refrigerator (maybe just the light after all), so I went to a Home Depot
today to look at what was there that fits into a smaller space.Well, actually there are smaller “retro” ones
(like in a motel room).
The sales person was in a long conservation about
paperwork with a customer or other worker, but finally I got her attention.
I asked her about delivery, and I got a lecture about
“this virus” and workers.There were
plenty of items in the store, but don’t count on being able to get one in
stock.Then she went of on a spiel about
working people and “this virus”, like she resented someone having the money to
replace an appliance (a rather common event sometime in one’s life) when
necessary.
She did not belong to a minority group.But I’m rather shocked to go into a major
chain store and get a lecture on commie worker comradeship, like ordering
something is a sign of anti-Maoist privilege.
The extent to which ideology has affected a lot of
working people is shocking.
Yet, there is the issue of empathy, as Tomas Puerto
points out in this Tweet sequence.
By the way, here’s ascary article about lung damage
in asymptomatic people in China shared by Tomas Pueyo, but it seems
self-contradictory when reading it.
Now I will note the fairness aspect of this. People
who do have money and work-from-home jobs may prosper by others lower in the
economic scale (sometimes because of race) taking risks – like getting drafted
and getting infantry in Vietnam – for them.
Is that sustainable?
One other thing. Fauci said today, "if we're going to have a vaccine, we should have it by the end of the year." I hadn't heard about the "If..."
I’ve seen a lot of very angry stuff on Twitter.
Someone named Jesse Kelly seems to be making demands of purging “racist
history” for example, by attacking ivy-league universities which in the past
had connections with slavery.
Plenty of high-minded white (male) college students
who have publicly signed on to full support of Black Lives Matter would then
have an existential crisis continuing to attend. Maybe their turn to learn to
be in the same boat?Maybe national service?
On the other hand, where does the obsession with
statues and names stop?Thomas Jefferson
and Monticello, George Washington (and the University named after him, from
which I graduated?) What about the Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin?The Lee House in the Arlington Cemetery,
Dorey Schelmer and Meghna Chakrabarti had an article
where Rana Foroohar and Michelle Singletary do a podcast for WBUR, “Economic
Roundtable: Pandemic, Protests and a Troubled Economy”.
“Systemic breakdowns are not personal failures.”Well, they are if you had been
inappropriately privileged and then are challenged from beyond the blue. Rana
really gets emotional at the end of the 47 minutes.She rails about people who make policy (that
might include opinion writers indirectly) and have no personal contact with the
disadvantaged people they make rules for.
The thrust of the discussion was to migrate from
accumulated wealth to labor for its own sake.This does matter more to people of color (which might be many other
minorities) than most whites (and she does go through the accumulated affects
of redlining and the mortgage crisis in 2008, and then talks about how the pandemic
has affected POC disproportionately and their jobs.
My own use of the web for speech becomes an issue,
because I can do it with accumulated assets and not as a business that employs
people.In the short run, I have very
little to “sell” people or create jobs.In a longer run, there may be some ideas but it has to be permissible
for me to carry them out, despite my “privilege.”
If you really want to address wealth inequality, you have
to consider a lot more than race.Activists
are distracted by the statues issue when they really could demand more from (“privileged”)
people to account for how they got what they have, and turn this into a personal
moral issue. Consider shared risk exposure and proximity (with service
expectations).Consider policies that
discourage passing on large inheritances, or even partially surrendering some
existing ones, where possible (state laws on trusts would need to change),
given the economic crisis.Particularly
if the economic impact continues as long as the speakers say in the podcast, you
want to think about “proportional equity” of outcome, where the reward is
appropriate for the risk and labor effort made by the person and takes into
consideration service.
Here are a couple of disturbing stories.I’ll leave it to the reader to make up mind.
The stepmother of Garrett Rolfe, police officer in
Atlanta involved in a back shooting at a Wendy’s recently, has been fired from
a mortgage company (Hotair).Tucker Carlson
mentioned it in a recent video for Fox.The facts are a little bit fuzzy, as the company claims she violated
their rules, but frames its statement in an unusual way.
Facebook has taken down a Trump campaign ad for what
is purported to be a Nazi triangle symbol (CNN).
I want to revisit the question of what others want or
expect an individual like “me” to do about it.I generally don’t circulate in social circles where microagressions or
disparate comments are likely to be made (although two or three decades ago I
might have).
It seems like there are two intersecting problems (and
I am not calling for “intersectionality”).One is pervasive inequality, which I personally believe has more to do
with inherited wealth and environmental advantages than just income inequality.
This emphatically covers a lot more than race and even the history of slavery
and segregation (and redlining). Some African Americans are indeed well off and
have many advantages in their own backgrounds, because enough time has passed
for much more opportunity to have developed. So we do have many in politics,
public office, and business.We have had
a black president and first lady, which makes this development over the past
six years or so very perplexing.
Handling wealth inequality at a personal level
involves something like what I used to call “paying your dues” but which is
more normally understood as soft “social credit.” (and expressed by "cancel culture"). It’s possible to imagine a
world where privileged people cannot have their own Internet platforms without
some community engagement.I’ve hinted
that I think this is coming for a few years now, all the way back to my 2014
DADT III book. Addressing this need could be viewed as part of a person’s
public character. An important part of this is stepping up to personal
risk-sharing when necessary (“skin in the game”). The aim of a policy like this would not be equity or even equality of opportunity but some sort of "proportional equity" related to what is earned by effort and risk.
There is controversy here about community engagement,
because another question would be, how public should you be expected to make it
(like in participating in fund raising for others under your own name or
brand), in a world that otherwise gives you your own (potentially asymmetric)
soapbox? One argument is that without this public confessional from influencers ("bend the knee") politicians have no incentive to change things (in response to normal solidarity and group activism) -- hence we have this problem with the police now.
The second part is rectifying America’s own original
sin – slavery, etc.That arguably isn’t
limited to blacks, but would encompass the wrongs done to Native
Americans.That background made it so
hard for mainstream media to see what had happened in the Covington Kids case,
for example.
Some of the rhetoric suggests white Americans have
personal past dues bills owed to African Americans – the reparations issue,
made personal.I’ve covered before David
Brooks’s ideas about national service to force the idea of social proximity on
everyone.But there could be an idea
that people must specifically show they have benefited black Americans as a
group with their activities (like say public fundraising) before they can be
heard individually.That would corrupt
all speech.
Yet it is common in history for many issues like this
to be viewed through the rubric of fixing group or ethnic wrongs and forcing
everyone to go along.Hence, the
“silence is violence” oxymoron.
In the 1990s (as we came out of the worst of the AIDS
crisis and as the election of Bill Clinton, following the Persian Gulf War and
then the unusual cultural battle over “don’t ask don’t tell” developed) we
developed a certain moral bias, that your work life and even public life are
separate from the very personal aspects of your life.Whether you marry and have children is your
business.Whether you feel attracted to
people outside of your race is your business.
Modern social media changed all that, and made private
life part of public life rather than an afterthought. No wonder we see the idea
of “anti-racism” as an expectation in everyone’s public and private
behavior.But we also need to remember
that many people have a life experience that is mostly tribal, and involves
very little independent self-expression – which some cultures (the Amish, for
example) explicitly say destroy community solidarity and throw many less
competitive persons (who are more likely to be black or native for historical
reasons) back in line.
Social media companies and possibly even hosts could become hypersensitive to demands from activists that people perceived as "privileged" (by lack of evidence of social credit) not be allowed to remain on stage. We've seen evidence of this since especially late 2018 (and even after Charlottesville in 2017) with erratic and unpredictable changes in policy (especially by YouTube suddenly in June 2019). The enormous disparity of sacrifice (by race) caused by COVID-19 would only add to the popular pressure that they may feel.
The video above would imply a wealth transfer of about
$7000 per white person to black persons, if done literally. Do the math.
Also, later tonight I found this gratuitous invitation in my Facebook feed. No, I don't run fundraisers under my own name for specific ("identarian") groups of people. FB, given its monopolistic behavior, seems to be using the political pressure from BLM to offer a quid pro quo to users and hint at "compelling" in joining their political cause publicly,
I know I’ve talked about estate executors and domains
and digital property before.
With a public health crisis, it makes sense to wonder
what happens to a website or domain owned by an individual if the individual
becomes ill for a long time and then dies or is incapacitated.
The problem has always existed, but the possibility
would seem more serious now with the Covid crisis.
It could be exacerbated when people are suddenly isolated
from their lives by quarantines, which may happen overseas more often than
here.
Yet I don’t find that much is done about it.Registrars send annual notices asking of your
domain information has changed, but usually these have been registered
privately.
GigaLaw gives a rundown (2012) and I don’t see that
anything has changed.
ICANN does have a best practices link on allowing
others access to this information.
The Wall Street Journal (Brent Kindall and John D.
McKinnon) that the Department of Justice will propose to Congress limits on
platform protections from Section 230, in line with Trump’s XO in late May. .
The legislation would tighten the exemptions from liability
protection in some areas, beyond sex trafficking (FOSTA) to include terrorism
and cyberstalking and some other specific law violations.
It would also require “better faith” in content
moderation.There is noting in Section
230 that requires political neutrality now. For example, targeting right wing
extremism but not Communism would not compromise the protections of 230.
A good question would be whether a platform is legally
allowed a “quid pro quo”, to pressure users to raise money for causes or
non-profits in order to get perks from the site. That would compromise the
integrity of free speech. (This sounds like a “danger” rising from the recent enormous
power over tech from activists like Black Lives Matter.Yes, Tucker Carlson has talked about it.)
Remember, the need for 230 comes from the attempt to
play good Samaritan and do content moderation.
Pelosi wants a bill to allow the US to tighten its own
Internet regulation as part of a trade pact.
Another possibility could be to take another look at
Internet content and campaign finance reform (related to Citizens United) and
earlier concerns back in 2004.
This “Think” passage on NBCNews by Daryl Austindoes,
to its partial credit, take up the question of what "white people" will be expected to do in their own personal lives about systemic racism.
The question for me is, well, “what do you want me to
do about this, personally?”It’s a
binary question.I either can respond
(effectively) to the race-specific aspect of Black Lives Matter (with intentional “anti-racism”), or I can’t. Note the new meme "silence is violence" (a paradox?)
The article makes a lot of having personal
relationships with people of color. Let me add something else, too, right
now:talking about “black and brown
people” (or worse, “black and brown bodies”) by people who are not
(biologically) part of those groups sounds condescending, as if coming from
pity or condescension. We were taught, in the workplace especially, as far back
as perhaps the late 1980s, not to refer to this at all in speaking of people.
I have to respond to this inside-out.First, we have relationships with people in
the real world (often through family, and then through associations we build as
adults after leaving the nest, which happens later these days).A lot of this gets into areas like “cognitive
empathy” v. “emotional empathy”. We also
have “imaginary friends” that we build online, and that often crosses
generations.
At age 76, the latter has become more important in recent
years.They tend in many cases to be
with younger adults with a rationalist, often libertarian mindset, and they are
often content creators.They are all
“intact”.None are particularly needy or
underprivileged.So they generally don’t
lead to the bonds that we consider to constitute “solidarity” (having each
other’s backs, like when protesting and risking arrests) except in some more
rarified contexts.
These connections are not discriminatory and they include
female, a few non-binary, and a few POC. But some POC are other groups (not
necessarily black or indigenous American).Some have been raised in relatively challenging circumstances and done
well.Tim Pool is POC, but not the
(chosen) “oppressed minority” in the mind of the far Left; he is part Korean
(Asian) but for him it is a big deal, he says. I have part-Asian friends who run a major
grocery-bar market in Arlington VA.The
father is also a novelist. They talk as if race doesn’t matter.
But we know now that for some people it does. Yet, as you
see with the following video, a lot of activists are “naïve” in their
expectations that most people use social media the same way they do, and would
even run into these opportunistic situations.
I would add that some people even want "me" to be open to deliberately including considering POC as intimate partners (I get challenged this way in bars and discos, or did before COVID). That seems like the ultimate proof of life, or of worthiness, to some people/
Let me jump to another topic that seems
important.In my situation, I am
sometimes able to influence policy outcomes with my content, while remaining
relatively obscure personally and not well known.But I don’t normally take orders from
established non-profits and join up with them.I work entirely independently (I have more contact with the “free
speech” community than the traditional progressive one.)This
approach has been particularly effective with certain issues, many of them
related to national security.For
example, it worked well with gays in the military two decades ago, as that was
an “unusual” issue that connected to my own personal history in ironic ways
which I could leverage to attract public attention. One of these levers was the
military draft and the history of student deferments which – guess what-now could be seen as connected to structural
racism in the past (black young men were more likely to wind up in combat in
Vietnam).Now the “draft” issue connects
to other areas of state-run constrictions of people, such as now with
quarantines and isolation. These problems might affect “black” people
disproportionately now, so if I work on these, I am helping them.But I am not branding my own work to their
authority (“Black Lives Matter”) so the activists are not satisfied.
So this is a problem, if there are too many people who
work the way I do, conventional activism and solidarity is diluted.I’ve talked about that before (with the video
“Dangerous Thought Experiment” on the home page of my “doaskdotell” site.It also loops back to the still unresolved
issues from campaign finance reform in the early 2000’s (I’ve talked about it a
lot before).
So, when you combine this with all kinds of other
threats to user-generated content (loss of net neutrality, FOSTA, other threats
to Section 230, concerns over radicalization) and also some issues with
trademark (you can compare the use of the marks “Black Lives Matter” and “Do
Ask Do Tell” and make some interesting observations), you can imagine that my
own operation isn’t sustainable forever, if it doesn’t pay its own way
legitimately with public outside support (like a normal business) which I have
never asked for. One issue would occur
if I were kept away from being able to maintain the sites (by illness or
hospitalization, possibly by isolation in some situations, or even by prolonged
jury duty or some other civic obligation) the sites might have to disappear.
I do like functioning as an amateur “journalist” –really, commentatorwho aggregates and “connects the dots” and warns
everybodyThat works because of
globalization and search engines – still, and informal word-of-mouth networks
of the “enlightened”.But that also
implies that I seem “above” shouting in a demonstration like everybody else – I
just film and talk about “them”, which gives their causes attention, but then
undermines them if I don’t join in solidarity.In our system, we don’t want to “license” journalists (because
Trump-like, or Erdogan-like or Orban-like, politicians would destroy
them).But we could wonder if
journalists need “skin in the game” in the sense of doing it for a legitimate
living, which I don’t (in retirement)/
David Brooks suggestion to use national service
(previous posting, June 11) seems in play here.It seems like the most effective idea to cause the cross deeper
socialization that some think is necessary to heal the specific ancestral
problem from slavery and segregation and (individually allocated) “reparations”
– apart from the idea that inequality of opportunity, including many other
factors besides race per se . His idea would require that you have some
personal contact in providing service to people (even coming out of Covid, even
if you are more elderly); “raising money” for others for those you have no
contact with would never be more than a quid pro quo for staying online at all.
You wind up with a system where people
mind their own “social credit” and whether, when privileged, they have, on
their own, given back in personalized ways enough.But this is still about a lot more than
race.Can our individualized society
really handle a pandemic (if it hangs around long) or other disruptions from
climate change or even enemy threats (like EMP)?We are indeed terrible when warned of
disasters (April 17).
A Facebook friend put up a set upnotes about coronavirus-related
developments with a special feature, and Facebook suddenly blocked him from
updating it for violating community standards. Yet it still can be accessed. He also talks about going to MeWe (CNET review).
By normal standards, there’s nothing wrong with
it.He just gives a series of links to
local south Florida news stories in reputable sites.
Then David Brooks offers an op-ed June 4 on “How to do reparations right” That sounds fine, to
do it with the people living in troubled neighborhoods.(But some variations of proposals like this
want some sort of sovereignty comparable to Native American reservations – “Chaz”
in Seattle may sound something like that.) He wants National Service participants
(as an alternative to military service) in young adulthood to live and work in
these areas.
It’s all to easy to imagine expanding that idea – why not
invite retirees to do the same thing (maybe if able bodied and still getting
social security)?That could impact “me”.
Social media companies and platforms could invite people
to take sabbaticals and do this kind of service for 1-2 year hitches, and
disappear.It’s a kind of “paying your dues”.Maybe its living wokeness.Maybe it’s “social creditworthiness.”But it is still focused on the individual’s
own public behavior (or taking it private and offline for periods), not really
based on the person’s ancestors.
It strikes me that I do have meaningful contact with
outstanding young adults online, the old “imaginary friend” problem.Some sort of service expectation could break
all this up – imaginary globalization, and force people (like me) into social
service “where they are,” as people would come down for periods.
One thing I have noticed that social media has
pressured people to do if lift up others online, very publicly (like FB’s
urging people to run public fundraisers).Yet in one case I know of a young man who decided, after honoring the
people he had helped with grocery deliveries as chores, to take all his social
media private.There was no point in
being a celebrity anymore (although confusion about his name was a problem,
too.)
I’ve talked about my own plans before (mandatory “simplification”
at the end of 2021), and I would still like to be able to deploy the work I am
doing.I think it is good for people to work
alone and for themselves – but maybe there should be finite limits on how long
this is allowed until it shows results actually for others.Yes, we need the critical thinking and I have
provided that (and with two or three situations it was a very good thing that I
did).But it may not be enough forever.
I developed my search-engine-driven method for
Internet reach because I got in the game early, in th late 90s.I did not always keep up with the technology.I did not get around to teaching myself to
become a “Youtuber” because I “came of age” when blogging was considered more
promising, so my “style” is different from that of other people with similar
views. Once you get hooked on doing something a certain way for years or
decades, it is hard to change.But
eventually you may have to.Nothing
lasts forever.
Timothy B. Lee has amajor article in Ars Technica clarifying
the significance of Section 230, “The Internet’s most important – and misunderstood
– law explained; Section 230 is the legal foundation of social media, and it’s
under attack.” I know the writer personally from my days in Minneapolis, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota; in 1999 he helped set up a lecture by me on my first book (as a Hamline student also did in 1998 in St. Paul, when I was still on crutches from a fall!)
Lee discusses some important cases, with AOL, Prodigy,
and Compuserv, in the early days, and then later Grindr, that explain why
platforms needed a shield if they moderated some content to protect users.
It is often said that without Section 230 platforms
would be liable for all user content.Not necessarily, ih they never moderated it. Consider older models of Internet use like
conventional website hosting. Hosting companies generally never moderate content,
although they will cancel accounts that violate Acceptable Use Policies (like
running online pharmacies). More
recently, after Charlottesville, they also removed accounts (as did domain name
hosts) that seemed to be affiliated with white supremacy. But, contrary to what even I had thought,
hosting companies might not need Section 230 as it is now written and Biden’s
desire to get rid of it is not necessarily a threat.
But major social media platforms need the ability to remove
content from users which harasses other users of might be harmful (such as manipulating
elections).FOSTA would give them the
requirement to do so if they have reason to believe sex trafficking is
happening. (FOSTA has unintentionally hurt some minorities badly, but that’s
another discussion.)
Section 230 does not require platforms to be
politically neutral. Twitter, for example, prohibits deadnaming and
misgendering because it does not want to drive away trans or non-binary users –
a perfectly reasonable business priority.
Trump’s recent Executive Order will run into legal
problems, as it is based somewhat on a misreading of the law (although the
final version wasn’t quite as silly as the leaked rough draft).
I thought I would share this little article from “My
Daily Magazine”: “These Facts Will Change the Way You Look at the Amish”. The title of the magazine reminds me of
the grade school “My Weekly Reader”. The
Twitter link says, “That’s why the Amish allow their teenagers to share a bed
when dating.”
Very noteworthy is that the Amish want to eliminate
individual self-expression and even noting individual differences, with their
doll toys. For them, their authoritarian lifestyle works.
It seems that their marital heterosexuality is tied
into this kind of group-owned consciousness.
This past weekend, radical SJW activists had “dear
white people” washing their feet, in a ritual outdoors in Cary, NC, near UNC
and all the tech companies.
Tim Pool, in one of his Timcasts, uses this spectacle
to get into a discussion of positive vs. negative rights.First, let me interrupt myself.I generally don’t use the same YouTube channel
for material on successive posts, but lately it seems like Timcast and HoegLaw
have been providing a lot of the material.
At about 5 minutes into his video, Tim points out that
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related laws are mostly about negative
rights.You are not allowed to discriminate
against members or protected classes in public accommodations or hiring or
housing. Now the SJW’s seem to be demanding “positive rights”, which is seen as
a kind of reparation, but some SJW’s are trying to make this very personal. Positive rights would go beyond familiar
affirmative action into quotas (including casting diversity in Hollywood) and
replacing white people with black people, and maybe even forcing race consciousness
training or activity upon everyone.
I can remember the subject of positive and negative
rights coming up in the late 1990s after my first book, but I don’t think I
discussed them as such in my 1998 booklet “Our Fundamental Rights”.I’ll look into this soon on my “do ask do tell
notes” blog. There was also discussion during
that time (when I lived in, ironically now, downtown Minneapolis) of what “positive
law” means.
Tim notes in one sequence that SJW’s seem to be
demanding that others joint their “cult”, since religion in itself is dead
(remember Time in 1966). As payback, they want increasing submission (“bend the
knee”) to their demands.
That’s why individualized speech like mine on these
blogs could be in trouble, with all the threats to user-generated content that
I’ve noted in the past few years (essentially since Charlottesville).It’s easy to imagine SJW’s getting tech
companies to go along with an idea like, “you want to have a website or be on
our platform.Please prove you can raise
money for oppressed minorities first.”
And I refuse to identify people first publicly by
their membership in a group.That
insults the whole idea of being an individual person.
There is, however, a legitimate issue, which died off
(the concern back around 2005 that bloggers could covertly influence politicalcampaigns without being accounted for as affiliated with any party or movement –
that sort of but not completely went away with Citizen’s United.)It was already a cause of one major incident
in my own life in 2005 when I was substitute teaching.Expect to see it come back. Activists today will claim they need everybody marching for them to get the reforms they need, not "amateur" journalists (not recognized as press) just taking pictures without joining in. (Nevermind, some "amateurs" do male a living at it; I don't.) It's the "no spectators" meme ("Burning Man") indeed.
The New York Times is apologizing for a stern op-ed
from Senator Tom Cotton (link) on June 3, and the Washington Post isjumping on it(Paul Fahri et al)
There are two sets of problems here.First, there had already been a lot of loose
talk about (Greg Carr) “martial law” (maybe even an Internet shutdown) after the violent
riots broke out last weekend.Since
maybe Tuesday, they seem to have calmed down, and it looks like the million or
so marching in Washington Saturday will be peaceful (as if we could have had
Gay Pride this June after all, as far as health is concerned – as long as
everything stayed outdoors – and that may be correct medically).
Wednesday, at age 76, I broke the “safer at home” idea
and visited the protests on 16th Street and made some video (as it
happens, my best friends in indie media were just getting up from having been
up all night covering the crowds the night before, so essentially I felt like I
was filling in).
Driving back (I eschewed the Metro) stores were
boarded up from 16th St all the way past the GWU campus onto M St,
all the way to Key Bridge.They had even
gone into stealth, removing their trademarks outside. Once I got into Arlington
(Rosslyn) the damage stopped, although I’ve seen isolated protesters in
northern Virginia.
To say that operators of businesses must be brought
low and start over in life (that’s already happened anyway because of
coronavirus shutdowns), as a kind of punitive reparation of past institutional
racism, is vengeful thinking from the far Left, it’s Marxist, even Maoist.I don’t have a physical presence, but there
are definitely lines of action where this way of thinking can threaten me.That’s essentially terrorism, a variation of
what we were seeing a few years ago from radical Islam, which we seem to have
forgotten.
At the present time, it’s not clear who the outside
insurgents are, and how there are so many, and how they are getting into the
cities.Recent news articles have
discredited claims that they are Antifa.There does seem to be credible evidence that white supremacists have posed
as radical Leftists to promote false flag violence. So right now, the actual evidence
(Tim Pool’s videos notwithstanding) suggests that covert white supremacy might
actually being a bigger driver of the unrest than I would have thought possible.However, there are some individual arrests of
people known to be associated with left-wing anarchism, too. (Wikipedia has more information on theexternal violence, as does Joan Coaston, explaining "boogaloo" on Vox.)
So once the looting starts, yes, I favor using force
very quickly.
Nevertheless, there is enormous tenacity among the
legitimate protesters, steadfast through last night’s thunderstorms.I wonder how one million people will get here
Saturday and even where they will stay.
There are two problems worthy of protest.One is the economic inequality and unequal
risk-taking (skin in the game) resulting from the lockdowns. The stock market still seems to go up (maybe
now on vaccine rumors) even as destruction downtown happens.Maybe there is rationalization: the retail stuff
stolen couldn’t be sold right now anyway.
The inequality is not limited to blacks, but still disproportionately
impacts them, as does the medical risk of some jobs and the overall health
status leading to much higher death rates in blacks, some Latinos, and some
indigenous peoples.But the financial
hardship impacts workers of all backgrounds.
The second problem is, of course, the claims, after decades
(and a black president) that police target blacks arbitrarily and this is
especially dangerous for black parents.I have to admit, I heard that once in the mid 1990s from coworkers (and
there would be a lawsuit where I worked that I won’t get into now). This is
what seems to override the usual economic unfairness arguments (which do affect
all groups) and cause demand of attention, even from general interest bloggers
(like me) to this specific outrage. Lack of dedicated attention even from
someone like me is seen by some as a back door invitation for violence by
police (or supremacists) to continue.But this fits into the arguments about radicalization on social media we
have been hearing since Charlottesville.
I do not form emotional attachments to people in a
group as readily as others, but I am seeing that the increase of inequality has
made people much more vulnerable to manipulation by others through their own
participation in tribal groups, which is something I observe but don’t experience
much myself. I do not engage in influencing efforts to get justice only according to group identity.
The media does report that the markets were surprised by the drop in unemployment with some partial reopenings, but blacks did not benefit from reopening nearly as much as whites.
This video by Martin Goldberg is also interesting.
Hoeg Law has an interesting video today exploring the recent
complaints that the Internet Archive commits systematic copyright infringement
and is actually behaving like “copyright pirates”.Remember SOPA?
The Archive (and “Wayback Machine”) is like a digital
library.In a real world, library behavior
was regulated in practice by “the Principle of Exhaustion” or “The First Sale Doctrine”.
That would mean it would pay for a number
of copies and allow only a certain number of them to be opened at the same
time. This sounds like Object-Oriented software: the site's (or book's) content is the class, the copies are the instances.
The same concerns could be made of Google's practice of placing book contents online and indexing them.
I thought of the battles over SOPA at the end of 2011 (the good old days). Remember, the Internet Archive (as well as Wikipedia) fought the European Union's Copyright Directive.
Much of my earlier website activity is stored.As an experiment, I just looked at my old “hppub.com”
as it had been in late July 2003, shortly before I moved back from Minneapolis
to Virginia.
I have sometimes met criticism for “self-competition”,
allowing my books to be browsed free, without ads, and without logon, although
they are sold on Amazon. It gives me covert “influence” under the radar that
some activists (mostly on the Left) see as inappropriate or unethical favoring
those with capital, and that is something that, yes, I am paying attention to.
(I’ve covered before how this line of thinking almost blew up in 2005 in connection
with campaign finance reform). I certainly don't follow the usual expectations of "selling books" as consumer items (and instances).
One other thing to mention: Barack Obama today say he keeps hearing people talk about "voting v. protest" as if it were an "either-or" rather than "both-and". He also talked about "my brother's keeper".
Update: June 9: The Washington Post weighs in with aneditorial on this "piracy" model for an essential public service when the physical world is closed for Clovid.