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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Steve Sailer has been suspended from Twitter for allegedly violating their rules against hateful conduct.

His tweet said

Blacks suffer and perpetrate the majority of homicides/murders in the U.S., so anytime there's a sizable change in the national trend, it's usually driven by changes in black behavior. During the BLM Eras, black homicides [and] black traffic fatalities have trended together.

He appealed and the decision was upheld.

This is yet another way in which Elon Musk is going back on what he said in April.

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.

Did Elon directly respond about this one? Some people were suspended for posting negative things about Dear Leader (ie Zelensky). When brought to Elon’s attention, he stated unequivocally the tweets were not a violation of TOS, the tweeters were unsuspended, and Elon vouched to look into it.

I imagine there are still holdovers from the prior regime. Rome isn’t built in a day.

What did they post? I couldn't find anything, all the results on Google are about the suspensions related to Musk's jet.

Basically images of Pelosi and Harris displaying the Ukrainian flag and comments about how this is America last.

Here’s a screenshot: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Elon-Musk-Jacks-Magic-Coffee-Shop-2.jpg

The article it’s embedded in is not about this censorship, but uses it to introduce a broader screed, practically a manifesto, against the FBI for acting as the fist of a power which works against the American people, both online through censorship and in the real world.

/images/16718142177968981.webp — EDIT: Not sure why TheMotte made a local copy. This feature could be used by bad actors to add illegal images to our site and get it shut down. Insertion of insurrectionary or subversive material could also be used as “sources and methods” to get wiretap warrants on us all and our closest associates. (Farfetched? It’s how the FBI got Operation Hurricane started, the Russia collusion investigation against Trump.)

@ZorbaTHut im kind of surprised we do hosting too. is it the architecture for profile pictures/banners? how much of a liability is this?

It's not great, but you're right in saying that it's necessary for profile pictures. In the end, if you allow users to submit any content, there are potential problems, and I'm not sure that hosting full images really leaves us worse off.

It's something I've meant to revisit at some point with some kind of review process but right now I'm just not worrying about it; it doesn't seem to be common for this attack to be used.

@DuplexFields:

Insertion of insurrectionary or subversive material could also be used as “sources and methods” to get wiretap warrants on us all and our closest associates.

Yeah, but you can do that with text also, and I ain't gonna shut down text submissions.