1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints.
2. Instead of changing people’s minds (isn’t the evidence overwhelmingly conclusive that people rarely change political viewpoints?), people flock to “community bubbles” like Parler, TheDonald, etc where they feel welcome.
3. This marginalisation leads to increasing extremism; going from the likes of “immigrants bad” we saw in 2016 to disputing and attempting to overturn democracy.
> 1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints.
For the most part, those "viewpoints" are verifiable falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and other types of disinformation and misinformation. For instance, the recent migrations to Parler are chiefly people who want to deny the legitimate US presidential election result and spread false claims of widespread vote fraud.
Using the term "viewpoint" like you did is misleading, since it has the effect of making literal lies sound like legitimate differences of opinion.
> 3. This marginalisation leads to increasing extremism; going from the likes of “immigrants bad” we saw in 2016 to disputing and attempting to overturn democracy.
Eh, not so much. A lot of the recent "increasing extremism" (for instance QAnon and Boogaloo Bois), occurred on mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter. While pushing crazies and extremists to places like Gab and Parler probably radicalizes many of them further, it also isolates them from the wider community, which helps reduce their ability to recruit new people into their lunacy.
So what? People should be free to discuss stupid and wrong ideas.
Btw: I think conspiracy theories are good indicators for what certain people want to believe. I personally don't want to be disconnected from these indicators.
> So what? People should be free to discuss stupid and wrong ideas.
And they are, but if they want to do it on Twitter, Twitter gets to have its say as well. However, the conspiracy theorists don't seem to like it when Twitter exercises its rights by labeling their tweets, like in this case.
As for why this matters, people who want to live in functioning democracies have a strong interest in making sure the truth prevails in public discourse, and that lies find the habitat difficult.
ask jim watkins or weev or dick masterson about that.
alternative platforms get to exist on a small scale as long as they maintain obscurity, but as soon as old media releases a black pr scarepiece, they get Esther Aronowitz'ed pretty quickly.
>people who want to live in functioning democracies have a strong interest in making sure the truth prevails in public discourse, and that lies find the habitat difficult.
i think you will find that every conspiratorial thinker completely agrees with that sentiment.
"Twitter gets to have it's say" Free speech is more than just a law... it's an idea and a philosophy.
Part of making sure "truth prevails" is having open discourse about topics. That involves people with "Wrong" ideas the ability to talk.
When platforms like Facebook and Twitter become the arbiter of what's "right"? Then people will leave those platforms because lawfully they have the "right" to censor their platform... but people WILL talk about it elsewhere.
Facebook/Twitter may win this "battle" by purposefully influencing an election by hiding disinformation they disagree with (while allowing disinformation they are okay with)... but they'll lose the war as other platforms gain momentum and legitimacy.
The internet will route itself around the censorship.
What place does someone with the delusion that '2+2=7' have in 'prevailing the Truth'. Such a person only frustrates that search for truth. They don't make the outcome faster, easier or more true, do they?
What place does "russian collusion" have? because "2+2=7" is provably true/false... but Russian collusion? not so much... meanwhile, it's "truth" that's allowed to be spoken of without repercussion...
Because life isn't as simple as "2+2=7"... it's opinions and people saying "my opinion is valid and yours is banned from open discussion".
Because I can find plenty of examples of stuff that isn't as clear as flat-earthers or pizzagate that's being blocked from public discorse.
Ok, but let's start with stuff that is provably false, yet is debated all along.
For example: There is a climate crisis. This is a scientifically proven fact, not an opinion. Yet people deny it, often with the argument "I'm entitled to this opinion." No. You are not, because it is not an opinion; at most it is a delusion, at worst it is a lie (that you might honestly believe in). This is a 2+2=4 situation, or as near as one can get; yet one that even heads of "modern" states keep saying that is anything but 4.
Once we start from the basis that "there is a climate crisis", we can move forward, make choices and so on. A choice might be "it's there, but we're not going to do anything against it, because our economy". That is effective. (albeit something I would have a strong opninion about). At least others can still move forward.
But stating it does not exist (which is provably untrue) really harms effectiveness a lot.
> Part of making sure "truth prevails" is having open discourse about topics. That involves people with "Wrong" ideas the ability to talk.
Yes, but for that to work, the discourse has to between people who are actually seeking out the truth and who have the ability to recognize it. Dead-enders and nutjobs fighting to spread (often obvious) lies do not qualify.
Is their competition a medium like mobile calls and text messages? Or is their competition curated content streams like newspapers or cable news networks?
Legally, maybe the distinction doesn't need to be made, but I think users of social media deserve to know up front what they're in for.
Once Twitter has a say it becomes a publisher not a platform. There is no practical difference between writing a piece yourself and choosing which piece to publish out of thousands other people write. After all you can always claim something you write was submitted by an anonymous donor.
Twitter is a publisher and should be responsible for all that it publishes including calls for violence which it regularly features.
> many other places were pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy theory.
I might be out of touch but isn't it fairly established at this point that - for certain definitions of "collusion" - it was factually true?
i.e. not "Trump got together with Putin and hatched a plan" true but "both sides obliquely acknowledged the interests of the other with a nod and a wink" true?
Literally the only reason "oh it was just not true" is a prevailing bit of logic is because no one in power has cared to do a single thing about it, or even so much as announce that it's in no way acceptable.
No - I'm saying in addition to "Russia prefers Trump at the helm", there was some (direct or indirect) contact between the two parties and some awareness and (implicit or explicit) encouragement from the Trump camp for Russian actions.
Surely there is a meaningful distance between that and your formulation?
How are they “verifiable” falsehoods? E.g., conspiracy theories are famous for being almost always unfalsifiable. These views usually are a mix of low prior hypotheses, politically incorrect semi-truths, marketing propaganda (with few empirical assertions), and lies.
Like the knowledge that the Mueller investigation got criminal convictions on a number of Trump associates including Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rick Gates and a couple dozen Russians?
Not sure why you're down voted. It's a good example. The whole "Saddam was buying yellowcake" was completely false, yet the only evidence was a gov't statement saying it was true.
If someone said "that's a lie", it would likely have been viewed as disinformation, but it would have been the truth.
Not sure why you're being downvoted either. This scenario is completely true and it absolutely would've been marked as disinformation by Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. It's being marked as disinformation now by Hacker News members without any actual discussion as to why. It's a very valid scenario and a great topic of discussion.
And... That's fine I think. Nobody actually knew that, even though many suspected it. Less strict versions of that sentence would be completely fine. Discussing the details of things like their secret rooms at internet exchanges and countermeasures in case it was true would be great too.
But it's like people saying "MS is selling all your behaviour data" today, which is likely partially true, but not quite in that way. And when they take that extreme position without having something to back it up, it's hard to / not worth discussing.
I agree, but the situation is symmetrical. Parler is removing liberal memes (unsure if it’s automatic moderation after flagging - but that doesn’t really matter as the outcome is the same).
I could agree with a lot of this... the problem for me though is it always comes back to actually enforcing this stuff.
I already know I sinned by trying to have a productive conversation of twitter, however when "talking" with a few self proclaimed communists (no, I don't think they were joking) they basically implied the "rich" deserve to die, they were morally allowed to kill them, etc. IIRC, this was on a post about a teachers union displaying a guillotine and I pretty much said "yea, lets not be like this." There was also some racism thrown in there, I guess for good measure. They seem to have even developed their own "secret language", calling white people 'mayos' and 'yts' - maybe to get around filters? Or just to be extra edgy.
I would argue that pushing some justification of murdering fellow citizens because of their net worth is just as dangerous as the insane conspiracies about lizard people... if not more. Yet, I don't think these things are shut down or given the same standards as what you're thinking of.
I wish for twitter (and everyone else's sake) they equally applied their "TOS". I have no need to go to those sites you mentioned... in fact I can't think of anything less productive but on the flip side of the coin, I've pretty much deleted twitter for the same reason.
I'm sure it must have been terrifying but overall I'd rather have the real war, Poor v Rich , than the deluded Poor v Poor. It would be over quickly and we won't even lose anything of value.
No, there really isn’t. Election fraud happens all the time, but there is zero evidence of it happening in any quantities here that would change anything about the results.
No, there's not. This is the point. The people driving these conspiracies are applying statistical techniques poorly and then parroting their claims on social media.
I've dug a fair bit into the statistic based claims and most of them just don't hold much water. The benfords law one that picked up steam being the main one I dug into, I even made a nice repo with fancy graphs but the meme had died out by the time I finished so I never shared it. However the main summary was "Benfords law just doesn't work for proportions of a precinct"
However, if we want to go deeper into the rabbit hole, if there was a coup to steal the election I'd expect there to be ample fake claims of election stealing that would be easy to debunk.
If your idea of a solution includes people arguing with other folks about whether or not their humanity should be recognized, then you will be surprised when no one meets you halfway. It's a horribly simple bad faith argument that anyone should try to "convince" or coddle folks who hold signs such as
>"Coming for Blacks and Indians first welcome to the New World Order."
I wouldn't downplay where they were in 2016. TD was crawling with things like Pinochet helicopter kill all leftists, celebrating punching protestors. Their "community bubbles" were never a place to respectfully disagree about immigration policy which you can and always have been able to do on whatever platform you like.
This is certainly a line of thinking. Of course the alternative is:
1. Tech platforms were too slow with limiting extremist viewpoints
2. Instead of keeping extremist views isolated, this allowed them to pick up more support. These groups continue to move more and more extreme, and more popular.
3. Delays in taking action to prevent the spread of these views allowed the combination of extremism and popular support that empowered people to make outrageous claims.
Of course, the presidential bully pulpit being used to stoke these ideas didn't help. We could argue about which of these mis more likely all day.
I agreed with you until the last paragraph, where it became clear that your problem isn’t with extreme views in general, just the sort of extreme views Trump is likely to endorse. That’s exactly the bias that people behind Parler aim to exploit (or provide an escape from, depending on your view)
Common, plenty of extreme left content and people were suppressed. It is just that each group complains primary about own suppression and never able suppression of other groups. And extreme left groups are also smaller.
I was discussing the exact same set of views as the parent: those espoused on "Parler, TheDonald, etc" (and also subtly objecting to the parent's proposed timeline. The_donald started self-radicalizing long before it was quarantined. In fact, it was the radicalization that took place in the Donald that led to its subsequent quarantine and removal).
I certainly do take issue with extreme views on the other side, but those views are usually things like crystal healing, not Coups.
I imagine this view will not be looked on with approval, but the ethos espoused by the BLM cadre is explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-police. To many who are right of center, that looks like an extreme left-wing view that is not only tolerated by tech and social media companies, but actively promoted. It’s not all crystals and homeopathy.
Well, it is those things, but it's not explicitly pro violence, it's anti racist, and it's not based on lies or misrepresentation. In each case the inciting incidents actually happened and in many we have footage.
I think many on the right under estimate how much slack the right really do get from Twitter and YouTube. Refusing to ban bannon after he called for the execution of the FBI director (does that count as anti police?)
> it's not based on lies or misrepresentation. In each case the inciting incidents actually happened and in many we have footage.
To play devil's advocate a little: BLM's ideology (the core activists, not the average supporter) is based on a specific view of anti-racism — critical race theory. CRT is not the only way to think about race, and many would argue it's a bad way to think about it: it's illiberal, divisive, wedded to ideologically left-wing ideas about power and social relations, and not particularly amenable to evidence-based thinking. In fact, it could be argued that the CRT is a huge misrepresentation.
Furthermore, while each of the "inciting incidents" did happen, so did hundreds more involving every racial combination of police and victim you can think of. It is a misrepresentation to focus on a subset of incidents because it moves focus from the actual cause of the problem. It is not racist police. It is poorly trained, unaccountable, and psychologically unsuited police officers. You could drum every racist police officer out, make every one of them take the knee and attend endless mandatory bias classes until only dyed-in-the-wool CRT advocates are left, and these incidents would keep happening until training and recruitment undergo a radical change.
Moderate right-wing people don't oppose or fear "anti-racism" or the support it receives in the corporate world because they are racist, but because they think i) It doesn't work and can't work, ii) it's a bad diagnosis, iii) it leads to socially damaging second order effects.
> The problem goes further than the police into the prosecutors
Yes.
> Hence the refusal to prosecute in cases of murder by police of black people.
No. They refuse to prosecute cases of murder by police regardless of race. The race of the person killed is largely irrelevant, which is the point I was making in the previous comment. Black officers aren't prosecuted, white officers aren't prosecuted. They aren't prosecuted when they kill white people or people of color. The problem is that police (and the prosecutors) aren't accountable, and they know it.
You make it about race rather than accountability and the problem will not be fixed.
Certainly one can imagine that. But do you really think, upon more than a cursory examination, that you'll see Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg actively arguing for an end to capitalism as we know it?
I mean they're anti-union.
I'm also not clear about the equivocation you're making. Being anti-capitalist or "anti-American-police", even if we take those at face value, while certainly extreme in the modern American political sphere, aren't on a global scale, nor is it advocating for political violence (which we've seen not only advocation for, by both the Trump and his supporters), but actual real-world attempts at smaller-scale violent coups[0].
This runs into the philosophical questions of what "extremism" is, and whether or not it's socially constructed, and I think an important takeaway is that there are tons of reasonable, "objective" measures, by which abstract anti-capitalist sentiment is fine, and calls for defunding the police are fine, while false claims of election fraud are not. A platform choosing an independent, objective measure by which to judge extremism and then having one group go off the deep end doesn't make the platform biased against that group, it makes that group more extreme by the objective measures.
Even if a person doesn't understand Critical Race Theory, or is afraid of the "socialism" boogeyman or whatever, people advocating for socialism, modern anarchism, or critical approaches in politics[1] aren't usually doing so violently, and those that do are usually deplatformed as well.
Like in your followup to another user you get into the weeds on CRT, and your conclusion was "You make it about race rather than accountability and the problem will not be fixed." Which okay, that's a fair view. Ultimately I disagree. I think a rising tide lifts all boats, and among white-middle class people police apologia is so strong that you're never going to get popular support. So gathering support among minorities is the best you can do (and I'll add, reasonable levels of support amongst Republicans and white people as well, Black Lives Matter is, if I'm reading the polling correctly, more popular than Joe Biden). But even ignoring all of that, so what? Does that mean that a site should remove that content? Does it at all compare to right wing content that is removed?
[1]: which are really just a lighter version of the modern anarchism take and, I should add, should be super popular on HN because they resemble libertarianism a surprising amount
> 1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints.
Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s many of these large companies billed themselves as open platforms where you can express yourself. Twitter's Jack Dorsey said in 2012 that "We are the free speech wing of the free speech part". Now he says it was joke.
The terms of service on these platforms appears to be enforced selectively, information appears to be selectively censored and a lot of the time it appears to be based on their politics. Also a lot of internet jokes that have been around for years are being censored because the people doing the moderation don't understand the odder internet subcultures.
So It isn't just tech platforms being uncomfortable with certain viewpoints. It a combination of things that make it seem that these companies are censoring viewpoints (some not even that extreme) on one side of the political spectrum. That is what people are complaining about.
> people flock to “community bubbles” like Parler, TheDonald, etc where they feel welcome.
This isn't true. People are removed from platforms and go to another service where they won't be censored or banned and then a bubble forms.
> 3. This marginalisation leads to increasing extremism; going from the likes of “immigrants bad” we saw in 2016 to disputing and attempting to overturn democracy.
This is a strawman of what these people believe. The vast majority of American conservatives and Trump supporters I know don't say "immigrants are bad". They said "Illegal Immigrants are bad". There is a very important difference. The former is clearly xenophobia, the latter is not.
As for "over turning democracy". They see that there was a lot of odd things that seemed to happening upto and including election night. They feel that there has been voter fraud. Whether that is true or not I have no idea and it looks like it will be settled in court. But they believe they are preserving democracy not overturning it.
> As for "over turning democracy". They see that there was a lot of odd things that seemed to happening upto and including election night.
Wow, seems like the people who voted for a candidate who said that mail-in voting was a hive of fraud for six months before an election were less likely to vote by mail, leading to a huge number of mail-in ballots being cast for the opposing candidate. Odd.
Like I'm not sure where these people were getting their news, but literally every news paper pointed out that this would happen, and it did.
> Wow, seems like the people who voted for a candidate who said that mail-in voting was a hive of fraud for six months before an election were less likely to vote by mail, leading to a huge number of mail-in ballots being cast for the opposing candidate. Odd.
That isn't what they are complaining about though e.g There are saying that some areas have very high turnout (over 95%) in specific counties. Even in countries with mandatory voting you don't get past 95% of the population voting. I haven't looked into these claims myself. So I have no idea if they are true.
Same day registration appears to account for most of this. Normally the registered voters count is from the start of a month, so same day registration can make the numbers look really weird.
I don’t think you have captured their take on immigration correctly. If it is only illegal immigration that is bad, that would mean that changing the law to make them legal would solve the problem. But that’s not what they want.
They don't say illegal immigrant is bad as a legal status (so that merely changing the law to make everyone legal would make it ok).
They say that illegal immigrants are bad for the same reason that the lawmakers made a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants: to place quota, immigration criteria, and so on.
> This isn't true. People are removed from platforms and go to another service where they won't be censored or banned and then a bubble forms.
I’m not sure the bulk of the people currently flocking to Parler were ones who were removed from Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit. Especially when they use those sites to announce their move.
I said "censored or banned". Enough people are getting censored and they are moving. A lot of people that were conservative talking heads that were banned went on parler as that really is the only alternative that is getting traction at the moment.
So I am quite sure that there is a good bulk of people that are going there for those reasons. In anyevent it feels that a line has been crossed.
Also, he attacked accepting refugees from certain high-risk countries (which had been designated as such by the Obama administration).
He didn’t say “immigrants bad.”
> Kaine has embellished the controversy by saying Trump has said "all Mexicans are rapists." The Democrat doesn’t come close to proving his claim; all of the Trump quotes Kaine’s campaign sent us pertain to unauthorized immigrants crossing the Mexican border into the U.S.
> Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.
Journalists can’t help allowing their point of view to influence their reporting. But when someone can just pull up as transcript and say “well he didn’t really say that” that damages the credibility of the media. Even if what he actually said was wrong or bad on its own merits. This is what drives people to alternative media silos, and that’s bad because people are no longer operating from the same facts.
I don't believe Clinton ever attacked the integrity of the election process itself. She did claim (and as far as I'm aware the investigations more or less supported the claims) that the Trump campaign colluded with foreign governments to influence the election.
Russia Collusion itself is an attack on the legitimacy of Trumps presidency - just like election fraud is an attack on the legitimacy of a Biden presidency.
The muller report found collusion between the trump campaign and the Russian government. It also found obstruction of justice by both the Trump campaign and Trump Whitehouse. What is up for discussion is if it found criminal collusion on the part of Trump, which it might have but stopped short of explicitly stating for political, not criminal, reasons (Muller did not feel he was able to indict a sitting president).
This is actually true (god I hate agreeing with Trump/the GOP).
Collusion was not proven, and the left-wing media went completely overboard on this.
Did Russia want Hillary Clinton to lose? Yes.
Did the Trump campaign meet with Russian operatives? Yes.
Did they collude with Russians? No, not in a legal sense.
Was the determining factor in the election Russian interference? No, it was almost certainly the NYT covering the James Comey investigation into Hillary's emails in the last week.
Mind you, if I were a Russian disinformation specialist, I would be very proud of how the American people took up my insanities (on both sides) and ran with them.
> Was the determining factor in the election Russian interference? No, it was almost certainly the NYT covering the James Comey investigation into Hillary's emails in the last week.
Keep in mind the entire Hillary's emails thing may have stemmed from Russian foreign intelligence work.
Again, lots of speculation around this, no reasonable evidence in favour.
Like, I'm not American (and I would have voted for Sanders twice if I was), but the core issue here is that people are focusing on conspiracy-like theories to explain their loss in elections, rather than trying to understand where the other side is coming from.
>but the core issue here is that people are focusing on conspiracy-like theories to explain their loss in elections
Yeah liberals did with Russiagate in 2016, then Trump supporters will probably run with something into 2020. It's a convenient distraction from material policies.
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out” - Hillary Clinton
Seems like Trump has taken her advice.
At this point she really should just retire from politics and spend her hundreds of millions of dollars living the good life. She doesn’t do Democrats any favors.
So are you claiming that Clinton's suggestion that we wait until absentee ballots are included before letting someone claim victory is "disputing ... democracy", or are you trying to change the subject to something else?
Nobody is “disputing democracy” at this point. Bush vs Gore took an entire month to sort out.
Hillary said this might drag out for a while... and she was right, it is. That’s fine. We have a process for this; no need to be melodramatic.
Biden has almost assuredly won, but first there will be some court cases and recounts simply because it was extremely close. That’s a good thing for Democracy.
That was a difference of around 500 votes out of nearly 6 million, which was around 0.009%. That's well within the range you can get with just the ordinary counting error. It is not at all uncommon for a recount to reverse a lead that small.
In addition, Florida at the time was using a lousy ballot marking system that caused many ballots to fail to register that the voter had tried to vote in the Presidential race. Neither side disputed this. The dispute was over how to address it.
Are you really comparing that to trying to challenge in several states where the difference is well outside ordinary counting error and there is no evidence of sufficient voting irregularities to come anywhere near changing the winner in those states?
There is a lot more to it than that. There had already been a machine recount in Florida, and Bush won that one as well. What Gore did was use a loophole in Florida law to pursue a dubious recount strategy. He demanded hand recounts only in four counties he had won by large margins. That tilted the recount in his favor: hand recounts will find more discernible votes than machine counting, and by only requesting recounts in counties that where the base rate of Gore votes was very high, most of those newly-counted votes would be for Gore. Even WaPo called out this strategy as obviously unfair: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2000/11/18/o...
> But there's a danger to Mr. Gore's eventual legitimacy too, if this extraordinary story eventually results in his election. The recounts will now go forward in three counties--Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. That at least was the situation as of last night. All three of those jurisdictions are heavily Democratic and voted heavily for Mr. Gore; the recount is thus tilted in his favor.
> The Gore campaign, however, viewed the absentee mili- tary ballots received between Election Day and November 17 as a lethal threat. Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican candi- date, who had lost Florida, nonetheless had received a hefty majority of the military absentee vote. Bush would likely top 60 percent at a time when he already enjoyed a 300-vote margin, which Gore was seeking to erase with selective recounts.
> He demanded hand recounts only in four counties he had won by large margins. That tilted the recount in his favor: hand recounts will find more discernible votes than machine counting, and by only requesting recounts in counties that where the base rate of Gore votes was very high, most of those newly-counted votes would be for Gore
So recount all the counties.
But that's beside the point, which was that we know there were severe problems with the 2000 Florida vote due to a large number of dimpled or hanging chads, meaning that votes were being counted by the machines as being omitted where the voter intended to and thought they had voted, and poorly designed butterfly ballots that appear to have led to many people to mix up the Gore hole and Buchanan hole (and led about 19k people to punch both holes, since both were next to Gore).
There's nothing like that for 2020, where Trump is claiming the vote was fraudulent but keeps failing to actually bring up any evidence in court.
There was a statewide machine recount, and Bush won that too. Gore never asked for a statewide recount. He pursued a selective recount strategy, and in the process burned half the time available to certify the results. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/05/bush-v-gore-fake-news...
> But that's beside the point, which was that we know there were severe problems with the 2000 Florida vote due to a large number of dimpled or hanging chads, meaning that votes were being counted by the machines as being omitted where the voter intended to and thought they had voted
That sort of thing happens in every election. An MIT analysis found that about 2% of ballots in a large sample set from 1988-2000 showed no vote for President: https://news.mit.edu/2001/voting1
Normally that doesn’t matter. As long as you apply a uniform standard, like the machine count, the error affects all parties equally.
What Gore did was turn that fact of vote counting into an election strategy. He realized that by demanding hand recounts under subjective standards, he could gin up more votes from that pool of 2%. And by demanding hand recounts only in Democratic counties, he could ensure that these new votes would disproportionately go to him. And even when the Florida Supreme Court smacked him down and ordered a statewide recount, he vigorously pursued a strategy of convincing Democratic counties to adopt looser counting standards, and indeed standards that shifted mid-count: http://electoralcollegehistory.com/electoral/florida/00837-2...
> In Palm Beach, if the hand counters saw a card with several punches on it, and a dimple near Al Gore’s name, the election officials did not count it because that voter knew how to punch a card and did not punch a hole next to Mr. Gore. The machine worked correctly when it did not read it.
> Not so in Broward County. If some of the vote counters saw several clean punches for Democrats and no punch for Gore, not even an indentation, but they saw a “scratch” near his name, they called it for Gore
> The state attorney general, a Gore elector, argued that “never before the present election had a manual recount been conducted on the basis of the contention that ‘undervotes’ [ballots with no punches on them] should have been examined to determine voter intent.”
That’s why all this stuff about hanging chads and pregnant chads and whatnot mattered at all. Ordinarily, those errors should cancel out. It’s only when you try to get a selective recount, or pursue different counting standards in different counties, that this matters.
Ultimately, Gore handed the Supreme Court a giant mess. The Justices agreed 7-2 that the recount that was ongoing at Gore’s request was unconstitutional.
> and poorly designed butterfly ballots that appear to have led to many people to mix up the Gore hole and Buchanan hole (and led about 19k people to punch both holes, since both were next to Gore).
> Nobody is “disputing democracy” at this point. Bush vs Gore took an entire month to sort out.
The trump campaign is literally putting forth the unfounded conspiracy theory that Democratic-party-affiliated groups some how placed fraudulent ballots, and that this is the only reason Trump lost.
> Biden has very likely won, but first there will be some court cases and recounts simply because it was extremely close.
There aren't actually. Biden doesn't need to carry any states with recounts to win. Pennsylvania isn't going to a recount, nor is Arizona. Even if GA and Wisconsin flip on a recount, Biden has carried the electoral college. All of the court cases so far have have been thrown out or withdrawn.
Despite this, Trump continues to claim that there was election fraud (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13277501276798894...), even after his own lawyers have dropped suits in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and have yet to, in any suit in any state, provide an example of fraud. There's no substance to his claims, and when in front of a judge, the lawyers admit that. And yet.
comparing margins for EC and popular vote does not really capture how close a US presidential election was. you can easily have a blowout in the EC that was determined by a <1% lead in a few key states. popular vote is an interesting stat, but not very meaningful under the current rules.
Oh c’mon. “Don’t concede under any circumstances” is a lot stronger of a statement than “wait for absentee ballots to be counted.” She was reinforcing accusations that she and folks like Jerry Nadler made that Trump would try to “rig” the election.
In context it really isn't. I think it was misguided, but her entire concern was that trump would attempt to mess with absentee ballots and get the race called before they were counted. By any account, he's done both. He hasn't really succeeded, in the "popular" sphere (although he's still delaying the Biden transition from starting, which is bad for the entire country), but if the race had been a bit closer his claims of "well overturn the results on a recount" might ring truer, especially if news organizations weren't able to call the races.
Also worth mentioning that, while I can't find the full clip of the quote anywhere, some of the reporting on it seems to imply that the question she was responding to was if Biden should concede on election night, and the answer was under no circumstances. That really strains the whole "disputing democracy" thing.
When Donald Trump launched his campaign he said; “ When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
How else is one to take this? He said some are good people implying the majority are not despite evidence to the contrary.
He was specifically talking about Mexicans crossing the border illegally. Are you saying majority of people who cross the border illegally are good people?
Most "good people" don't have to cross the border illegally. They can get a U.S. visa and never leave. The people who will definitely not get a U.S. visa to do that is those have a criminal record in their own country, so their only option is to cross the border illegally.
Very few people can get US visas without work sponsorship. The green cards are rationed, aren't they?
Similarly, there is little proof that a significant fraction of the people crossing the border have criminal records for things other than immigration law.
Now, let's get back to what Trump said. Right after he said what you quoted in that speech, he said: "I speak to border guards and they tell us what we're getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They're sending us not the right people."
He's constantly repeating how good the Mexicans and Japanese and everyone else is... (as opposed to the American leaders back then)... but the best ones among the Mexicans are not the ones coming in to the U.S. by crossing the border illegally. If you look at the context, he is clearly saying that Mexico has great people in general, the leaders are smarter and they have some terrible people who they're sending across the border illegally.
His opponents, which were all of the media back then, because he was neither liked by either party, attacked him for it. It was even a part of the attack strategy by Jeb Bush's campaign because he has a Mexican wife. They did it by taking the quote out of context, as anybody would do. If I was a political strategist, I would happily do the same. It was a easy hand to play and would potentially sway voters away from him.
Since the election is over, I'm assuming you're not one of Media Matters bots and I think, like a lot of people, you genuinely believe that those remarks were what the media told you they were... which is why I'm having this conversation.
Yes, I’m saying the vast majority are good people and regardless of how they cross the border demonizing people with lies or exaggerations is unacceptable.
I'm not from the US so may interpret differently, but when Trump says "Mexico sends" it has a strong implication that the government and/or the general collective people of Mexico are deliberately transporting criminals to the US.
Trump was referring to the Drug, Weapons, & Human trafficking that was occurring due to the border policy at the time. This illicit trafficking and violence against civilians & journalists is well documented in many sources.
That doesn't accurately describe Trump's comments. This wasn't some onetime only type of comment. Remember when he said a US judge couldn't rule on a case where Trump was losing, because the judge was of hispanic origin. That's another racist comment. Trump has continually made these types of comments, made references to shithole countries. You can't just dismiss that with a claim that he was saying something else, because his comments were part of a long standing sequence.
Exactly. Trump apologists like to pretend like there isn’t a pattern of these statements and treat each of them as a one off and they often add context that doesn’t quite fit.
It does accurately describe Trump's comment. The DEA, ICE, & FBI have documented cases of criminal activity across the border. The left often editorializes his comments however his supporters understand what was meant, and no, it's not a racist dog whistle.
You brought up a non-sequitor, re Judge Curiel. He has provided legal representation for a hispanic-supremacist organization named La Raza (meaning "the race" in Spanish), which has a public political opinion on matters such as the wall on the southern border. Perhaps Trump should have mentioned the group "La Raza", however the point stands that Judge Curiel has racial-supremacist political affiliations, was in-explicitly hostile in the lawsuit, & Trump called it out as a theory.
For many, the "Orange Man Bad" & "all white people are racist" narrative will probably kick in & they will reject what I'm saying outright because it does not fit their narrative; however this interpretation better fits Occam's razor, considering that Trump has also worked with certain people of all ethnicities in a harmonious fashion, while having rocky relationships with certain people from all ethnicities. The differences have to do with political worldview rather than ethnicity. Unfortunately, the political left has a habit of editorializing worldviews according to race, so other explanations are rendered moot according to the worldview of the political left, which views the world according to race.
The part you quoted is sandwiched between two statements that make that clear. Right before, he says:
> When do we beat Mexico at the border?
Right after the part you quoted, he says:
> But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we're getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They're sending us not the right people.
The reference to what “border guards” are “telling him” makes quite clear he’s characterizing their descriptions of illegal border crossers. That is how Factcheck.org interpreted the statement (see above) as well.
There is a fair criticism of Trump here—most people who immigrate illegally are “good people” (other than the fact they broke the law in crossing the border). On the other side, there is a truth to his point. We have MS-13 operating in Northern Virginia now where I grew up. They don’t arise there organically.
On reddit, these reasons you mention are selectively enforced and often actually made by people trying to get the subreddits banned. Bans are also familial: reddit tends to do “ban waves” where they also ban similar subreddits, irrespective of whether they have rule violations or not. There’s no communication; no appeals; no “you got this wrong”.
If you’ve ever participated in one of the banned subreddits; you’ll know “hate speech” or “doxxing” are a big fat lie. WE are the ones getting doxxed and brigaded!
It’s not too different to police using marijuana laws to target Black communities. In a free-to-join community of thousands to millions of people, you will get people breaking the rules. Moderators clean them up. The only difference is unwelcome viewpoints get their subreddit banned with this as the pretext.
Source: moderator of 3 banned subreddits; from political to sexual kinks like consensual rape fetishes (which 31% of women say they have fantasises; just FYI).
Admins have never; ever, ever engaged with us during my tenures.
This is 100% gaslighting by mainstream media. Immigration _per se_ isn't bad. I say so as an immigrant myself. Trump is married to an immigrant. But unrestricted low-skill illegal migration in tens of millions is most definitely bad, and it leads to modern day slavery, while at the same time depressing the wages of the working poor and making them dependent on welfare. That's why Kochs want it so much. So bad, in fact, that Barack Obama deported a lot more illegal migrants than Trump ever did. So long standing that Bill Clinton highlighted the issue in his 1995 State of the Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IrDrBs13oA. So severe that Hillary Clinton voted for a border wall: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jun/27/cal-thomas.... Immigration from countries where one can't even meaningfully do a background check is also bad. Skilled immigration program abused to get H1B wage slaves to the detriment of US grads who are drowning in debt is very bad indeed.
> disputing and attempting to overturn democracy
Nobody is "attempting to overturn democracy". There are hundreds of sworn affidavits and abundant video evidence of election irregularities. This needs to be followed up on, for the same reason why Nancy Pelosi was calling for the same in 2017: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080. She spent _4 years_ undermining the choice of the American people, and by extension "democracy". Presenting evidence in the court of law is democracy. If evidence is shit (as it was in Pelosi's case), the court will throw it out. If it's not you should be just as interested in hearing about it, because such things tend to backfire, just like Harry Reid's filibuster fiasco did.
> This has happened in all the lawsuits so far, I believe?
You're being gaslit about that too, although yes, some motions were denied and some lawsuits were rejected outright. Watch the last link in my original post. It explains the propaganda barrage perfectly.
There are a bunch of deadlines and appellate levels baked into this process for a reason. If Al Gore could hold things up for over a month over a few hundred votes, all the concerns about following lawful process are null and void. Same with histrionics about "overturning democracy".
The choice is pretty simple even to Trump voters: either Trump finds the smoking gun and deservedly gets a second term, or he's full of shit and he doesn't deserve a second term. Nobody on the right will set cities on fire either way.
Literally 10 seconds in DuckDuckGo. Notice that where lawsuits are rejected they are mostly rejected over lack of standing, and will be re-filed elsewhere with stronger evidence, or dropped outright due to insufficient evidence. This is what the legal system is for - to establish the veracity of claims, and obtain relief when due. Still more lawsuits will be filed next week. The current crop are just the small fry ones that could be filed quickly.
None of this constitutes "overturning democracy" in any shape or form.
At the rate law firms are dropping Trump, those cases next week will have to be argued by Rudy himself. And god willing, he'll give us some more press conferences as a bonus.
2. Instead of changing people’s minds (isn’t the evidence overwhelmingly conclusive that people rarely change political viewpoints?), people flock to “community bubbles” like Parler, TheDonald, etc where they feel welcome.
3. This marginalisation leads to increasing extremism; going from the likes of “immigrants bad” we saw in 2016 to disputing and attempting to overturn democracy.