good take. if this is your canary in the coal mine, you really got some catching up to do.
im even starting to feel that being forced off the giant corporate platforms might be beneficial...all this shit leads to is a delusional belief in the power of #activism.
the left in 2020 after 5 years of shitposting is a nothing compared to what it was in the early 20th century under eugene debbs.
I mean, so what if we know corporations get to decide what speech to allow? Last I checked, we don't control the actions of our enemies. We can no more stop twitter from banning left wing accounts, slapping foreign media labels on everything, just as we cannot stop reddit from banning r/cth. The thing we can control is our response and in the case of the subreddit, it was chapo chat. If anything, we should expect repression, not hope and pray the tech overlords don't turn their reaper laser on us after they're done with the fash. It's likely gonna happen too if we take our ideas seriously.
so long as we have the freedom to purchase domains, organize programmers and operate servers, we have available to us everything the internet offers: a means of communications.
if marxism in america gains any serious traction within our lifetime, theyll come down on us much harder for organizing workers en masse than they do on the right for vandalizing congress.
twitter is a front facing marketing campaign. our presence in the news can do that work for us..........but we're so far away from being a political precense that this twitter shit is what we talk about.
if this is your canary in the coal mine, you really got some catching up to do.
Who can you point to getting removed from social media that is on the level, or even close to the level of, the current president of the United States? The concern is not that they removed this specific president, but that they can remove any current US president at all. It's not contradictory to find it funny that the right is getting owned by their own opinions on private property rights and also be concerned by the fact that this represents a new level of power that we have not truly seen before, or at least not so publicly.
the left in 2020 after 5 years of shitposting is a nothing compared to what it was in the early 20th century under eugene debbs.
I think that's debatable. Debs got, what, 1 million votes in a country of maybe 100 million? Bernie -- admittedly not a full-on socialist, but hey, we've had a century of anticommunist propaganda and two red scares since Debs -- probably got proportionately more in the 2020 primary. And there's been a whole lot more political activity than just posting.
Debs was a boss, no argument here. His courtroom "fuck you I'm not sorry" speech is probably second only to Fidel's, too.
I'm only suggesting that Bernie in 2020 (not libertarians in 2020, lol fuck those losers) had at least comparable support, if not proportionately more support.
honestly coming up blank here. like what? some demonstrators are protecting communities from eviction I guess?
Electoral organizing is organizing, even if you personally disagree with that use of time and resources. And there's been significant amounts of leftist electoral organizing in the past five years (just measuring it from when Bernie kicked off his 2016 run is a sign of how valuable these efforts can be). Plus, if you want to write all of that off as insufficient, this summer we did just have the largest wave of protests (many of which were at least proto-leftist) this country has seen since Vietnam.
Nothing -- we were in this same bad spot yesterday, too. The point isn't that there's a new development here. The point is that because it's in the news and we're all feeling out the right take on the situation, the right take is "oh fuck we shouldn't let corporations control who gets to speak in the public square."
I feel like theres something wrong with calling online spaces the 'public square.'
you know how the term 'free market' evokes a deceptive image of how capitalism is just like a small town where three family owned grocery stores compete and the business with the best service thrives and blah blah blah. the term 'public square' evokes a similarly deceptive image of the 'free market of ideas'; where everyone gets a chance to speak and the best ideas win out.
obviously online spaces are important but I feel like for a while now we've been confusing shitposting with the real work of organizing(hint hint #forcethevote)
this is more or less a pedantic criticism but given how fruitless our online precense has been, maybe we should seriously reevaluate the value of social media.
worst case scenario this is just another minor blow imo. doesnt everyone just coalesce into their echo chamber anyways?
It's absolutely a radical development. Media ownership is more unified than ever, and it's easier than ever for corporations to just shut down or ignore big segments of unpopular public discussion.
As for new, I guess it's "new" in the sense that it's really metastasized in the past decade, but now we're just talking about what "new" means in this context. When this problem came about isn't as important as what to do about it.
This isn't "free speech, even for fascists." It's "we're in bad shape if corporations get to decide who's able to communicate to the masses."
So...what changed exactly?
good take. if this is your canary in the coal mine, you really got some catching up to do.
im even starting to feel that being forced off the giant corporate platforms might be beneficial...all this shit leads to is a delusional belief in the power of #activism.
the left in 2020 after 5 years of shitposting is a nothing compared to what it was in the early 20th century under eugene debbs.
I mean, so what if we know corporations get to decide what speech to allow? Last I checked, we don't control the actions of our enemies. We can no more stop twitter from banning left wing accounts, slapping foreign media labels on everything, just as we cannot stop reddit from banning r/cth. The thing we can control is our response and in the case of the subreddit, it was chapo chat. If anything, we should expect repression, not hope and pray the tech overlords don't turn their reaper laser on us after they're done with the fash. It's likely gonna happen too if we take our ideas seriously.
agreed 100%.
so long as we have the freedom to purchase domains, organize programmers and operate servers, we have available to us everything the internet offers: a means of communications.
if marxism in america gains any serious traction within our lifetime, theyll come down on us much harder for organizing workers en masse than they do on the right for vandalizing congress.
twitter is a front facing marketing campaign. our presence in the news can do that work for us..........but we're so far away from being a political precense that this twitter shit is what we talk about.
Who can you point to getting removed from social media that is on the level, or even close to the level of, the current president of the United States? The concern is not that they removed this specific president, but that they can remove any current US president at all. It's not contradictory to find it funny that the right is getting owned by their own opinions on private property rights and also be concerned by the fact that this represents a new level of power that we have not truly seen before, or at least not so publicly.
I think that's debatable. Debs got, what, 1 million votes in a country of maybe 100 million? Bernie -- admittedly not a full-on socialist, but hey, we've had a century of anticommunist propaganda and two red scares since Debs -- probably got proportionately more in the 2020 primary. And there's been a whole lot more political activity than just posting.
he was more successful than the libertarian party while campaigning from prison. he peaked at 6% in 1912
honestly coming up blank here. like what? some demonstrators are protecting communities from eviction I guess?
Debs was a boss, no argument here. His courtroom "fuck you I'm not sorry" speech is probably second only to Fidel's, too.
I'm only suggesting that Bernie in 2020 (not libertarians in 2020, lol fuck those losers) had at least comparable support, if not proportionately more support.
Electoral organizing is organizing, even if you personally disagree with that use of time and resources. And there's been significant amounts of leftist electoral organizing in the past five years (just measuring it from when Bernie kicked off his 2016 run is a sign of how valuable these efforts can be). Plus, if you want to write all of that off as insufficient, this summer we did just have the largest wave of protests (many of which were at least proto-leftist) this country has seen since Vietnam.
Nothing -- we were in this same bad spot yesterday, too. The point isn't that there's a new development here. The point is that because it's in the news and we're all feeling out the right take on the situation, the right take is "oh fuck we shouldn't let corporations control who gets to speak in the public square."
I feel like theres something wrong with calling online spaces the 'public square.'
you know how the term 'free market' evokes a deceptive image of how capitalism is just like a small town where three family owned grocery stores compete and the business with the best service thrives and blah blah blah. the term 'public square' evokes a similarly deceptive image of the 'free market of ideas'; where everyone gets a chance to speak and the best ideas win out.
obviously online spaces are important but I feel like for a while now we've been confusing shitposting with the real work of organizing(hint hint #forcethevote)
this is more or less a pedantic criticism but given how fruitless our online precense has been, maybe we should seriously reevaluate the value of social media.
worst case scenario this is just another minor blow imo. doesnt everyone just coalesce into their echo chamber anyways?
The article you shared seems to make it out like some sort of new or radical development.
It's absolutely a radical development. Media ownership is more unified than ever, and it's easier than ever for corporations to just shut down or ignore big segments of unpopular public discussion.
As for new, I guess it's "new" in the sense that it's really metastasized in the past decade, but now we're just talking about what "new" means in this context. When this problem came about isn't as important as what to do about it.
Correct. This should be the main focus, not whether people think the issue is trivial or whatever.