banned
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Also nope, and "he started it" doesn't cut it. Four warnings in the mod log, no quality contributions, one note recently with "ban next time". This is next time. Banned for a day, and the bans will rapidly escalate if you continue to communicate in this fashion. Next time report and move on.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Nope. Previous warning in the mod log for this same issue. Banned for a day, and the bans will rapidly escalate if you continue to communicate in this fashion.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
I'm not sure I understand your request? Silent praying abortion protesters do generally have signs with them btw, though I'm not sure about the specific one Vance was mentioning. Reading between the lines, though, maybe you're thinking it's a big difference between banning silent prayer and the signage of the Westboro Baptist Church, and therefore represents a difference of kind between the UK and the US attitudes toward freedom? If so, maybe, but it's a marginal and for my money irrelevant one given everything else going on in the world.
To answer your question literally, no, I don't think blue tribers typically use prayer as a form of protest. The only example I can think of at all is the silent walks that were held to protest the community neglect that led to the Grenfell fire disaster in west London. These protests were calling for higher safety standards and community cohesion so at leaning blue tribe even if not a clean example. (These should obviously not be banned.)
Shrike
4mo ago
I'm not aware of any crackdown on right-wing extremism in 1930s germany.
Mea culpa, I probably should have said "1920s" instead, as Hitler came to power in 1933, although I assume some of the censorship technically lasted into the 1930s.
On the crackdown in the 1920s I'll let FIRE do the talking.
Weimar Germany had laws banning hateful speech (particularly hateful speech directed at Jews), and top Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher actually were sentenced to prison time for violating them. The efforts of the Weimar Republic to suppress the speech of the Nazis are so well known in academic circles that one professor has described the idea that speech restrictions would have stopped the Nazis as “the Weimar Fallacy.”
A 1922 law passed in response to violent political agitators such as the Nazis permitted Weimar authorities to censor press criticism of the government and advocacy of violence. This was followed by a number of emergency decrees expanding the power to censor newspapers. The Weimar Republic not only shut down hundreds of Nazi newspapers — in a two-year period, they shut down 99 in Prussia alone — but they accelerated that crackdown on speech as the Nazis ascended to power. Hitler himself was banned from speaking in several German states from 1925 until 1927.
Far from being an impediment to the spread of National Socialist ideology, Hitler and the Nazis used the attempts to suppress their speech as public relations coups. The party waved the ban like a bloody shirt to claim they were being targeted for exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
I wondered if you were right and this is the first thing google turned up – protests at military funerals were in fact banned in nine states and twenty others at least considered doing the same. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/18/usa.gayrights
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
Re military hospitals, I had meant that I can imagine protests being banned outside some sensitive location in the US, especially if they are held repeatedly, are disturbing to the staff and visitors at a vulnerable moment, and are in contradiction of a court order. This is what happened outside a UK abortion centre, and that Vance is furious about. Obviously the same thing wouldn't happen outside a US abortion centre in the current climate, my point is that an equal infringement of freedoms at a different location not so important to christian fundamentalists would not cause any outrage, so if that's true, it's not at actually freedom that is at issue.
A military hospital was just my stab at an example location where the American public might not like to see repeated protests held.
As promised here is:
A breakdown of the Daniel Greene-Naomi King sexual misconduct scandal
A fascinating case study in social media hysteria and gender relations. I said I'd post this Saturday but the situation kept developing since then so I waited a bit, though it appears mostly resolved in the court of public opinion by now. I did my best to be thorough but there were lots of detailed claims made by both parties involved and I couldn't be bothered to outline all of them, so let me know if there's anything important I've missed that should be added to this post. I did link archives of all relevant videos if you want to examine them yourself. You can also just skip to the end for my funny summary of the events.
First, the facts in the order they were presented to the public, without my analysis:
Daniel Greene is a Youtuber who mostly covers fantasy novels. He had 580k subscribers before his recent scandal broke last, and now sits at 521k (since I started writing this it has climbed back up to 529k). His videos regularly got 40k-120k views, he's interviewed best-selling authors like Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie, and I've heard his convention panels are regularly packed. He's published 3 novels himself and is working on a fourth. His discord sever was very active and had 17k users. He has been dating his gf Kayla Torrison since 2021 and they were engaged last September.
Naomi King is a self-described Actor, musician, author, and (as she revealed in a since-removed video this past Saturday) Vancouver sugar baby. The two had not publicly associated before this scandal broke.
In 2017, someone on Tumblr accused Greene of rape. This was mentioned in his Discord server in 2021, which he denied by saying he wasn't in the area at the time, and the incident wasn't brought up again.
On June 19th, 2023, Naomi King posted a video to YouTube where she mentions an unnamed friend took advantage of her in Vegas. She implies she had agreed to some sex acts with the friend but they went too far. She also implies that the friend had suggested they would have a relationship but they did not deliver on this after they hooked up, and that she considers this sexual assault.
In the 2-3 weeks after this, Greene took a "mental health break" from YouTube, and also froze his server. He returned on July 7th with his usual posting schedule and unfroze his server.
On February 10th, 2025 King posted a video on YouTube where she accused Daniel Greene of rape, and revealed that his lawyers had sent her a Cease and Desist letter threatening to have her social media taken down after her June 2023 video. I've shared an archive as she's since removed videos from her channel regarding the incident. Some of the text of the letter is in the video, but much is redacted. It inexplicably describes Greene as a "medical professional". Prior to the encounter that prompted this, she shared an 8-page letter with Green about the nature of their relationship which she heavily implied was platonic. She goes on to explain that he had tried talking her into having an affair with him and that she had turned him down. He had confessed, in DMs shown in the video, that "I will probably always be a cheater". But the two agreed he would visit her in Vegas where he would "spoil her like a friend" and he would spend the night with her. It was 4/20 so she had been taking 40mg edibles all day and according to her he was sober. He then allegedly forced his penis inside of her without lube, knowing she couldn't self-lubricate, and came on her "batok", which she describes as a sacred Filipino tattoo. The next morning, the two got breakfast and he paid for her tattoo, and upon getting her alone again, proceeded to allegedly sexually assault her again. After this, she sent his then girlfriend, now fiance (they are still not married as many people discussing this have claimed) a video about what happened and she responded calling them both "disgusting". The video ends with her having a panic attack and mentioning she has reported the incident to the Vegas police.
Greene was immediately condemned by many of his closest friends. Fellow Booktuber Merphy Napier made a post where she stated the claims were convincing and urged people to donate to RAINN, a charity for victims of domestic abuse. Jackson Dickert, who has <7k subscribers but hosted a mock interview show called Between Two Perns that featured guests as famous as Brandon Sanderson and Terry Brooks, posted a video where he tearfully claims he believes King and wants nothing to do with Daniel, who he had a close working relationship with. Greene's own Discord server erupted with users condemning him. There were a few dissenting voices saying people should wait to hear his side of the story, the mods banned nearly all of them for "fencesitting" or misgendering King, who someone mentioned uses they/them pronouns. They also asked people to donate to Naomi's paypal account to help pay for therapy and legal fees.
On Feb 12th, Greene posted a short video where he, very clearly reading off a lawyer-prepared script, admitted to having an affair with King but that it was fully consensual and had ample evidence to prove as much. He ends saying he'll be suing King for defamation.
On Feb 15th, King uploaded a 3rd video on the situation which, were it not preserved in an archive, is almost unbelievable. In it, she confesses to being a sugar baby (adding context to why Greene offered to "spoil her as a friend"), shares the lyrics to 3 songs she had written about him wondering if he would eventually choose her over his then-girlfriend, confesses she did sleep next to him fully naked, then proceeds to mockingly reenact the sexual assault that days prior she couldn't even discuss without crying. She admits she "did not say no" but that she did try to talk him out of sex before the 2nd alleged SA incident, where she performed oral sex on him and he came on her face while moaning he "thinks about this every time I fuck my own girlfriend". Then she admits they hung out the next day before they both flew home. She reached out to his gf Kayla and told her about what happened in a video where she tearfully confesses that she didn't want any of it and Greene and pressured her into it. The video also mentions that he had also taken edibles, contradicting her earlier statement that he was totally sober. She adds that the man mentioned in her first video was in fact Greene and that she was in contact with another woman he had sexually assaulted, which made her realize this was a pattern of behavior on his part that she had to call out.
The response to this 3rd video of King's was overwhelmingly negative towards her. The comments have likely been lost so you'll have to take my word that almost all were some version of "you're crazy and just exposed yourself" or "I believe you but this video looks REALLY bad for you, please get a therapist and a lawyer". Comparing the comments on the the first and final /r/Fantasy threads on the situation shows a similar effect. There is a MASSIVE shift in sentiment between the threads.
On February 17th, King posted a video titled I am SO SORRY. Oh my god.. It's mostly incoherent. She apologizes profusely to Daniel and Kayla for causing drama and says "I never said he raped me." This is a lie, whether she used the word rape or not she clearly said he forced his penis inside her. She adds, "I don't like this version of myself and am gonna fix it". King had uploaded an earlier version of the video that ends with the full text of the 8-page letter she had sent Greene before their affair, which she has since edited out and I cannot find.
Greene then posted a video titled Proving Naomi King Lied With Her Own Words. It delivers on its title and features Greene, his now-fiance, and his college roommate. Greene had edited the video to demonstrate how King contradicted herself in her own words, and added context to her claims. He points out that she had also given him edibles (she claims they hadn't kicked in yet by the time they had sex, but of course there's no way for her to be certain of this), and that she had specifically said she was taking 40mg of edibles at lunchtime and they only had sex at around midnight. In addition, the video she had sent Greene's gf Kayla has absolutely no mention of sexual assault according to Kayle itself, just King confessing to a consensual affair. King even mentions that she was cheated on 10 years ago, and hates herself for enabling Greene to do the same to Kayla. Texts King had sent Greene which were included in her OWN video included "Last night I said I wanted to do more BECAUSE you said you liked it" and "It seems only you are allowed to express any sort of lust". Greene then identifies the other woman who accused him of sexual assault as Madison, and his college roommate confirmed she had visited Greene in their apartment a year after the supposed rape occured and was completely cordial. He ends by asking all the creators who condemned him to issue a correction to their audiences.
On February 18th, King posted another video (which I can't find an archive of, will edit the post if I do) where she shares a phone call she had with another woman who accused Daniel of "sexual assault" in college and includes details of him just frankly being bad at sex. But worth noting she had sex with him on 4 separate occasions, despite describing even the 2nd occasion as sexual assault.
Greene then gave all his Discord mods an ultimatum to either apologize and remain or step down, and all but one stepped down. Most creators who weighed in on the issue prematurely have since issued apologies.
My scattered thoughts and analyses:
1- When it comes to SA allegations, people are still shockingly naive. Nearly 11 years after Mattress Girl's performance art and 8 since the start of #MeToo, the public still has no idea how to respond to claims of sexual assault. It doesn't surprise me at all that someone like King would accuse someone of Greene of rape, what's shocking is the alacrity with which some of his closest collaborators and the vast majority of people who viewed King's first video believed her. Since she largely exposed herself as a liar, people have been saying things like "ah his fake friends just had to get the cloutbucks from condemning him immediately, huh?" But this is an insufficient explanation for what happened. Obviously having to admit they were wrong and plugged the PayPal information of a known fraud is hugely embarrassing for them and so they wouldn't have done so if they didn't completely believe King's accounts. Anyone with even moderately sound epistemics on the issue should know that, while sexual assault is very common and supposedly only 5% of accusations are false (assuming that statistic I've heard thrown around is even true), a women who presents like King does is not >95% likely to be telling the truth. I'm going to editorialize a bit by pointing this out but: women have thousands of "icks" and "red flags" they'll list about men. There are entire social media trends built around this idea. He drives a Tesla? Likes Fight Club? Likes the Infinite Jest? Listens to Joe Rogan? Red flags, each one. I'm not even sure those are necessarily bad choices of interests to look out for. But men look for <10 in women and Naomi King seems to have most of them. She has a LOT of tattoos (including a full sleeve and almost completely covered back), multiple ear piercings including guages, shows signs of BPD, does sex work, is an actor, describes herself as nonbinary, and films her own panic attacks and crying on camera. These are all, based on what I've observed, correlated with being mentally unstable. I sort of assumed most of this was common knowledge. So what's going on here? I think part of it is that something deep in the human psyche says "when a woman cries, you have to protect her". Richard Hanania said it best.. Even other women, despite having likely experienced the way some women use crying to manipulate, were quick to jump to her defense. I also think a lot of men just don't fuck that much. Or married their high school sweatheart and haven't really experienced the dating/hookup scene. Even my limited experience helped my identify the traits I mentioned as being correlated with a) being good in bed and b) mental illness. My more sexually experienced friend also adds "is Filipina and is a nurse to the list" and King is Filipina or just very immersed in the culture (though I can't confirm the accuracy of these stereotypes). Now granted we are talking about the type of man who likes to read Malazan Book Of The Fallen. But there's gotta be a few certified GuysWhoFuck in that group right? Greene is certainly one of them. Or am I unfairly generalizing here and actually these traits aren't associated with mental illness and it's just a coincidence this one person happened to have all of them?
But that's just the surface-level observations about King, there's also her story itself which is extremely questionable even from her first two videos (the ones that, taken together, kicked off this whole scandal Greene is dealing with). Is it not extremely odd behavior to, as a single woman, share a bed with a man in a relationship who had tried pressuring you into fucking him for two years if you weren't actually planning on fucking him? Obviously the fact that she was willing to do this suggests she wanted it to happen, right? I did see one other person point this out and they were met with "wow I can't believe you're going with the 'she was wearing a short skirt so she was asking it' " defense and "I've shared beds with tons of people without raping them". As if what was described isn't orders of magnitude more suggestive than wearing a short skirt and that sharing beds with platonic same-sex friends is the same as opposite-sex friends who tried talking you into an affair. People really just think in memes. There's this idea that some men in the more patriarchal days of old would say things like "she was wearing a short skirt so she was asking for it" so people think anytime anyone remotely questions a woman's narrative it has to be shoehorned into this "wearing a short skirt so she was asking for it" meme and is therefore misguided.
And there's also the shocking naivety about drugs. Even now there are people saying things like "even if she verbally consented, it doesn't count because she was high". This is not a consistent standard anyone can uphold. Especially considering they had both taken edibles. Many couples get high and bone on a weekly basis, are we expected to believe either member can retroactively, at any point, point to one of those sessions and say “actually I was high so I couldn’t consent”? This is a ludicrous standard. There is a ton of middle ground between roofie-ing someone’s drink and raping their unconscious body and two people getting high and hooking up. Marijuana use is pretty common among Americans at 17% and surely plenty of people are having sex while high considering what an intense aphrodisiac it is ( there's even an Arctic Monkeys song about it) , and yet no almost no one is willing to push back on this?
2- Are narratives this easy to manipulate?
I wish I had posted my predictions about this story to a commitment scheme because I easily knew that these allegations were false and were the result of "the girl who didn't get picked" lashing out against "the guy that got away" even after her first two videos. It seems most people missed this. But this reminded me of Gell-Mann Amnesia. I only noticed the prevailing narrative was false because I bothered to spend a few minutes looking into the claims since I was interested in the particular Zoomer fantasy subculture. I don't have the time or willpower to do this for every claim/narrative I hear in the media (I still don't know much of anything about even the Neil Gaiman scandal), and yet I definitely internalize some of them.
Much was made of the fact that Greene sent a Cease and Desist letter in response to a video that didn't name him, many considered this immediately damning to his case. But I can't imagine why. King's video clearly provides a) a clear description of a person (a man King had played therapist for for three years who spent a few days with her in Vegas and b) a claim about what that person did (sexual assault). Obviously Greene would recognize the description matched him but that he hadn't sexually assaulted her. Even if he was innocent (as we now have very good reason to believe he is), he sent the C&D to avoid exactly the scenario that transpired. If people can't be trusted to see the truth about a simple love triangle while the evidence in right in front of them, how can they possibly be expected to come to the right consensus about claims in history, science, philosophy, and politics? We are almost all swimming in delusional narratives that we've internalized, fed to us by people with horrendous epistemics or bad actors trying to control the narratives themselves.
3- Men really aren't built for monogamy, huh?
A while ago I got into a debate with some people. I claimed, and thought it was uncontroversial, that monogamy is not most men's ideal relationship arrangement. Of course, neither is full polyamory (which involves knowing your girl is banging other men), but most men would love a relationship where their woman is exclusive to them while they can sleep with other women on the side. I was met with unanimous shock and disagreement. That "I just didn't respect women if I felt this" or accusations that I'm typical minding. But I suspect most men actually do agree with me, and the ones who claim otherwise fall into a two categories 1) Men who are sour graping. That is, they know they couldn't pull off an arrangement like this (which tbf is most men, including me) so pretend they wouldn't want it anyway. 2) Ones who "want" it instinctively but are opposed for religious reasons 3) The few who actually just disagree. Cases like Greene's seem to vindicate me. His girlfriend, Kayla, is an attractive woman (happy to cite my sources) who speaks Korean. Most men, in theory, would be happy to score even a 1st date with a woman like her. And yet he couldn't help but risk his relationship by cheating on her with a clearly unstable sex worker? This is very common pattern among famous/successful men. Maybe all it takes is the knowledge that they can repent and get away with it (she agreed to marry him following all this, after all). But clearly the impulse already had to be there. I remember some Motters experiencing envy at Gaiman's escapades when they were revealed to the press (I still don't know the details of them like I mentioned), so are we dispositionally different than the male population at large or just more honest?
4- This whole story is just funny
While I sympathize with Daniel's fiance, who had her partner's affair needlessly exposed and scrutinized by the internet, I can't help but admit the whole situation is otherwise hilarious. If some conservative culture war provocateur gave me this summary of a screenplay he was writing: Charming yet somewhat awkward and mildly woke YouTube fantasy nerd with a model girlfriend uses Black Lives Matter to slide into the DMs of a mentally unstable sex worker with full-body tattoos and guages. She talks him into cheating on his gf, partially by mentioning that as he is a bisexual man, it's normal for him to want to experience a relationship with a non-binary person such as herself despite the fact that she clearly presents as a woman. Despite all evidence that this was a jealous woman lashing out against the man who didn't ultimately pick her, the entire internet sides with her and plugs her paypal link because she's pretty and cries on camera. His close associate is an effeminate man named Jackson Dickert who has curly hair, and wears a beanie and clear-rimmed glasses. This man had been in consideration to take over parts of Daniel's channel from him, but upon being made aware of the deranged woman's accusations, immediately threw him under the bus without bothering to hear his side of the story. In Dickert's video he tearfully confesses he spent most of yesterday crying before calling his mommy who advised him to "act with integrity". He says he wants nothing to do with Daniel and urges his followers to start spaces for women (and trans and nonbinary folx ofc) to discuss fantasy without the presence of predatory men, concluding that "men who abuse women control the flow of information" (seemingly forgetting this entire scandal was kicked off by a much less successful woman posting a video on YouTube who was uncritically accepted by almost everyone).
My response would probably be: Dude, this is all way too on the nose. Everyone in this story is a caricature of what The Babylon Bee thinks progressives and woke young people are like. No one actually uses Black Lives Matter as a pickup line. And "Jackson DICKert"? I know Marvel got away with "Dr. Doom" but that was a comic book movie, bro.
And yet that's exactly what happened. Life imitates meme. Shakespeare couldn't have written a more entertaining drama.
Tagging @Pynewacket @YoungAchamian @rincer_of_wind @Fruck @malcontent who all wanted a breakdown of this.
I like the idea here but this post could really use a round of editing.
As far as the general substance of the post, I think trying to regain the title of America's #1 sport is probably a lost cause as long as football remains dominant. I agree that the Three True Outcomes approach is the least-interesting the sport has ever been, and that the league should try to do something about it. The last time pitchers were this dominant, they lowered the mound to generate more offense. Fundamentally I think pitchers are just too skilled to hope to string together enough hits to make that the most effective strategy. I don't think limiting the velocity they throw at is realistically possible, even if that would be the best option for the health of both the league and the pitchers. Ten feet is probably too drastic to start with; I would begin with 6 feet and possibly a slightly-lowered mound before jumping a full ten feet back. That said you'd need to implement this as a trial-run in a different league first, and it 100% will cause injuries when first implemented to established veterans as they change their deliveries and grips to get their pitches to break at the right time. You mention that hammer curves will have an extra ten feet to break, which is true, but thrown as they are now those pitches will all be spiked in the dirt before they reach the batter.
I agree that the league should look into figuring out a way to get back to contact-based strategies, and they agree - that's why they went to bigger bases and banned the shift. The problem is pitchers are so good that it's hard to get any hits at all, let alone string three or four together to get a run across that way. Better off maximizing the effect of those hits by sending them 420 feet instead, even if you only get one or two instead of three, because you'll have a harder time getting those three than one long one.
Walks are the least-entertaining outcome in the game for the spectators, but not for the teams trying to win the game; ditto strikeouts, which often aren't exciting to watch (though certainly more exciting than a walk - seriously there is nothing less exciting than a walk) but aren't looked at as a personal slight the way they used to be. Striking out used to be considered dishonorable; the object of the game was to get a hit, not even managing to make contact almost made you less of a man than if you grounded out, even though both resulted in the same result (one out). There's a reason that so many MVPs of the past went to players that look extremely undeserving by WAR; no one cared about many of the stats WAR valued highly, and everyone cared batting average, a stat WAR doesn't give a fuck about. Thing is players with a high batting average are way more entertaining than a player that has a much lower average but walks enough to make up the OBP difference.
Feel like I'm kinda rambling my thoughts out here, maybe this will need an edit for clarity in an hour, but getting it down for now.
Sometimes I feel like living in a different universe.
First, Dorsey twitter absolutely worked together with many agencies in many countries far above what is was required to do, shown trivially by the fact that Musk Twitter refuses to do so and is nevertheless existing. This was shown in the twitter files, but they are hardly necessary; Here in Germany, our local Blockwarte voluntarily complain about nothing but how much better they could "work together with" Dorsey Twitter to combat "misinformation" than with Musk Twitter. This also goes for the UK. Even beyond western countries, where Musk Twitter is far more resistant to censorship efforts and which have far more resources to staff liaison bureaucrats and as such are a much greater threat to open discourse, Dorsey Twitter was also more than happy to go along with censorship in non-western countries as long as it fit with their left-leaning preconceptions, such as in Brazil or South Africa.
Second, the moderation staff of Dorsey Twitter not only was much, much larger and could handle much greater throughput, but pretty much everyone is primarily complaining about who is allowed to continue posting, and voluntarily leaves due to it, as opposed to being banned. I've seen a lot of people and institutes around me make a big show about posting how they're leaving X and going to bluesky. Not a single one of them was banned, and almost none of them complained about any person ban or topics ban whatsoever, either. It's always about how now that this or that category of person is unbanned, they can't in good conscience stay there. At most they point at some nebulous alleged algorithmic boosting which they have no evidence for but are sure has to exist (and which, ironically, provably existed under Dorsey Twitter, it was just going another way). I don't think it's a coincidence that X discourse has moved closer to the notorious chan-style discourse.
Third, the kind of topics that could get you banned on Dorsey Twitter was incredibly broad, and frequently included taking even milquetoast center right opinions ("there are only two genders") or very basic common-sense observations ("the covid vaccine, just like many other vaccines, has a heightened likelihood of complications for people with autoimmune diseases and as such may not be worth it especially for young people with an autoimmune disease"). People went to other places since they either already were banned or felt they would get banned if they openly discussed the topics they care about.
I'm certainly not happy about how trigger-happy Musk is about criticism of himself or how he runs his company, but in practice it's not only an incredibly limited topic, it also would have gotten you banned on Dorsey Twitter as well, even labelling it similarly as "misinformation" or "conspiracy theories". On doxxing I'm also more split, since this was weaponized pretty hard on Dorsey Twitter.
Also on the Vance talk, I'm an academic who has lived his entire life in Europe (mostly Germany and a few years UK), and I think he's just objectively correct about his statements, not just directionally but also literally, so there's that I guess. It was very moving to see that if we want to have a course-correction, we will have some allies in foreign governments that will help us and stand by us. That's a fairly straightforward foreign policy strategy. The norm-breaking criticism is also pretty hilarious to me, since visiting american democratic politicians love talking about right-wing dangers in Europe which is totally OK, but once it's american republican politicians talking about left-wing dangers it's suddenly a dangerous break with norms.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4mo ago
More speech is banned on Musk's Twitter than Dorsey's Twitter. (Trivially, because most Twitter censorship is done by foreign governments, and DorseyTwitter consistently resisted to the best of its ability whereas Musk rolls over if he finds the government in question friendly.)
I'm not prepared to concede either part if that argument in nothing but your word. DorseyTwitter banned something like half of the accounts I followed, most of which are either American or Anglo, so I don't believe it's due to foreign goverents, nor do I believe that there are more bans than we used to have.
The problem is that the sequence of mouth noises "freeze peach" has acquired a secondary meaning - when very online people - on either side of the US culture war - hear the noises, they don't point to the concepts traditionally associated with "free speech" (i.e. the ability to say what you want without fear of punishment by people more powerful than you), they point to the anti-establishment wing of the Red side of the US culture war.
More speech is banned on Musk's Twitter than Dorsey's Twitter. (Trivially, because most Twitter censorship is done by non-US governments, and DorseyTwitter consistently resisted foreign censors to the best of its ability whereas Musk rolls over if he finds the government in question friendly.) Musk bans people who annoy him whimsically, most often nominally based on an incredibly-broad "doxxing" policy which covers almost any dissemination of accurate information about an identifiable individual and is selectively enforced. Elon Musk has also threatened, and boasted about his limited success in, lawfare-to-the-death against his critics to punish publication of accurate information about the way he runs X that he considers biased or misleading - this is the least speech-that-is-free thing you can do as a private citizen, but it is very freeze peach because punishing people for calling out anti-establishment-right speakers makes it easier for the anti-establishment right to speak. So when Musk talks about being a "free speech absolutist" despite having multiple outstanding SLAPPs in the federal courts, calling for the reversal of Sullivan, tweeting threats of prosecution against his critics etc, the very online right hear "freeze peach absolutely," agree, and cheer, the very online left hear "freeze peach absolutely," agree, and boo, the few remaining principled liberals hear a censorious asshat claiming to support free speech and try to call out the hypocrisy, and the darkly cynical raise eyebrows and say "this is your brain on ketamine."
If you treat Vance as talking about speech-that-is-free to a European audience, then his comments were mostly false if taken literally, directionally correct but exaggerated if taken seriously-but-not-literally, and bizarre if treated as an attempt to achieve some kind of political goal of US foreign policy*. Everyone in Europe who is sufficiently interested in politics to pay attention to a speech by the US VP already understands the free speech situation in Europe better than Vance does, so the only people who didn't respond by thinking "what a tool" are the ones who live in an anti-establishment right-wing social media filter bubble. Even people like me who think that Europe does have a free speech problem can see that a tendentious intervention by a senior official of an increasingly hostile (based both on the rest of the speech and on Trump admin policy towards the EU) foreign government is going to be counterproductive.
If you treat Vance as talking about freeze peach to the global-but-mostly-American audience of partisans in the US culture war, then everything makes sense including Margaret Brennan's response. It's megaphone diplomacy of a type that often backfires, but that's the way Trump has rolled since before 2016 and it's what his domestic supporters expect. Trump's America does want to see more freeze peach in Europe, whether or not this is actually in the US national interest. Freeze peach (in the sense of differential tolerance of right-wing speech that tests the boundaries of permissible rhetoric vs actual incitement) was one of the tools the Nazis used to take power in Germany, although not the most important.
I was initially concerned by this story because most of the coverage I saw didn't make clear who said the dumb stuff about Germany, and I assumed from the attention the whole thing was getting that it was a German official. That would be worrying. But it is some MSM pretty face with no reason to matter beyond her parents being able to afford out-of-State fees at UVA. Vance talks like a right-wing blowhard when a Bush-era Republican would at least try to be diplomatic. Margaret Brennan's response makes clear she is as dumb as Rachael Maddow. Bear shits in woods. The Pope coming out as Catholic would be more newsworthy.
* Notably, the reaction to Vance's speech has increased the chances of European leaders effectively sabotaging Trump's policy of appeasing Putin in Ukraine from none to slim.
In a sense. 1a has always had war as a sticking point.
But since I'm here referring to social media censorship (in peace times, ostensibly), that would rather fall under prior restraint or licensure, which the federalist argued 1a forbade in that first major debate, as opposed to seditious libel.
Although I suppose a counterargument would be that those nice letters the feds sent to twitter on who shouldn't have an account were sometimes motivated by national security under the reasoning that we live in a world where mere journalism is warfare in the information theater.
So perhaps getting banned for saying the Russians aren't so bad has more common law backing than for misgendering people. I'm not sure where it would fall on Covid.
Of course bending the rules to make them say nothing that stops you is a long and storied tradition.
hydroacetylene
4mo ago
I'm wondering why it got off the ground then. Few remember but it was very explicitly a banned ideology in continental Europe before it won.
Whether the quote is trolling or not, many in the X/Twitter replies were taking it at face value and affirming their support of the underlying sentiment. Someone in another thread said we need a "Kremlinology" of Trump that is attuned to knowing when to take what he says seriously or literally, and I agree in this case.
I would argue that if Trump is being literal with this tweet, then he is basically positioning himself as a "dictator" in the original Roman sense of the word. Someone imbued with emergency powers in order to save the republic in a crisis. The problem is that nobody actually appointed him to do that. Like, you could argue the American people did, but a 51/49 victory should not a Roman-style dictator make. 51/49 is "reform immigration, lower taxes, use the bully pulpit to get as much of your agenda through congress as possible" territory. It is not, "take all the power you need to save our republic, but please give it back when you're done" territory.
I simply do not share the belief that Trump couldn't have done most of what he wanted to do with the Republican majority congress and Supreme Court. He just chose to do it in a legally dubious method instead, and that's the main thing that concerns me.
EDIT: There's also the component where he's posting it on Lupercalia (Feb 15), the same day Mark Antony tried to crown Ceasar king. Even if it is god-tier trolling, then I've got to say I'm not amused. I actually care about my republic. (Thanks /u/SoonToBeBanned for reminding me of the Lupercalia connection.)
Someone on the Internet speculated that this tweet/Truth posting (?) was testing the waters. I find that a very plausible explanation.
In which case, it reminds me of Historia Civilis's amazing storytelling about later Caesar. At Lupercalia there's an incident where Mark Antony suddenly out of nowhere, from a crowd, appears and insists Caesar wear a diadem/crown which would make him a king. As people do sometimes, you know? Caesar turns down the repeated bizarre attempts. Speculation abounds that Caesar and Antony were testing the waters to see how the public reacted to him finally taking the shot and outright calling himself king, rather than dictator for life with a literal golden throne. But they plainly didn't like it so he pretended it was presumptions and silly. In other words, depending how Trump's fanbase reacts to this, and how much everyone else pushes back, we will get more.
Anyway, yeah. I've never had Trump derangement syndrome. And it's strange because going by topology, I should have it. I've been mystified by what people see in him, negative or positive. I get downvoted and banned for both defending and denouncing him (the latter more so only around here or places like this). I thought I was clear headed and everyone else was going insane, but maybe I've been missing something. It seems the squawking MSM libs saw something I could not. He really does seem to be a fascist, and him and his cohort really are a danger to democracy. All I can say now is I notice I am confused.
Tintin
4mo ago
Why do you default to ‚admonish everyone‘ when ‚no one‚ is the much more logical choice? Moderation is more likely to hit the left-wing minority. Not because of mod bias, but because the mob will :
-
pick dozens of high hostility fights
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report any opposing comment when the fight inevitably devolves
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mass complain and argue against mod action against their side, and for banning the other guy
Then they both get banned, fair enough. So no more left-wingers left, but for the mob, plenty more where their guy came from.
As to the original beef, „Source?“ demands should be protected as always legitimate. „Source?“ is what keeps discussions casual and factual. Without „Source?“, we‘d have to provide sources all the time for everything.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4mo ago
Okay, you seem to be on some kind of spree with this comment and this one and this one. All of which seem to be testing the limits of what you can get away with. Given that the common theme is "I hate a lot of people (and fantasize about violence a lot)" paired with the obvious fact that you are a returning alt who we probably banned not long ago, and I would suggest you cool it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
"Do not participate in massive unprotected orgies" is an intervention that can be equally applied to both straights and gays. And in fact, straight people were already de facto banned from participating in massive unprotected orgies based on the many, many restrictions placed on gatherings. And yet my recollection is that gays thumbed their noses at the rules, and were allowed to, even when it was causing a mini-pandemic within the pandemic.
WhiningCoil
4mo ago
The "donating blood" bit is probably unavoidable-- but also I suspect it's just not very salient, even for leftists fighting the culture war. My dad didn't give blood for a long time because there was a mad cow disease outbreak in the region he lived and at some point he was told not to. And honestly, he just didn't really care. Giving blood is an act of charity. People get more mad about the idea that their community doesn't care about them than the idea that the community doesn't need as much of their help.
Yeah, after I visited China was I banned from donating for a period of time because when I went to Xi'an it was technically in a malaria zone. Didn't seem like a big deal.
When I as in middleschool, there was a kid with Hemophilia. Had a rough time of things. Felt like every few weeks he'd be on crutches cause he got a bruise on his leg or something. I remember in 7th grade science class when we were learning about the AIDs epidemic in the anodyne way it might be taught about it effecting everyone and everyone needing to be careful, he flew into a rage. Kept yelling over the teacher that it was those damned gays that spread it absolutely fucking everywhere with their promiscuous lifestyles.
Of course, he was a hemophiliac child in the 80's when HIV positive gays were contaminating the blood supply. I never put two and two together then, but I always wondered if he was personally effected by that, or merely righteously angry that he was put in harms way.
I'll concede that the "no unprotected sex" thing would probably be looked at unfavorably no matter what, but at least hypothetically reagan could have pissed off different people. Imagine if instead of saying, "no sex," he'd said, "instead of penetrating each other, why not try out these bizarre fetishes?" and subsequently promoted, for example, full-body latex condoms, humping in fursuits, teledildonics, tying up people in chairs and verbally abusing them while they pleasured themselves, etcetera. In a degenerate alternate universe reagan could have enraged the conservatives instead of the liberals by trying to convince America that penetrative sex was for boring straight people.
I mean, even just a year or two ago when Monkeypox was spreading, the humble suggestion that gays stop having giant unprotected orgies with multiple strangers was viewed as a demand that "gays stop having sex". There seems to exist a certain vocal segment that gets their way that any insistence that gays use protection or practice monogamy is akin to trying to get them to stop being gay.
cjet79
4mo ago
In case it was not clear from the edit, @netstack reversed this mod decision. @WhiningCoil is not banned at this time.
There is often a very fine line between booing your outgroup and discussing your outgroup. Especially when the topic of discussion is some of the worst characteristics of the outgroup. I feel like the post hit some "boo" applause lights while actually being a true discussion. I might have made the same call as netstack had I been in a hurry and just clearing out the backlog.
The mods are human. We care about the community. We do respond to feedback. We are active participants here and we care about the quality of discussion.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4mo ago
Would it be possible for the mods to aim to make a public statement on every post that receives more than a certain number of reports, even if just to explain why they disagree with the reporters' view of it violating rules?
Fuck no.
Well, maybe if someone else wants to do it. But no, we get enough flack when we do mod posts and people are unhappy about it; now you want an open forum for people to bitch every time we don't mod a post? Fuck if I'm going to explain myself for every post I mod or don't mod. (As for "a certain number of reports," it's pretty rare for a post to receive a large number of reports and not get modded. Usually those are unambiguously pretty bad.)
Look, I think we are pretty damn transparent. We usually explain ourselves, we let people argue with us, we engage civilly on threads where people are calling us shitty mods. Sometimes we are too transparent, because it just invites ankle-biting and rules-lawyering. I go through phases where I will patiently explain to someone why I modded them and let them argue with me for an entire thread, and phases where I just say "Banned, bye" because I feel like it's a waste of time explaining things to bad-faith grudge-holders who don't really care about our reasoning, only that we didn't mod the way they think we should.
We do read every single report. Including yours. I would guess we actually act on about 5% of all reports.
Why does any particular mod not mod a particular post? It might be because the mod thinks it's okay, it might be because it's borderline and the mod isn't sure whether they think it merits action. It might be because the mod thinks it merits action but doesn't want to be the one to make the call, for various reasons. I will frequently look at a mod queue full of "borderline" posts and think "I don't want to deal with these right now." Maybe I don't have time to think about them, or maybe I'm in a bad mood and am afraid I might be too trigger-happy, so I will hope some other mod makes the decision. Then maybe I see three days later no one has made the call and it's still in the queue, and I sigh and approve it because clearly no one felt strongly about it and I'm not going to come and ban them three days later.
As it happens, that particular post by @crushedoranges was discussed in the mod channel. It was definitely borderline. We were split about 50/50 between "It's a bad post but not a rules violation" and "This deserves a warning." In the end we defaulted to no action. On a different day, a different mod might have warned or banned him. @crushedoranges posts a lot of crappy comments like that so he's on thin ice, but this time he skated. Does that mean we are not always 100% consistent and that sometimes a much worse comment will pass while a less bad comment earns the poster a ban? Yes, yes it does mean that! Yes, that definitely happens!
So it goes.
hydroacetylene
4mo ago
In the original metaphor, libertarians or principled free speech advocates were explicitly distinguished from witches. The witches are posting here because they can post things that are banned for ideological reasons elsewhere- HBD advocates, the pedo guy, securesignals, etc.
Man.
You keep doing this thing, this complete disregard for the spirit and letter of the rules, and we keep letting it slide. You’ve been an articulate and passionate and interesting commenter. But now when I see your name in a thread I know exactly what I’m going to get.
One month ban.
Edit: fuck me, this is what I get for modding on my way out of work. I read this as a straightforward attack on the general category of feminists as “hollowed out p-zombies” who “aren’t capable of consent.” And I thought, Jesus Christ, this is the clearest possible violation of the Specific Groups rule and the general proscription on Booing the Outgroup. I could write up a detailed explanation, or I could assume that he and any observers would recognize the same old fight as always.
We have been politely asking you to stop tarring all leftists/Democrats/Californians/NGOs/women with the same brush for literal years. And every time, you insist that no, you’re just speaking truth to power! Surely there can be no transgressing against people who want to MUTILATE and STERILIZE your kids!
I have so much respect for you as a writer, a craftsman, a father. You’re smart and you’re damn funny. You also have this pathological urge to tell everyone about how evil the other team has been lately. And that comes into direct conflict with the Specific Groups, Outgroup Booing, Antagonism, and occasionally Evidence rules. A lesser poster would have earned a permaban several times over.
I banned you for a month because the last one was two weeks and I saw this as more of the same. Now all sorts of pillars of the community are popping in to tell me it was a bad shoot. There’s also the fact that Amadan thinks I was too harsh; you were only “pretty close” to generalizing about all lefties/feminists.
So…did I get you wrong?
So the Trump administration has made an effort to limit "indirect" research costs, those research funds which institutions charge on top of a research grant to pay for expenses which cannot be attributed to an individual research project, for items like building maintenance, grant writing staff, and administrative staff. The new policy, effective February 10, 2025, caps the indirect cost rate at 15% for all NIH grants, both new and existing. People in my social circle are watching the court battle over this with baited breath. One of their institutions charges 55%, and another one charges 70% (which appears to be the legal maximum). From this perspective, 15% seems very very low, but it appears the average is around 27%.
I recently talked to some of my Korean researcher friends, and in Korea indirect costs are capped at 17% (and come out of the allocated grant money, so they are considered during grant proposal submission). Of that 17%, the institution even sets a few percent aside to give "miscellaneous funds" to Professors. My friend (a former Resident) said that these miscellaneous funds (which are completely unregulated) were critical to keeping medical professors on the job after an anti-corruption law banned them from taking "gifts" from patients: they were frequently spent on personal items, team dinners, and alcohol. In my experience they were used to purchase high-end computers for data analysis. But the point is that 17% leaves the institution with a surplus.
I'm left wondering if indirect costs in the US (now two to four times higher than those of Korea) are a result of perverse incentives. The NIH negotiates these after grants have been granted. If the US had counted these expenses against the grant value prior to grants being granted (as Korea does), would professors have been incentivized to lobby their institutions against administrative bloat?
I tried to find how these costs have changed over time, and it looks like they have risen by a few percent in the past decade, but every grantmaking agency has different numbers and it is a mess, with more variance between agencies than change over time.
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