mike10010100

> This is an accusation made by the US government, it's not a fact.

Are you claiming the chat logs that show Assange offering assistance cracking passwords are fake?

This. When is Apple getting on board?

> An iPhone is not a hard disk, but a computer with its own operating system, and you need dedicated software to communicate with it, imagine that.

Lol so I guess my Android phone isn't a computer with its own OS, since I can just plug it into a computer and copy over whatever files I want without bloatware, or, even better, plug in an external drive and copy over files to my phone.

This rationale of answering "I don't want to use Apple's BS ecosystem" with "Just use Apple's ecosystem" with a side order of "you luddite this is how technology works" snide is so sadly typical of people entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.

Lol "I don't want to use Apple's services for everyhing"...."Just use Apple's services!"

> You can disable iMessage at any point and it works.

Maybe now, but there was a time when iMessage would continue to hijack your number and divert messages from your phone, even if you disabled it.

Also, have you ever tried extricating your photos from iCloud? It's ridiculously complicated, and Apple doesn't give a bulk "download all my photos and delete from your servers". You have to go photo by photo and download them.

> If the American people knew the truth about these military incursions, they would be utterly outraged

The many, many, many times things have leaked with absolutely no major public reaction would show that to be false.

> And this is why the world is perpetually at war.

No, that's because we have an entire industrial complex surrounding making war profitable.

We had state secrets far before then and there were very long periods of peace.

> you have to prove intent

The intent is proven from the in which Assange agrees to provide assistance cracking a password.

That is the textbook definition of "conspiracy to commit a hacking crime".

It seems like your only justification here is outright denial. That's an interesting tactic for someone who claims to care about the law and logic.

Have you read a lot of indictments around conspiracy to commit crimes that end up with convictions? Because I think you have far too naive of a viewpoint about what constitutes evidence.

These people are actively muddying the waters by making outlandish claims about what constitutes public and private property.

> If the govt is using the law to retaliate against journalists

Assange is not a journalist. He conspired to hack a computer system. That is a crime.

Regardless of what you believe to be right, you must acknowledge that sometimes good people have to face consequences for their actions, regardless of the morality of said actions.

It's like these people don't understand how these charges work.

> How would you elect someone to get that done when every issue is tied to a hundred other issues in the same candidate and basically none of them will have any meaningful progress made during their term?

Elect an idiot like Trump who leaks secrets to foreign governments at the drop of a hat?

You know, this was really quite the disproportionate reply that in no way answered the poster's question, but I have to say that this line takes the cake.

> You'd rather the country be run by shady Blackwater types protected by ultimate state secrecy than have to deal with state diplomacy as its always been?

Secrecy has always been a part of state diplomacy. What world do you love in that this is not the case?

> I said very little was said

Really? Because from the citations I've given, it looks like a lot was said.

> That clearly isn't the case because it's happened already and journalists didn't salivate over it - they reported the event once and then it was never brought up again.

Because it was uneventful. It was a universally reviled thing that got banned, and rightfully so. There doesn't have to be "another side" to a story when that "other side" is filled with nothing but hate.

It really isn't.

Then perhaps if you could be a little clearer about what you are saying, we could have a discussion about that.

Blocking access to information via DNS blocks is an entirely different concept than private entities not wishing to host extremist content on their private platforms.

> PC Mag is mainstream media, now? How many readers do you think it has compared to a national newspaper?

You're comparing apples to oranges. What's it's ranking among tech/PC websites?

How about the Guardian?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/14/facebook-bans-...

How about BBC?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746601

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43398417

How about Wired?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-britain-first-far-r...

Is that mainstream enough for you?

> They want to manipulate the narrative to ensure the right outcomes, in their view.

Prove it.

This seems like a relatively moderate view, and I like how it breaks down the individual freedom of intentioned users vs. the freedom of users who have no intention of seeing said content.

But at the end of the day, aren't the companies who are providing payment processing or website hosting profiting off of extremism and hate? If you'll recall, the reason why they started deplatforming individuals to begin with was that large swaths of people boycotted their services until they chose to no longer do business with said extremists.

Isn't that voting with our dollars? Isn't that the Free Market of Ideas in action?

ISPs as a group blocking IP-level access to portions of the web is far and above a different thing than a private company or a group of private companies refusing to host content on their servers that they do not want to host. Your attempt to conflate the two is moving the goalposts and arguing a slippery slope.

But even then, VPN or Tor? The internet is built to route around damage. Has Mastadon, IRC, or ICQ ever been blocked?

Again, just because white nationalists don't have the platforms they want doesn't mean they can't get their message out. But what they want is mainstream acceptance, and that is most certainly not going to happen.

> His channel is not 'deleted', (as is the case with the majority of right-wing commentators as well btw), but it is very much 'shadowbanned'/blacklisted, (economic ruin).

And, as we all know, nobody ever made money off of extremist political commentary before YouTube, right kids?

FFS he has his own website and show. Just because YouTube doesn't give him money doesn't mean he's persecuted. He can feel free to host his videos elsewhere.

> (economic ruin).

Hyperbole alert!

> People like Rania Khalek, Abby Martin... were even more explicitly interrogated by the likes of CNN, had their Facebook pages taken down etc.

Please cite some sources. I'm not really finding any info.

> you are acting ignorant when you know there are only handful of platforms on internet.

Your continued participation in said platforms ensures that they will remain the "only" platforms on the internet.

There is absolutely nothing guaranteeing you a right to have a private entity host your information, especially when you're paying absolutely nothing for them to do so.

> The next step would be blocking DNS registrations of websites whose content you don't agree with

Slippery slope fallacy incoming!

> just out of interest... such as?

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQF2-F-GG_o

And here he is with a bunch of others!

https://i.imgur.com/SXqc8PX.jpg

> You could be really helpful here, sugar.

And you could tone down the condescension, sweetie.

> The same Voat that just got banned in New Zealand for hosting stuff the government didn't approve of whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone?

Take it up with New Zealand, which has very strong laws about hate speech and promoting extremist communities.

> whilst Facebook, which also hosted it, was left alone?

That content makes up a microscopic amount of the content on Facebook, and it was removed when reported. That content makes up the vast majority of the traffic on Voat, however.

It seems like you're moving the goalposts here, though. We're not talking about governments banning websites, we're talking about the government forcing websites to host content that they don't want to host. That's what's at play here.

And the fact is that you are free to start a public or Tor-based community of your own, unless you're in countries where Tor is blocked, in which case I think you're in far deeper shit than this discussion is focused on.

> the same kinds of people who control Facebook also control the mainstream media

There's that conspiracy language again!

And then you go on to link a piece of "mainstream media" that writes extensively about it! Did you mean to prove yourself wrong?

Why should we trust Alan Dershowitz without proof? Giuliani is a lawyer and he goes on TV all the time to lie about easily verifiable facts.

How about instead of a one-stop-shop social network, we go back to the random topic-specific forums of yesteryear? It decentralizes discussion, allows individuals to freely associate among themselves, and doesn't result in a "one size fits all" mentality when it comes to moderation.

> Strange how when some foreign state censors FB or Twitter it's an outrage, but when FB or Twitter sensor people directly "there are other places".

Because a government has a monopoly on violence, while a private company has freedom of association. You're conflating two different situations that are only superficially similar.

> Social media and platforms were supposed to be open to society (hence "social")

Yep, and that didn't work out so well. Hence, the bans.

> Really? How about plain nationalists? How about communists? How about separatists? How about traditionalists? How about "Occupy Wall Street"? How about "nationalists" in e.g Iceland, a country where nationalists would be predominantly if not exclusively white in the first place?

Are they talking about racial genocide? No? Then they're a-okay.

I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for people to understand: If you're advocating genocide or violence against a people, you're gonna get banned. Pure and simple.