What kind of animal lives in a herd?

The psychological preparation here is to accept random recommendations from pedantic ignoramuses who change their mind every other week, when science and statistics show the recommendations are typically more stupid and harmful than anything, but we are supposed not to notice, because we are a herd.

I suspect the next big power grab will use the term "drone".

In a time where freedoms are eroded for a variety of reason, we all need a voice like Stallman's.

There is Eric Raymond on the list.
Or several Emacs and GCC developers / maintainers (including myself).

I worked with rms personally (a little). You?

> Would you ever have thought one day, back when you created
> your slashdot accounts, you would be DEFENDING richard stallman?

No. And I have a five-digit account.

Just saying...

Those who try to cancel Richard Stallman or Brenden Eich or Markus Persson did not contribute a fraction of what these coding heroes did.

Yes, Richard Stallman's wording in defending the MIT was wrong. But no, it's not worth having him lose his job over it. What it's worth is a strongly argumented rebuttal on the same mailing list, end of story.

Those who have not sinned should throw the first stone.

Remember that they still remember German censorship.

And if you are a US citizen on some sort of high horse, look up Sep 5, 1939.

Hard to see why we would do better with a super-intelligent AI than with a guy throwing bricks at a Starbucks.

The EFF should have been on this ten years ago. Now it's a bit late. The CCP has taken over.

A warning is not the same thing as a valid notice of contract termination with a valid 30 days notice.

Also, double standards much? Twitter was just sued for refusing to remove pedophile content at the request of the victim. https://phoenixwolfj.com/twitt.... Did Amazon warn Twitter about this too?

If you feel a need to remove content, it's probably that you don't have any better response to offer than brute force.

The dangerous evildoers and dictators are not generally the ones being removed. Just saying.

The dictator is usually not the one being silenced, but the one doing the silencing.

For anybody with a bit of knowledge of history, what happened in the past year is eerily similar to what happened when socialist dictators like Mao, Hitler or Lenin took over. And it's once again done in the name of "progressive" socialism. Whoever rejoices today would do well to remember the millions of deaths that followed.

All the historical tactics are there. Control the public dissemination of information (social networks, Media), vast campaigns of disinformation and smear (CNN, Fake News, Jussie Smollett, Nicholas Sandman, Brett Kavanaugh), obvious lies ("Trump did no denounce White Supremacy" when we have at least 39 on-video records of him doing it), control of corporations to coordinate coercitive measures against opponents (Amazon, Google, etc), arbitrary rules applied arbitrarily (ever changing Facebook or Twitter rules), violent thugs in the streets burning and looting with widespread political support (Antifa, BLM), opponents accused of your own misdeeds (Ukraine), abuse of the institutions (Mueller investigation, impeachment, Spygate), voting irregularities (just watch the hearings), and so on, and so on. The most recent example of this parallel is the Capitol Hill events, which to anybody knowing history is painfully similar to the burning of the Reichstag, that Hitler blamed on his opponents and used to gain power.

The question is absolutely not if Amazon is a private business and free do do whatever they please. The real issue here is the obvious coordination between government entities (democrats) and monopolistic corporations. It is not a free speech issue if a corporation alone does it. It is a free speech issue if it does it on behalf of a political party. It was not just Amazon breaching their contract with Parler, it was Twitter and Facebook and several others unpersoning Trump and a large number of his supporters, in an obviously well-planned and coordinated fashion. There was obviously a well-prepared, precisely coordinated attack that involved Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and a few other smaller companies, and it was precisely aligned with the needs of the democrats. If you don't see the problem there, you are young and naive, and the proverbial useful idiot.

It's not like it's a principled revolt either. If it was, Twitter and Facebook would be the first to feel the just wrath from Amazon, given what happened during the Portland "peaceful protests". Twitter would not have immediately erased the call for peace from President Trump, to make sure they could freely spread their lie-filled narrative that he called for violence. In reality, the Capitol intrusion cannot be blamed on Trump supporters, who were busy listening to his speech when it began. So you'd have to believe that this were Trump supporters who did not care much about what Trump had to say. Sure.

The only principle at play here is a power grab.

There was a coup in the United States, and it was not Trump doing it. China just conquered the United States, and many on Slashdot are cheering.

This settles the question: do the CEOs of Big Tech see themselves as more legitimately elected, more representative of We The People, and ultimately more powerful than the president of the United States? It's clear that with all the recent moves in the past four years, they answered, increasingly boldly, with the affirmative. And that should SCARE YOU, folks.

This also settles another question: the era of intelligent debate is definitely over. I wish Facebook and Twitter CEOs had used their platforms to share their viewpoints, to explain why they thought Trump was wrong and all that. Instead, they chose to silence their opponent. I wonder why.

Seriously think about the reason they made that choice. Is it because nobody would listen to them? Can't Zuck send a message that every Facebook user would see? If so, can't he craft a nice rebuttal of what Trump wrote or said? As Scott Adams would say, this is the dog that did not bark. They chose not to do that.

Could it be because Trump is actually...wildly popular, and as a result, the only remaining threat to their power? When Trump invites people to meet somewhere, thousands show up. Can you seriously imagine anybody else, Jack, Mark or even Joe, achieving the same result? When was the last time we saw a large Biden rally? Or a large popular Zuckerberg meeting with a wild crowd happily cheering at his jokes and jabs?

But here is the more annoying problem. Facebook and Twitter didn't just choose the easy path. More importantly, they abused their power. They silenced an opponent, rather than argue and debate him. That's really a sign of weakness. At the very least, it signals the weakness of their argument. More probably, it highlights the weakness of their whole political proposition.

Think about it. Trump too could have chosen to abuse his power in the same way. Would you be cheering if he had gotten Zuckerberg or Dorsey arrested on some weak pretence? It's not like he did not have a precedent, with Obama vs. D'Souza. But why stop here, if we consider the power Trump really has, i.e. the kind of order he could have given but chose not to. How hard would it really be for the NSA to sneakily block or destroy the infrastructure of these tech giants, with "plausible deniability" for Trump to boot? Or if you prefer more spectacular abuses of power, to bomb a data center or two out of existence while making it look like a terrorist attack or hardware malfunction? If you think states don't do this kind of shit, I have a Rainbow Warrior ship to sell to you.

Obviously, Trump did not make any of these choices. Mark and Jack, on the other hand, by choosing their own little nuclear option, are the ones who ultimately abused their power. So in that situation, Trump is the good guy.

Additionally, anybody who thinks that it's "about time" or "great news" or whatever is really short-sighted or has a very bad knowledge of history. Burning books or killing heretics is generally frowned upon by reasonable people, for good reasons, and I don't see on-line censorship as being any different. Anybody who still think tech giants are only attacking Trump is a fool. It's not just random chance or conspiracy theory if so many right-wing people complain about them. The current social credit system in China tells us in which direction this is going.

The Slashdot crowd used to be all about free software, about the exchange of ideas. It's sad to see that it morphed into a place where comfortable censorship is preferred by some to mildly uncomfortable debate. By the time you wake up to what is really happening, it will be way too late.

I'm a bit concerned about all the people who believe they single-handedly hold the truth. Even more so when these people are arguably in a monopoly position.

YouTube is not a truth holder. Their judgement is often quite bad, actually.

This is not exactly a new theory.

There is a good variant in Calvin & Hobbes: the proof there is intelligent life in the universe is that they are not trying to visit us.