Right, but Congress votes along party lines so that isn’t much of a remedy. The remedy is just as flawed as the process that leads to political bad acting in the first place. That’s why people look to a (supposedly) non-partisan body like SCOTUS to resolve the issue, and why SCOTUS becoming partisan is such a big deal.
But your larger point that the system has broken down is well-taken. Much of how government functions successfully is based on unspoken conventions and norms of behavior. When a large proportion of the population actually WANTS someone like Trump, you have a very serious problem. No democratic structure or form of government can save the people from themselves forever. Sure, gerrymandering and other dirty tricks make a difference, but at the end of the day Trump really will get almost half the vote. He’s not the representative of some small fringe party who managed to ride a crazy set of circumstances to power, like Hitler did. Trump represents one of only two major parties and will legitimately get support from right around half of those who vote, which is just crazy when you think about it.
What the actual fuck happened that we stand on the precipice of such madness?
We repealed the fairness doctrine; didn’t obliterate Fox News when it was obvious they were party propaganda fraudulently representing themselves; gave social media a license to be neither publisher nor public utility under regulations; and made bribery legal in Citizens United.
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
As far as section 230 goes, that is by far the least problematic, and take note how the vast majority of efforts to remove it come from conservatives who appear to me to be annoyed that their views are being called out as harmful or hateful.
Right, but Congress votes along party lines so that isn’t much of a remedy. The remedy is just as flawed as the process that leads to political bad acting in the first place. That’s why people look to a (supposedly) non-partisan body like SCOTUS to resolve the issue, and why SCOTUS becoming partisan is such a big deal.
But your larger point that the system has broken down is well-taken. Much of how government functions successfully is based on unspoken conventions and norms of behavior. When a large proportion of the population actually WANTS someone like Trump, you have a very serious problem. No democratic structure or form of government can save the people from themselves forever. Sure, gerrymandering and other dirty tricks make a difference, but at the end of the day Trump really will get almost half the vote. He’s not the representative of some small fringe party who managed to ride a crazy set of circumstances to power, like Hitler did. Trump represents one of only two major parties and will legitimately get support from right around half of those who vote, which is just crazy when you think about it.
What the actual fuck happened that we stand on the precipice of such madness?
We repealed the fairness doctrine; didn’t obliterate Fox News when it was obvious they were party propaganda fraudulently representing themselves; gave social media a license to be neither publisher nor public utility under regulations; and made bribery legal in Citizens United.
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
As far as section 230 goes, that is by far the least problematic, and take note how the vast majority of efforts to remove it come from conservatives who appear to me to be annoyed that their views are being called out as harmful or hateful.
It seems that way but they couldn’t use algorithms the way they do without section 230 to shield them.
And yeah I didn’t realize it was the mobile link. I’ll keep an eye out for that in the future.
Yeah, content algorithms aren’t great, but revoking section 230 isn’t the way to solve that.
I don’t think just repealing it is the answer either. But the way it is written and implemented is absolutely a part of the problem.