apostacy

Sorry, I didn't mean to mischaracterize what you said.

It sounded like you were saying you wanted to change the interface somewhat. The reason that I thought that was because if it was a 100% transparent interface identical to an existing fax experience, then there are already solutions like that, but we just don't notice them because they are so transparent.

Regular consumers sending faxes over copper already have their fax calls digitized, encrypted, and compressed. And offices have pretty simple solutions to manage fax numbers from their servers. I think Exchange server might be able to do it out of the box now.

The reason I compared it to the "dropbox" comment was that I think that it would be a case of needless over-optimization.

I thought it was clear that I was opposed to moving away from phone numbers. Of course if the system that OP was talking about was almost completely identical to a fax experience, then what I am saying does not apply.

This is what the OP said:

> Sending the "fax" simply emails a PDF of the scanned pages over the internet and then prints the "fax" automatically?

Which, I read as implying that the user would have to enter something like an email address, to which I replied:

> Besides that, there is still no replacement for phone numbers. A phone number immediately returns if it is available to receive a transmission, and a fax on the other end confirms that it is set up, and you can be pretty sure that it isn't just going to languish in an unread mailbox somewhere. A phone number also takes more effort to set up, so will probably be treated better.

Of course, if an IT department mapped an POTS phone numbers to their mail server, and then had that email print out a pdf attachment on the other end, then yes, that would be fine.

But, actually this is done already in some places anyway. My old university had a system where incoming faxes were converted into emails and forwarded as email attachments, and I don't see why the IT dept could not have also configured it to automatically print out incoming emails, or even relay to an outgoing fax line.

But it does seem to me like a lot of trouble.

This question reminds me of the now infamous comment[1] asking why Dropbox exists when you can just use an SFTP server.

Just because there are technologically superior solutions is hardly what matters.

You need to factor in the experience of the users.

Besides that, there is still no replacement for phone numbers. A phone number immediately returns if it is available to receive a transmission, and a fax on the other end confirms that it is set up, and you can be pretty sure that it isn't just going to languish in an unread mailbox somewhere. A phone number also takes more effort to set up, so will probably be treated better.

Under certain circumstances, I would be more comfortable faxing documents somewhere than emailing a pdf somewhere.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

> And not moderating them is a slippery slope to facilitating violent extremism, and to anti-science activists leading an otherwise-developed country to top the chart in pandemic deaths.

Have we really learned nothing over the last year and a half? What will it take to shake your faith in the media?

Four weeks ago, the idea that COVID-19 originated from a lab was a conspiracy theory, likely to get you banned with extreme prejudice for being a qanon white supremecist.

COVID-19 was a conspiracy theory. Then it was a conspiracy theory that human to human transmission was possible. Then it was a conspiracy theory that wearing masks was at all helpful.

What will be the next domino to fall? What will the new truth be a few weeks from now?

If anything, censoring "conspiracy theories" led directly to the COVID-19 pandemic.

If this was 2015, I think things would have gone much better for us. Citizens would have been able to fill in the gaps where journalists failed us. There might have been a panic for people to buy masks and close the borders, sure, but the pandemic would have probably been contained.

I was banned for spreading conspiracy theories in February 2020 when I pleaded with people to practice basic hygiene and postpone travel until we had figured out what was going on.

Yes, because right now it is effectively Google having a pretext to remove whatever they want, by only selectively overriding moderation.

Just yesterday, a group posting Xinjiang videos was censored from YouTube.[1]

Are their videos going to be reinstated? Unlikely. They will have to try their luck on some obscure platform

Imagine if you had video evidence of human rights abuses (lots of people do), just hope that you can raise enough outrage quickly enough before it gets flagged and removed.

I know that Google and Facebook are private platforms, but that should not excuse them covering for genocidal maniacs.[2]

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-youtube-takes-d...

[2]: https://www.propublica.org/article/sheryl-sandberg-and-top-f...

> Hm. It does? My point is not saying anything is not part of "scriptural canon", merely that "CRT" as described is not actually taught in schools nor is it a clearly defined category.

I think that it is an accurate enough label. Clearly this stuff is heavily inspired and informed by CRT. From what I can tell, it contains the essential elements of CRT, just distilled down for easier consumption.

I think it is fair to call a curriculum authored by a confessed CRT advocate like Ibram Kendi Critical Race Theory.

But again, people are not complaining because it is Critical Race Theory. People are complaining that it is harmful.

> Yeah probably no lurking variable there...

You are teaching kids to be uncomfortable with each other based on what they look like. You are telling kids that they are fundamentally different from each other. You are telling kids that "race" is the most important element of their identity, and that they are wrong for trying to overlook how they are different.

That is child abuse.

I've heard fire and brimstone priests who turn people against each other use exactly the same defense for traumatizing kids. It is something like: It's not my fault that I'm giving 6 year olds nightmares; I'm just exposing them to reality. I'm actually helping them!

Telling children that they are terrible people and need your permission to be good is a horrible thing to do. And I think that in the future you will end up being seen as no better than abusive clergy.

> Imagine replacing CRT in this sentence with quantum physics or advanced macroeconomics. It doesn't make sense, and leaning heavily on "oh but the children" doesn't really win any points if you don't have a rational explanation of how this is happening.

It makes perfect sense. If everyone is learning a flawed or incomplete version of quantum mechanics, then that is what quantum mechanics effectively is. The fact that a "better" version of it exists somewhere is meaningless. Physics isn't right because feelings and because a majority of people say it is right. This is basic epistemology.

If you can defend any ideology by simply saying that the version being widely taught is wrong, and somewhere, there is a correct version of it.

You can try to defend CRT abuse by saying that it isn't "real" CRT, but that again means almost nothing. The problem is not about textual adherence, it is about abuse of people.

I'm equally not impressed with people dismissing stuff like The Killing Fields as "not really Communism", as if that even matters. People aren't complaining about the text of CRT, they are complaining about harm done to people.

And yes, if you are hurting children, you are prima facie wrong. It is an incredibly short chain of reasoning.

> That's always been true, and CRT has nothing to do with it.

I have seen it happen to preteens first hand. Children that a year ago were comfortable hanging out, are no longer so.

CRT encourages kids to engage in paint-swatch racialism.

It is heartbreaking to see first hand children who used to just be able to play together, worry about whether they should include or exclude other kids because of what they look like.

Teaching children to pre-judge people because of where their pigmentation is on a paint swatch is grotesque and it is child abuse.

If your ideology leads you to hurt children, then your ideology must be wrong.

So, pre-judging people is wrong because it erases their identity by making unfounded and unfair presumptions about who they are because of arbitrary physical characteristics that they can not control. Racial pre-judgement is a dangerous bronze-age heuristic that society should try to be moving past, but CRT encourages it.

Implanting racial self hatred (and racial pride) is a pernicious and dangerous thing to do, and if you can't see that I don't have time to educate you. Reducing human beings down to being "black and brown bodies" is disgusting. The correct response to that kind of dehumanization can only be disgust. And again, people in positions of authority imposing that in CHILDREN. At least adults have more agency to push back.

I don't care if that isn't "real" CRT. It doesn't matter if what I am talking about isn't textually correct. If the CRT you are talking about only exists in the minds of obscure scholars and texts, then it is just a fantasy, and doesn't really exist. The only real CRT is what is actually being implemented in classrooms across the country.

> Nobody had even heard of CRT until like 3 years ago and what people call "CRT" isn't even an actual category. It is certainly not being taught in highschools.

This to me sounds like someone dismissing the harms caused by a Church by saying that it isn't technically part of scriptural canon, and that if we could only adopt True and correct orthodoxy, these abuses would not happen.

The problem is that kids are being taught to not be friends with each other because of what they look like.

> The First Amendment to the US Constitution constrains the limits that laws can impose on free expression. That's one definition.

One reason hat this is an unreasonably narrow definition is because it implies that censorship can only be done in places where the United States legislature has jurisdiction.

Does this mean that censorship is impossible in Canada, because they are not subject to the First Amendment?

Nothing done in Canada can technically violate the First Amendment, so I guess that means that we have no right to complain about suppression of people expressing themselves there.

I usually read this argument as either very misinformed, or bad faith sophistry.

> I don't think I need an authoritative source to assert that you can't stand on my lawn with a megaphone and yell at passers by; and if you guest on my blog, I can moderate your posts if I don't like them. If that's censorship, then it's perfectly legitimate, when done by a private individual who is responsible for the channel.

Those examples you gave are complete straw men. Nobody is saying that you should be compelled to allow people to scream at your on your own lawn, or that your small personal blog should be compelled to allow anyone to comment.

Companies like Facebook and YouTube are bigger and more influential than any other media platforms in history. And yet they are far less regulated than any newspaper or cable television network.

Debunkers got people killed. Facebook, Twitter, and most of the mainstream media suppressed early warnings about COVID.

Warnings that we should wear masks were called fake news and anti-Chinese racism.

And every single person I know who is smug about how ignorant other people are for not getting vaccinated ignored warnings about COVID because it wasn't on a major social media platform or cable television.

Every single person I know who needlessly wears a mask and loves showing off how smart they think they are denied that this was coming until it was far too late.

If COVID had happened in 2014, it would have been much less of a problem because people would have been able to communicate with each other.

I wish I could say that people have learned from their mistakes.

If you were wrong then, isn't it possible you are wrong now?

> Truth and reality aren't subjective, but people's beliefs about the nature of them are, very much so. It's impossible to solve the problem by asking "The Experts" to adjudicate what is and isn't true, because The Experts have become too mired in corruption, greed, political intimidation and so on.

I remember well into March 2020 that The Experts were telling us to go about our business as usual, and censoring people who tried raising the alarm about COVID.

Most high speed rail lines are just upgrades to existing lines.

We already have these rights of way settled. That is all the more reason that should not be abandoned.

It is typical to run minimal service to maintain the route, until service can be improved. China's passenger rail in rural areas looked downright dysfunctional 25 years ago, until it was upgraded, now it is the best in the world.

I think it is perfectly fine to run empty trains to the middle of nowhere.

NYC runs excessive service to neighborhoods that don't need it. There are four different lines to Coney Island that are nearly empty by the time they reach their destination, even during rush hour. They should not be abandoned though, because those neighborhoods have the capacity to grow. Neighborhoods that were lower traffic 20 years ago have only improved because of subway access, and are now reaching capacity limits. If we keep pruning parts of the network that are under-performing, we will be left with nothing.

I don't think that characterizing mass transit networks as unidirectional money sinks is correct. Cost goes in the other direction as well; if you invest more, then they expand and more people use them, and then they become more efficient to operate.

Eventually, populations align themselves around well developed public transit, but that can take decades. We just spent decades re-aligning the population around government subsidized highways and air travel, that's all.

I think the absolute time and distance is what matters, and it would still substantially benefit from being high speed, even if it is meandering through upstate NY and along the great lakes.

Eventually, a more direct NY - Chicago high speed rail route could be built that is even faster.

These long distance routes should be left intact because they are an important anchor for eventually expanding to high speed rail.

China kept their unprofitable rural slow passenger routes into the distant corners of their country, and now they are converting them to high speed routes.

The Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line is 2,298km long, and used to be 22 hours but now runs in 8[1]

Being able to go from Penn Station in Manhattan to Union Station in Chicago in 8 hours in a comfortable train would be a serious alternative to air travel, and once the track is upgraded, it would probably be cheaper than existing service. And this is completely doable with decades old technology. Other countries have done comparable things with less.

I don't think we should abandon "legacy" routes just because they are not profitable right now. And even if they are never profitable that alone is not a good enough reason to abandon infrastructure.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20842836

Consider that most regional airline routes to rural parts of the country are subsidized as well (and far more is spent on it). Most of Alaska would lose air service. Large chunks of Texas, Arizona, and Alabama would be cut off.

I think we need to have a concept of essential rail service, like we have with road and air.

These routes should have have any obligation to make money, because they provide a benefit to tax payers. Most infrastructure is just accepted as something that should be funded.

Another reason these long distance routes should be left intact is because they are an important anchor for eventually expanding to high speed rail.

China kept their unprofitable rural slow passenger routes into the distant corners of their country, and now they are converting them to high speed.

For some perspective, the federal government regularly funds highways to nowhere that nobody asked for or wants[1]

Most regional airfields are bigger money sinks than Amtrak. The federal government subsidizeds up to $800 per passenger in some of the more rural air routes in Alaska.[2]

Rail travel subsidies are a fraction of what the United States taxpayers spend on transportation. We have a concept of "essential" air and road travel subsidies, why not essential rail subsidies?

Think of how great this arm of our transportation infrastructure could be if we shifted 10% of what we spend on regional airlines to rail transport.

Other countries have clearly demonstrated that high speed rail works. And they don't spend nearly as much on infrastructure.

And what is wrong with just having subsidized slow passenger service across the continent either? I assure you it is not too expensive compared to what we already spend, and I think it is very beneficial. I think that we should continue to maintain a fleet of long distance passenger trains and stations. Passenger trains can be an essential safety where other forms of travel are unavailable. We just take it for granted that the government should spend as much as it wants building roads everywhere, but we count every penny when it comes to passenger rail.

[1]: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/12/23/meet-2020s-worst-high...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20120202212318/http://www.buses....

Notice the dotted line between Jacksonville FL and Mobile AL in the lower right?

That is because of a "temporary" service suspension in 2004 from damage by hurricane Katrina.[1]

Apparently even Amtrak thinks that by 2035 they won't be capable of restoring service.

[1]: https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20081117/NEWS/801256449

> But it's as easy to point to the dire consequences of persisting in amplifying the voices of people spewing hateful rhetoric as it is to point to the people silenced to protect the interests of the powerful. I think treating this as a one-sided problem with an obvious answer does it an injustice.

I don't think it is as easy to prove that something has been censored, that's the problem. There is not transparency. Maybe if we could examine exactly what was removed and why, that would be different. But we have normalized and legitimized the opaque and arbitrary removal of political content and historical records.

I also don't think it is so easy to prove direct harm from something not being censored, and certainly not enough to outweigh the harm that accepting censorship brings.

The truth is, when you outsource critical thinking to Facebook, it is not just potentially harmful content they remove. You can't say that you only support deplatforming for people you disagree with, because it will never be implemented that way.

In practice, you either you support freedom of speech, or you support billionaires and dictators arbitrarily removing and editing what we say.

> Fellow Turkish trolls are doing extra duty on this thread :-)

If I got something wrong, anyone please feel free to correct me instead of just downvoting.

If I only get downvoted but nobody can tell me what I'm wrong about, it is just brigading.

And that can backfire, because if this is happening to seemingly reasonable comments, it strongly implies that those downvoting me are not capable of countering what I said.

I think your links prove my point: Facebook only cares about appeasing the powerful. Whether it is facilitating genocide or covering up genocide, they are the same. If it benefited Facebook, they would just as well deplatform people trying to expose a genocide in Myanmar.

And if the Turkish government tried organizing another genocide, I'm sure Facebook would platform it, and censor any opposition to it.

Why wouldn't they? They've already committed to deplatforming critics of the Erdoğan. Do you think that Facebook would take a principled stand and suddenly choose not to take orders from the Turkish government, and risk losing that market? I don't see that happening.

Facebook has shown themselves completely willing to remove content at the request of the Erdoğan government.

If they deplatform critics of Erdoğan, why would they also not be willing to deplatform anything else that Erdoğan does not like, like discussion of the Armenian Genocide?

And maybe this is why we should consider the consequences of encouraging deplatforming of people we don't like.

My other comment pointing out collusion of Facebook and the Turkish government is heavily downvoted, and I am not sure why. If I am mistaken, please someone let me know.

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/sheryl-sandberg-and-top-f...

Since Facebook has agreed to implement censorship on behalf of the Turkish government[1], how long is it until discussion of the Armenian genocide is flagged as hate speech and fake news?

As far as Turkey is concerned, this is fake news. And big tech has agreed to defer to Turkey.

[1]: https://www.engadget.com/facebook-turkey-emails-200407588.ht...

The problem is essentially the same. I did not say they should start a new browser engine. I think that if Mozilla was as willing to take risks as they were before, they would win over users. The difference is that before they were willing to risk annoying the big fish. Now they are afraid of upsetting Netflix or Google.

And I don't think they will be able to make progress if they refuse to challenge existing web technologies. They could do it, but they won't.

In fact, Mozilla seems terrified of losing favor with any of the major platforms. Which means that they are beholden to them.

I would assert that the exact opposite is true. Taking a strong stand in favor of users would increase their market share.

Over a decade ago, one of the best things that Firefox did to compete against IE6 was to include a built in popup blocker that was on by default. Exactly the same criticisms were made.

It was called irresponsible and disruptive, since so much revenue came from popups, and horrible flash-based full screen pop-under ads. But I am glad that Firefox didn't let the pleas of the established market prevent them from siding with users.

> Regardless, you bet it would decrease the death count.

Absolutely not. Guns "democratize" violence. People who are less strong will at least have a fighting chance to defend themselves. Without guns, those with brute force have all the power. It would be especially bad for women.

When we have a country where everyone gets along and trusts the police and government, then we can have a discussion about banning guns. I still won't support it but at least you have some justification for considering gun control.

The Philippines has more mass shootings, and way more crime in general.

And how do you define a mass shooting? The media equates a gangland battle between two groups of crack dealers to be the same thing as the Columbine shooting.

A country can still have nightmarish levels of crime while having strict gun control, like Brazil. A country can have nightmarish levels of crime with very little gun restrictions, like South Africa and The Philippines. A country can be very safe and have little gun control, like Switzerland, The Czech Republic and Israel. A country can have strict gun control and very little crime, like Japan.

You need to take a more holistic approach to understand what is really going on. And certainly to inform policy.

I don't think so. I think it is our society.

If you gave everyone in Japan a gun, I don't think people would just start committing more crimes.

If you took away guns from everyone in a place like South Africa, I don't think it would decrease violence.

This is just conservative Prager-U corporate toadying.

Essentially, if you don't like your job, stop complaining and quit!

People invested significantly in YouTube because they were promised that it was a platform for everyone.

Now they are gentrifying the platform and driving everyone off who isn't a major celebrity, via gaslighting.

If you are a celebrity like Logan Paul, the rules simply do not apply to you. YouTube will fully monetize anything you put up, up to and including violating the terms of service or even committing actual crimes in real life.

YouTube is perfectly capable of treating people better, they just choose not to.

People can see it is wrong when Uber does stuff like this to contractors who are far less invested in the platform, but YouTube gets a free pass to abuse its contributors.

Lets of course also not forget the biggest one, COVID.

COVID was fake news, until it wasn't. Previous weeks (months?) were spent suppressing warnings about it.

I specifically remember being banned for saying that people should wear face coverings. In February I tried saying that people should think twice before taking the subway or going to Lunar New Year.

January 2020, there was overwhelming evidence that something bad was coming, even though independent and citizen journalists didn't know the exact scope of it.

But their narrative was that COVID may exist but it isn't dangerous, and wearing a mask is alarmist and probably sinophobic racist Russian propaganda; continue having public gatherings and stop asking questions.

Within 48 hours, big tech decided that the truth is that we had always been at war with Eurasia and that anyone who had any doubts about lockdown strategy was basically a white supremacist and needed to be censored with extreme prejudice.

In my mind, that should have been it. After so many lives lost, that is when we should have decided that corporate america should not set up a de-facto ministry of truth, but I guess most people don't agree with me.