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Thread: A free market answer to the facebook/twitter problem.

  1. #1

    A free market answer to the facebook/twitter problem.

    A lot of people here have said we should remove Facebook and Twitter's liability protection for unfairly editing right leaning views. I think the idea of government granted liability protections seems like a bad idea to begin with.

    I would think in a free market, no web site would ever be automatically immune from liability, but the web site could require their members to sign a waiver saying something like "I understand Facebook is not responsible for the postings of it's members and I waive my right to sue."

    So yeah, take away their automatic immunity but let them enter into a contract with their members.

    Edit: As someone pointed out, my solution wouldn't work because non-members could be harmed by something someone posted. But I think the real question is how could Facebook EVER be held liable and not the one doing the posting? Isn't Facebook just a platform? If I had a wall where I let people write graffiti, could I be held liable for someone else's graffiti?
    Last edited by Madison320; 01-23-2021 at 04:18 PM.



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  3. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    A lot of people here have said we should remove Facebook and Twitter's liability protection for unfairly editing right leaning views. I think the idea of government granted liability protections seems like a bad idea to begin with.

    I would think in a free market, no web site would ever be automatically immune from liability, but the web site could require their members to sign a waiver saying something like "I understand Facebook is not responsible for the postings of it's members and I waive my right to sue."

    So yeah, take away their automatic immunity but let them enter into a contract with their members.
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...06#post7014206
    "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

    "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

  4. #3
    Sherman Anti Trust Act for both those 2.

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    A lot of people here have said we should remove Facebook and Twitter's liability protection for unfairly editing right leaning views. I think the idea of government granted liability protections seems like a bad idea to begin with.

    I would think in a free market, no web site would ever be automatically immune from liability, but the web site could require their members to sign a waiver saying something like "I understand Facebook is not responsible for the postings of it's members and I waive my right to sue."

    So yeah, take away their automatic immunity but let them enter into a contract with their members.
    The free market answer is for people to move away from Facebook and Twitter. But simply going to another platform isn't the answer either. The Parler platform itself is getting de-platformed. People need to move to de-centralized social networking protocols instead of some new platform. Take Mastodon for example. (https://mastodon.social/) Mastodon is immune to being "de-platformed." If one Mastodon client is taken off Google or Apple, someone else can just write another one and submit it. Or you can get to Mastodon through a web based client so there's no app. Anyone can host a Mastodon server, so the problem Parler is having with being kicked off of AWS goes away. Bitchute and Lbry.tv are also decentralized though they are done through a blockchain. It's going to take more than free market snake oil to fix the issue. It requires truly free (as in nobody owns it) technology. So many in the liberty movement are so focused on "property rights" that they fail to see that doesn't fix everything. Our communications needs to be based on something that no one person or group of people or corporation or government can actually own and control. You can't easily shut down CB radio because nobody owns it. Social networking needs to be the same.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by parocks View Post
    Sherman Anti Trust Act for both those 2.
    Yeah. The fact that Facebook, Twitter and Google were sharing information about who to deplatform makes there actions ripe for a Sherman antitrust lawsuit regardless of the liability shield.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  7. #6
    No, the free market solution is don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple.

  8. #7
    pocketnet.app


    https://pocketnet.app/danskeee?msoci...1XGWQ8VXokBe3M


    POCKETNET — first fully decentralized social network
    No corporation. Open Source. Nobody can take your subscribers away.
    All advertising revenue goes directly to you as content creator.
    Owned & self-policed by users like you.
    Join the revolution today!

    How is Pocketnet different from...

    Twitter, Facebook, Reddit & other centralized platforms?

    There is no central authority or corporation. Platform is run by equal nodes on a blockchain. All revenue is split between node operators and content creators. Node operators stake Pocketcoin in order to mint blocks with rewards and transactions fees. Half of rewards in each block go to content creators based on ratings their content gathers from users.


    Decentralized platforms like Minds.com and Sola?

    Both of those platforms, while great, are not self-contained. Both are highly dependent on the Ethereum platform, because their tokens are based on ERC-20 Ethereum standard. That means that operations with tokens carry Ether gas fees. Also, those entities have corporations behind them and a corporation will always be a point of centralization due to its economic logic of growing profits. In addition, corporations are exceedingly easy to censor.


    From Steemit?Steemit has its own blockchain, but is a corporate entity with all of the centralization that comes from that.
    Last edited by dannno; 01-23-2021 at 12:50 AM.
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
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    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by parocks View Post
    Sherman Anti Trust Act for both those 2.
    So you wan to fight private censorship with authoritarian big government?

    Anti trust laws are anti free market by definition.

    It sounds like you don't want liberty, just revenge.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    So you wan to fight private censorship with authoritarian big government?
    Yes. The monopolies have been granted, in large part, by the authoritarian big government. I see no reason not to use the power of that same authoritarian big government to do the opposite.

    You are playing a game by a set of rules that no one cares about. You are so obsessed with the property rights of cheaters of that game, you'll wake up in 30 years unable to even own property yourself, still referring to that original rulebook.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Our communications needs to be based on something that no one person or group of people or corporation or government can actually own and control. You can't easily shut down CB radio because nobody owns it. Social networking needs to be the same.
    A lot of things need to be this way IMO.
    "The issue is that you to define the best candidate solely based upon what they stand for." - CaptLouAlbano

    This is the mindset trying to take hold on RPF.

    "Kelly Thomas did this to himself." - FrankRep

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by fcreature View Post
    Yes. The monopolies have been granted, in large part, by the authoritarian big government. I see no reason not to use the power of that same authoritarian big government to do the opposite.

    You are playing a game by a set of rules that no one cares about. You are so obsessed with the property rights of cheaters of that game, you'll wake up in 30 years unable to even own property yourself, still referring to that original rulebook.
    How was Facebook was granted a monopoly?

    Why go half-ass with anti trust laws? Why not just nationalize Facebook and Twitter?
    Last edited by Madison320; 01-23-2021 at 10:11 AM.

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by belian78 View Post
    A lot of things need to be this way IMO.
    You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to belian78 again.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    How was Facebook was granted a monopoly?
    You're unfamiliar with the CIA's role in the meteoric rise of Fedbook?

    Well let's not hijack this thread with it. The site has a search engine.

    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    Why go half-ass with anti trust laws? Why not just nationalize Facebook and Twitter?
    Too late. They just haven't let you in on the secret yet.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    You only want the freedoms that will undermine the nation and lead to the destruction of liberty.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    So you wan to fight private censorship with authoritarian big government?

    Anti trust laws are anti free market by definition.

    It sounds like you don't want liberty, just revenge.
    Corporations are anti free market by definition. Corporations are government licenses to be able to have unlimited growth with limited liability. In your OP you said:

    "I think the idea of government granted liability protections seems like a bad idea to begin with."

    Well...that's exactly what a corporation is. The "platform liability" that people usually complain about here also applies to this forum. The owners have the right to edit user posts, remove user posts, and "de-platform" users. That still doesn't mean the forum owners should be sued if a user posts something that is libel. Allowing, in general, websites to be sued for libel just because they moderate content is not a good idea. However Facebook, Twitter and Google have gone beyond that. They have conspired with each other (now proven) to coordinate their efforts to de-platform. That is not free market. Not even kind of. Parler tried to get around this by creating their own platform as Gab had done before. Predictably Parler has suffered the same fate as Gab. The "platform" being "de-platformed." If evidence comes forward that Apple, Google and Amazon conspired to de-platform the Parler platform that is also anti free market and a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

    Now, let's take a closer look at your solution.

    I would think in a free market, no web site would ever be automatically immune from liability, but the web site could require their members to sign a waiver saying something like "I understand Facebook is not responsible for the postings of it's members and I waive my right to sue."

    Ummm.....that's not the issue. Someone who NEVER uses Facebook could sue Facebook for libel for what some Facebook user posted. And, by extension, someone who's not on RonPaulForums.com could sue RonPaulForums.com for something a member of RonPaulForums.com posted. Let's take PizzaGate or the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. Alex Jones was sued for libel and slander in both those instances. The people who sued Alex Jones were not members of PrisonPlanet or Infowars. They might not have even ever read those sites. Should RonPaulForums.com be liable for members who have in the past posted and argued in favor of those conspiracy theories? Should the fact that people get banned for at times unclear reasons remove that liability protection?
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  17. #15
    They don't have immunity from liability from edits, whatever that would mean

    Their terms of service, which users sign, already say that they can delete or edit posts, ban users, etc.




    What you're saying is already how it works
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Pinochet is the model
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Liberty preserving authoritarianism.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Enforced internal open borders was one of the worst elements of the Constitution.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    The free market answer is for people to move away from Facebook and Twitter. But simply going to another platform isn't the answer either. The Parler platform itself is getting de-platformed. People need to move to de-centralized social networking protocols instead of some new platform. Take Mastodon for example. (https://mastodon.social/) Mastodon is immune to being "de-platformed." If one Mastodon client is taken off Google or Apple, someone else can just write another one and submit it. Or you can get to Mastodon through a web based client so there's no app. Anyone can host a Mastodon server, so the problem Parler is having with being kicked off of AWS goes away. Bitchute and Lbry.tv are also decentralized though they are done through a blockchain. It's going to take more than free market snake oil to fix the issue. It requires truly free (as in nobody owns it) technology. So many in the liberty movement are so focused on "property rights" that they fail to see that doesn't fix everything. Our communications needs to be based on something that no one person or group of people or corporation or government can actually own and control. You can't easily shut down CB radio because nobody owns it. Social networking needs to be the same.
    Decentralization is the future, which is probably why they are trying to criminalize cryptocurrencies -- particularly people who use decentralized-financial exchanges.

    Parler being removed from those platforms is the biggest threat to cryptocurrency's stability. (If they can be removed, theoretically anyone could be!)

    But, the Apple and Google stores are just there for convenience, right? I'm pretty sure you can allow, download, and install from third party sources; although it might be tedious. (Still, de-platforming interferes with convenience, and the ability to do such consolidates great power into the hands of a few, arguably more effectively than government, since the pretext of consent is participating on their platform.)



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Corporations are anti free market by definition. Corporations are government licenses to be able to have unlimited growth with limited liability. In your OP you said:
    Individuals and LLC's also have limited liability, because they can declare bankruptcy.

    Explain to me at what point a business becomes anti free market. An individual owner mowing lawns himself? When he hires employees? When there's more than one owner? When there's 20 owners? When they sell shares of their ownership?



    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Ummm.....that's not the issue. Someone who NEVER uses Facebook could sue Facebook for libel for what some Facebook user posted.
    Good point.

    That being said I can't imagine any scenario where the website host would be liable. How would it not always be the one doing the posting?

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    They don't have immunity from liability from edits, whatever that would mean

    Their terms of service, which users sign, already say that they can delete or edit posts, ban users, etc.




    What you're saying is already how it works
    So if someone posts something libelous on Facebook, Facebook gets sued, not the poster?

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Proph View Post
    Decentralization is the future, which is probably why they are trying to criminalize cryptocurrencies -- particularly people who use decentralized-financial exchanges.

    Parler being removed from those platforms is the biggest threat to cryptocurrency's stability. (If they can be removed, theoretically anyone could be!)

    But, the Apple and Google stores are just there for convenience, right? I'm pretty sure you can allow, download, and install from third party sources; although it might be tedious. (Still, de-platforming interferes with convenience, and the ability to do such consolidates great power into the hands of a few, arguably more effectively than government, since the pretext of consent is participating on their platform.)
    The precedent for what happened to Parler already happened to Gab. For the life of me I don't understand why people didn't see that coming. Parler is (was?) a centralized application / platform. It was just owned by conservatives. True decentralized applications aren't owned by anyone. In contrast to Parler, there are different Mastodon servers. Taking down Mastodon would be like trying to get rid of email.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  23. #20
    Personally I would vote RONPAULFORUMS.com IS the solution to Twitter and Fedbook!

    ... or open your own platform!
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    Individuals and LLC's also have limited liability, because they can declare bankruptcy.
    An LLC is a corporation. And there are limits to individual bankruptcy. If your LLC or corporation goes bankrupt, typically your personal assets aren't touched. A corporation you 100% own can go bankrupt and it not affect your credit. That's not at all true for personal bankruptcy.

    Explain to me at what point a business becomes anti free market. An individual owner mowing lawns himself? When he hires employees? When there's more than one owner? When there's 20 owners? When they sell shares of their ownership?
    When the business model is dependent upon the largess of government. For example, a patent is, by definition, anti free market. So is copyright. It's got nothing to do with the size of the business per se, but government largess allows business to grow larger than they otherwise would. Free market depends in part on risk. The more owners are shielded from risk the less accountable they become. That's the problem

    Good point.

    That being said I can't imagine any scenario where the website host would be liable. How would it not always be the one doing the posting?
    Consider an actual case involving Section 230 of the CDA. Prodigy, an online service from the 1990s, was sued over a libelous message that one of their users posted. The state court found them libel because Prodigy had deleted some messages which, according to the state court's logic, made them an "editor" because they were exercising "editorial control." Prodigy countered that they had 60,000 messages a day and couldn't monitor all of them. They still lost. That's what prompted the passage of Section 230 in the CDA. Congress wanted online services to have a freehand to take down "offensive material" without being opened up to liability. Really Prodigy had a better defense than would RonPaulForums.com if Section 230 was repealed. RPF can't claim there is such a volume of messages that they couldn't all be moderated.

    https://scholar.google.com/scholar_c...en&as_sdt=1003

    Section 230 was prompted by a state court case holding Prodigy[9] responsible for a libelous message posted on one of its financial message boards.[10] See Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Servs. Co., 1995 WL 323710 (N.Y.Sup.Ct. May 24, 1995) (unpublished). The court there found that Prodigy had become a "publisher" under state law because it voluntarily deleted some messages from its message boards "on the basis of offensiveness and `bad taste,'" and was therefore legally responsible for the content of defamatory messages that it failed to delete. Id. at *4. The Stratton Oakmont court reasoned that Prodigy's decision to perform some voluntary self-policing made it akin to a newspaper publisher, and thus responsible for messages on its bulletin board that defamed third parties. The court distinguished Prodigy from CompuServe,[11] which had been released from liability in a similar defamation case because CompuServe "had no opportunity to review the contents of the publication at issue before it was uploaded into CompuServe's computer banks." Id.; see Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe, Inc., 776 F.Supp. 135, 140 (S.D.N.Y.1991). Under the reasoning of Stratton Oakmont, online service providers that voluntarily filter some messages become liable for all messages transmitted, whereas providers that bury their heads in the sand and ignore problematic posts altogether escape liability. Prodigy claimed that the "sheer volume" of message board postings it received — at the time, over 60,000 a day — made manual review of every message impossible; thus, if it were forced to choose between taking responsibility for all messages and deleting no messages at all, it would have to choose the latter course. Stratton Oakmont, 1995 WL 323710 at *3.

    In passing section 230, Congress sought to spare interactive computer services this grim choice by allowing them to perform some editing on user-generated content without thereby becoming liable for all defamatory or otherwise unlawful messages that they didn't edit or delete. In other words, Congress sought to immunize the removal of user-generated content, not the creation of content: "[S]ection [230] provides `Good Samaritan' protections from civil liability for providers... of an interactive computer service for actions to restrict ... access to objectionable online material. One of the specific purposes of this section is to overrule Stratton-Oakmont [sic] v. Prodigy and any other similar decisions which have treated such providers ... as publishers or speakers of content that is not their own because they have restricted access to objectionable material." H.R.Rep. No. 104-458 (1996) (Conf.Rep.), as reprinted in 1996 U.S.C.C.A.N. 10 (emphasis added).[12] Indeed, the section is titled "Protection for `good Samaritan' blocking and 1164*1164 screening of offensive material" and, as the Seventh Circuit recently held, the substance of section 230(c) can and should be interpreted consistent with its caption. Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. v. craigslist, Inc., 519 F.3d 666, ____ (7th Cir.2008) (quoting Doe v. GTE Corp., 347 F.3d 655, 659-60 (7th Cir.2003)).
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    An LLC is a corporation. And there are limits to individual bankruptcy. If your LLC or corporation goes bankrupt, typically your personal assets aren't touched. A corporation you 100% own can go bankrupt and it not affect your credit. That's not at all true for personal bankruptcy.

    When the business model is dependent upon the largess of government. For example, a patent is, by definition, anti free market. So is copyright. It's got nothing to do with the size of the business per se, but government largess allows business to grow larger than they otherwise would. Free market depends in part on risk. The more owners are shielded from risk the less accountable they become. That's the problem
    Yeah, I used to think that way also about liability and other stuff but I realized you can get carried away with it to the point that nothing is free market. At some point you need to make practical decisions about how to handle stuff like bankruptcy and patents and move on.

    Is your solution no declaring bankruptcy? Even for individuals? Not sure what credit score has to do with any of it. That should be up to the private credit companies.

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    So if someone posts something libelous on Facebook, Facebook gets sued, not the poster?
    I may have misinterpreted your first sentence

    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    A lot of people here have said we should remove Facebook and Twitter's liability protection for unfairly editing right leaning views.
    Do you mean that they have protection regarding editing right leaning views, or that their liability protection would be stripped because they unfairly edit?
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Pinochet is the model
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Liberty preserving authoritarianism.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Enforced internal open borders was one of the worst elements of the Constitution.

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    Yeah, I used to think that way also about liability and other stuff but I realized you can get carried away with it to the point that nothing is free market. At some point you need to make practical decisions about how to handle stuff like bankruptcy and patents and move on.

    Is your solution no declaring bankruptcy? Even for individuals? Not sure what credit score has to do with any of it. That should be up to the private credit companies.
    Is my solution to what? Facebook and Twitter? I'm not following you. What I know is this. We do not live in a free market and this country really never has been a true free market. There are aspects of the free market and there are aspects of government control. Trying to make everything fit into a free market lens is not practical. Look at HIPPA. That's government regulation that keeps healthcare providers from selling your private data. OMG! Regulation! Must be evil right? Well....no. No it's not. It is a GOOD thing that there at least some of my personal data that a corporation (or anybody else) collects from me is at least somewhat protected. Someone recently posted a thread about the military buying aggregated cell phone data that's available on the free market without a warrant. Totally constitutional. Maybe a federal law could be passed to keep the U.S. military from being allowed to buy that data, but that wouldn't keep the Chinese government from buying it. As for patents.....do you know why they exist? Hint, it's not to protect the patent holder. It's so the patent holder will make his invention available to the rest of the country so that when the patent runs out other people can make the invention. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes patents are abused. (Drug companies gouging people way past what they need to make a profit just because they have a patent on a life saving drug.)

    Here is the bottom line. Once one realizes that we don't really live in a free market, one can look at the broader issue of freedom! My freedom is not diminished if Facebook an, Google and Twitter get in trouble for secretly sharing data about who they are going to de-platform. Now repealing Section 230 of the CDA would affect my freedom because website, like this one, they I visit from time to time could get shut down without Section 230 CDA protection. That's it. It's simple freedom calculus. It's not hard to figure out.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  29. #25
    There is no "free market" anymore, and to even state there is, is either ignorant or mendacious.
    Our financial system, that is bleeding control into our main street everyday life, is monopolistic capitalism,
    controlled by the permanent oligarchy of the same kith and kin who do not compete against one another.
    Just as John D. Rockefeller said, "competition is sin". - Deuteronomy 23:20.

    To a stranger thou mayest lend in usury, and to thy brother thou dost not lend in usury, so that Jehovah thy God doth bless thee in every putting forth of thy hand on the land whither thou goest in to possess it.


    The irresponsible, foolish mantra of "free markets" was always their lie, the ploy by which they took over.
    Once they took over, dialectic materialism and liberal revolutions decimated all that was good and patriarchal in
    our world - we were made to embrace the game against one another - it was all a set-up.
    Last edited by Snowball; 01-23-2021 at 05:19 PM.

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    A lot of people here have said we should remove Facebook and Twitter's liability protection for unfairly editing right leaning views. I think the idea of government granted liability protections seems like a bad idea to begin with.

    I would think in a free market, no web site would ever be automatically immune from liability, but the web site could require their members to sign a waiver saying something like "I understand Facebook is not responsible for the postings of it's members and I waive my right to sue."

    So yeah, take away their automatic immunity but let them enter into a contract with their members.

    Edit: As someone pointed out, my solution wouldn't work because non-members could be harmed by something someone posted. But I think the real question is how could Facebook EVER be held liable and not the one doing the posting? Isn't Facebook just a platform? If I had a wall where I let people write graffiti, could I be held liable for someone else's graffiti?
    I expect that your waiver idea is already in use.

    I don't actually know for sure. Any time a website puts a wall of text in front of me and says I have to check the box that says I agree in order to enjoy the benefits of the site, I always just check the box without the slightest clue of what I just agreed to.

    It might sound like a bad idea, but it's worked out for me alright so far.

    This works with wives as well, in my experience.

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Invisible Man View Post
    I expect that your waiver idea is already in use.

    I don't actually know for sure. Any time a website puts a wall of text in front of me and says I have to check the box that says I agree in order to enjoy the benefits of the site, I always just check the box without the slightest clue of what I just agreed to.

    It might sound like a bad idea, but it's worked out for me alright so far.

    This works with wives as well, in my experience.


    LOL! Yeah, just show me the damn box to check. I don't even read stuff I'm supposed to, like when I bought my house.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Is my solution to what? Facebook and Twitter? I'm not following you. What I know is this. We do not live in a free market and this country really never has been a true free market. There are aspects of the free market and there are aspects of government control. Trying to make everything fit into a free market lens is not practical. Look at HIPPA. That's government regulation that keeps healthcare providers from selling your private data. OMG! Regulation! Must be evil right? Well....no. No it's not. It is a GOOD thing that there at least some of my personal data that a corporation (or anybody else) collects from me is at least somewhat protected. Someone recently posted a thread about the military buying aggregated cell phone data that's available on the free market without a warrant. Totally constitutional. Maybe a federal law could be passed to keep the U.S. military from being allowed to buy that data, but that wouldn't keep the Chinese government from buying it. As for patents.....do you know why they exist? Hint, it's not to protect the patent holder. It's so the patent holder will make his invention available to the rest of the country so that when the patent runs out other people can make the invention. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes patents are abused. (Drug companies gouging people way past what they need to make a profit just because they have a patent on a life saving drug.)

    Here is the bottom line. Once one realizes that we don't really live in a free market, one can look at the broader issue of freedom! My freedom is not diminished if Facebook an, Google and Twitter get in trouble for secretly sharing data about who they are going to de-platform. Now repealing Section 230 of the CDA would affect my freedom because website, like this one, they I visit from time to time could get shut down without Section 230 CDA protection. That's it. It's simple freedom calculus. It's not hard to figure out.
    After reading the 230 thing I agree with it. It's not really a special protection, it's just sort of pre-defining something.

    Where I probably disagree with you is that I suspect you think corporations are somehow getting a better deal from government than your average individual. This is clearly not the case. For one thing the ratio of money the owners get in dividends is microscopic compared to what the government rakes in especially if you consider all the income tax and social security, etc the corporation pays. And as far as "limited liability", even with that corporations get their asses sued for just about everything that no individual would ever get sued for. And then there's the ex post facto antitrust laws that the government can hammer a corporation with any time it feels like it. In a truly free market system, even without the bankruptcy protections, corporations would be far larger than they are today and that would be a good thing. Corporations have the economies of scale to invent things and build things much cheaper than small businesses. Look around you, how much of the stuff you own is made by a mom and pop business vs a corporation?

    Also don't forget when you're doing your freedom calculus that the owners of a business are individuals as well that should have the identical protections as any other individual.

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by 69360 View Post
    No, the free market solution is don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple.
    This is incredibly simplistic (and rather childish) thinking of the problem that is occurring. It would be that simple if the freedom of association trumped freedom of speech. In fact, both of those things are important. And you don't have to pick one over the other.

    Anyone who has read I, Pencil understands that the economy is a complex series of interactions that end up in the product or service you use. So, when you use any service, you are engaging a long supply chain. In the case of these social media problems, as we have seen, you have the site that could ban you. If they don't drop you, you could have their host deny them service because they wouldn't ban you. If the host isn't working out, you could target banks, or advertisers, or any other myriad of options to deny someone their free speech. Just keep going one step back in the supply chain until you find a weak link.

    We understand, as Americans, that our rights are not granted by a Constitution, but that they are inherent in each individual. The Constitution provides that the government should make no law to infringe on your natural right to free speech. But governments are not the only ones that can violate your rights - in fact, that's why governments are created in the first place. Because others can violate your rights, and people want a body that can help guarantee them.

    If this were simply a freedom of association thing, then you'd be right. But that's not what's been happening. There has been an intent to silence a political viewpoint. Now, these companies are not just amicably breaking ties, they are doing it as a way to violate their right to speech. It comes down to the "good faith" article of 230. It is clear that has been violated, so it must be adjudicated. And it should get a rapid rise to the Supreme Court. "Good faith" needs defined by Constitutional ruling so that all parties engaging in this business understand the rules. The Big Tech companies are trying to have it both ways.
    "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

    "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Madison320 View Post
    After reading the 230 thing I agree with it. It's not really a special protection, it's just sort of pre-defining something.
    Right. Section 230 limited liability isn't the problem. If there was real competition this wouldn't even be an issue. Anti-trust laws are meant to keep real competition going.

    Where I probably disagree with you is that I suspect you think corporations are somehow getting a better deal from government than your average individual. This is clearly not the case. For one thing the ratio of money the owners get in dividends is microscopic compared to what the government rakes in especially if you consider all the income tax and social security, etc the corporation pays. And as far as "limited liability", even with that corporations get their asses sued for just about everything that no individual would ever get sued for. And then there's the ex post facto antitrust laws that the government can hammer a corporation with any time it feels like it. In a truly free market system, even without the bankruptcy protections, corporations would be far larger than they are today and that would be a good thing. Corporations have the economies of scale to invent things and build things much cheaper than small businesses. Look around you, how much of the stuff you own is made by a mom and pop business vs a corporation?

    Also don't forget when you're doing your freedom calculus that the owners of a business are individuals as well that should have the identical protections as any other individual.
    If corporations weren't getting a better deal than sole proprietorships then all businesses would be sole proprietorships or at the very least the largest businesses would be sole proprietorships. These people aren't stupid. LOL @ what the government "rakes in in taxes." How much tax did Donald Trump pay last year? Dividends are taxed at a lower rate than income. That's why Warren Buffet's secretary pays a hire tax rate than he does. And LOL at the "owners of a business are individuals as well that should have the identical protections as any other individual" argument. They have greater protections by the fact that they can shield themselves from liability from their bad corporate decisions.

    Really, I think you're dealing with cognitive dissonance. You can't wrap your mind around the obvious. Unbridled corporate power is a problem. The problem exists because corporate power is, by definition, an extension of government power. The lobbyists for the corporations help draft the laws and they are not drafting those laws to oppress themselves. They draft them to oppress you.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

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