Early in the day on Saturday, Kyle Rittenhouse favorited an image of a topless woman on Twitter. As Twitter will post tweets you favorite in the feeds of your followers, suddenly this image began to display in the feeds of Kyle’s followers, showing that he favorited it.

Conservative host Lauren Chen sent a general tweet reminding people how Twitter functions.

It’s been a little while since Kyle has been on social media, as all the platforms purged him following the incident in Kenosha where he shot 3 people in self defense. Not only did Social Media platforms like Twitter and Facebook remove Kyle, but they removed anyone who said “Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.”

Only after Kyle’s acquittal was he allowed to open new accounts. It’s pretty easy to forget some of the details pertaining to what activity is visible when you’ve been off the platform for an extended period. Twitter is also unique in that it is a social media platform that openly allows nudity and pornography.

Sure, something like this can be embarrassing… But really, who cares? 18 year olds are going to be 18 year olds.

This is the second time that Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.

The post Kyle Rittenhouse Caught Browsing Porn on Twitter? So What. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Ailan Evans on October 4, 2021

Platforms owned by Facebook all experienced outages at the same time late Monday morning, and could not be accessed.

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all went down Monday morning, according to outage tracking site Downdetector. Facebook was first reported down around 11:15 a.m., with reports peaking around 12 p.m. with over 100,000 reported outages, according to the site.

When users attempted to access Instagram, a message reading “5xx Server Error” appeared. A message reading “Sorry, something went wrong” appeared when users tried to access Facebook.

Facebook did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” company spokesman Andy Stone wrote on Twitter Monday around 12 p.m. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Facebook has been the subject of controversy over the past few weeks following an investigation by The Wall Street Journal into documents leaked by a whistleblower showing the company’s inner workings.

Editor’s note: This is a developing story and will be updated.

The post Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp All Go Down At Once appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

At a blistering 2021 speed, the screen shifts from archaic interfaces to modern emojis without giving as much as a second to focus before clearing the display for text reading “It’s been 25 years since comprehensive internet regulations were passed. It’s time for an update.” It is part of Facebook’s pro-regulatory advertisement push entitled, “Born in ’96” part of the larger “It’s Time” campaign.

As advertisements go, this one is remarkably effective, if a little overbearing. Would you expect anything less from the king of every corner in the advertising market?

The ecosystem created for the internet in ‘96 by the Communications Decency Act (CDA) has clearly not impeded Facebook’s success. After being created in 2004, Facebook was established in a post-CDA world and has played a leading role in establishing that world’s bounds. Nevertheless, the company’s anxiety over ambiguities in the ancient digital legislation is understandable.

Rather than letting Facebook’s executives design the social media market of the future, what if there were free competition? Not the kind of competition that Twitter and even Parler provide Facebook, rather, a type of decentralized competition that challenges the structure that the Silicon Valley giants are built on. In other words, how about a polycentric organization of competition that makes the CDA obsolete and breaks up vertical monopolies on user-generated content and use data? Thanks to an unexpected source, that competition may not be far away.

To Moderate or Not to Moderate is NOT the Question

Chances are, if you are made uneasy by a social media giant lobbying to change the rules that govern it and its competitors, that dubious feeling may come from a general distrust of Facebook itself. Facebook may or may not have lost your trust after Russia used the platform to target Americans with divisive advertisements during the 2016 election, or after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to Congress to testify in 2018 about the site’s alleged internal content moderation bias against conservatives. Even without negative associations, however, new regulations on established markets create barriers to entry and disincentivize competition. In this case, new regulations would mandate that social media companies practice internal content moderation—otherwise simply known as moderation—something that has strained Facebook’s abilities up until recently.

At the root of Facebook’s legal issues is the CDA. Although originally intended to determine what content was suitable for television, the CDA became one of the most foundational regulations for the burgeoning internet. Insofar as the internet is concerned, the CDA mandates that a site may not publish certain indecent, and often independently criminal, content. It also delegates the enforcement of these rules to a regulatory agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), instead of leaving the justice system to sort out victims and perpetrators. Notably, the CDA also creates a distinction between “publishers,” standard websites that curate or create content, and “platforms” like social media sites that allow anyone to post and merely aggregate and serve content to consumers.

Distorting the justice system by inserting executive agencies between victim and perpetrator creates a topsy-turvy system. As it stands, proving the facilitatory guilt on the part of a social media company is far easier than proving that any crime outside of the scope of the CDA had been committed in the first place.

Under the CDA, there are two systems of online content production. Publishers are obligated to internally moderate content such that it remains within the bounds of what the law considers acceptable speech. On the other hand, platforms are not held to this standard and are, by the nature of the distinction, barred from behaving as publishers. Although this clause, better known simply as “section 230,” has been touted by many as the saving grace of the CDA from the perspective of free speech, it is also the wedge that causes Facebook to take flack from both the left and right.

Facebook has been scrutinized for not moderating content strictly enough in 2016 and for being too politically restrictive ever since. New regulations would certainly clear up Facebook’s role, especially if Facebook’s on-staff legal team would have a say in the verbiage of any proposed bill, which it likely would. Either way, moderation of user-generated media, and therefore free speech online, will either be centralized under a federal agency or only distributed between a few massive companies which themselves have nothing to do with content production.

The free market provided several alternatives to Facebook and Twitter but few gained traction in the face of such established competitors and steep regulatory obligations. One of these start-ups, Parler, managed to gain a healthy following when President Donald Trump was controversially removed from almost every other online platform following the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6. After gaining millions of users overnight, Parler’s web-hosting service, a subsidiary of Amazon, decided to sever ties with the company over its moderation policy. This effectively moderated the entire website off of the internet by refusing to do business with them.

Many were attracted to Parler’s moderation policies, or lack thereof, and, had it not been shut down, the site would have posed a competitive threat for a portion of Facebook’s disaffected user base. Although providing a place for truly unfettered conversation, Parler segmented conversation and would never be a comfortable place for the majority of social media users who prefer some community standards beyond the legal bare minimum to be enforced.

Besides, having a second, slightly edgier public square just outside the first is not a substitution for effective public discourse. The French third estate’s self-separation from the estates general did not, after all, create a more healthy political dialogue for the French people during the beginning of the French Revolution.

Parler was shuttered for two months while the site’s founders procured alternative web hosting services. Although currently functional, Parler’s existence is not a long-term competitive solution to the problem of legally obligatory moderation because it frames moderation, in and of itself, as a bad thing. The same could be said for President Donald Trump’s new media outlet if it is ever opened up to public contribution.

Moderation, when done offline, is a daily practice for most. Whether by choosing the members of your inner circle or choosing to only have two slices of pizza, people self-moderate their lives all the time. Centrally planned moderation, however, is called prohibition and often causes more harm than good.

Enter the Decentralized Social Media (DSM) model, a polycentric model of online interaction recently proposed on Medium by Ross Ulbricht, the currently imprisoned founder of Silk Road, an infamous illicit online marketplace that jump-started the popularity of Bitcoin in the early 2000s.

The Innovation of Decentralized Social Media

Moderation of something as big as social media is incredibly difficult and would take a massive amount of manpower if done entirely manually. Some of Facebook’s most closely guarded secrets determine the algorithms the company has developed for use in ad targeting and to facilitate moderation. The CDA both disallows this moderation and requires it, depending on which side of Section 230 a site falls on.

To oversimplify, Ulbricht’s DSM model would remove those automatic and manual moderation tools from under the hood of a social media’s servers and place those same processes in the device of the social media user under the control of separate companies that stand to profit from providing moderation and aggregation services at the discretion of the device owner. Users could access any or all of the web’s available social media content feeds at once and only be fed content within their own acceptable parameters while retaining ownership of their user data. All of this would be done through the operant function of Bitcoin, the encrypted blockchain.

In practice, the seemingly small distinction between where these algorithms are processed and who owns those functions resolves several of the questions raised and created by the CDA without having to create or pass any new laws.

Where the CDA consolidates and centralizes the responsibility for moderation under the content aggregator’s purview, start-up companies following Ulbricht’s model would compete to moderate and aggregate both user content and advertisements from social media platforms, thereby creating a market where there previously was only mandate.

Users would simply open an app wherein social media content is centralized. Users could pick and choose moderation and aggregation providers to reward with a portion of the advertisement revenue that their engagement latently generates and freely switch between providers.

Rather than having aggregation and moderation be centralized by legal obligation to a few social media companies, levels of moderation, advertisement service, and content prioritization would all be separate overlapping markets which independently compete to provide superior service and control for negative externalities.

Algorithmic moderation is a powerful tool that, along with manual moderation, can create comfortable digital environments. If moderation and aggregation were divorced from the social media platform and made a competitive marketplace, users would be free to use whatever network or combination of networks that they preferred and have the content they are served moderated however they see fit. If users could be in control of the moderation they facilitate and are subject to, the arrangement would be considerably more consensual. Social media companies under a decentralized model would not be held responsible for users misusing their digital infrastructure as content regulation would be the responsibility of the client-side moderation algorithm and the companies that compete to provide those services most effectively. If a user was ever dissatisfied with the moderation they were provided those would have market remedies.

Should someone use social media as a means to harass or threaten another, there would be no intermediate party at fault, freeing the judicial system to bring justice to guilty and affected parties alike.

Side-effects may include

Besides sidestepping the CDA’s ineffectual regulations, a DSM would protect the privacy of users by encrypting the user generated data used by moderation algorithms and keeping a function of that unique data as the user’s encryption key or proof of identity.

The value of the advertising market and the size of Facebook’s share of it are both due to the incredible amount of data that Google, Facebook, and other companies collect on every person who uses their services. This information is the company’s to sell, use to target ads, or train algorithms with. Under a DSM model, that information would be yours to sell and distribute among service providers.

The value of this information is worth much more than the emotional value of privacy. Companies like Facebook make much of their money in one way or another from the accuracy and scope of their user data collection. If that information were to become yours by using a DSM, so too would the money it generates.

As it stands, Facebook and Google data-mine users in exchange for a service. Were they to have to adapt to a DSM model, companies like this would need to shift to more traditional models where payment is offered directly for a service rendered. Ulbricht’s model would allow businesses to accommodate liquid payment between service providers like web-hosts or advertisers and the users so that the app constantly allows users to be in control of how much of their data they would like to share and how much usability they want to pay for by receiving ads.

Innovation always trumps regulation

Rather than offering prescription for what ails the social media marketplace, Ulbricht’s paper is a prediction from a prison cell. The unstoppable march of innovation is sure to further segment the digital marketplace for social programs into intricately specialized niches. The distributed social media model is merely a description of how those businesses and technologies would need to operate.

Because Ulbricht was not granted the clemency from the Trump administration that he so hoped for, the infamous programmer will not be the one to found the moderation or content aggregation start-ups that he describes. Public figures such as Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, and Tim Pool have all claimed to be creating platforms that in some way aggregate social media, beginning the process of decentralizing—or polycentrizing—the social media market. It remains to be seen if these or any start-ups will truly realize Ulbricht’s ideas, but if the CDA is not soon updated, it will likely be circumvented.

Just as 3D printers have shown several gun laws to be archaic, if not entirely obsolete, the best way to counter a bad set of laws or regulations is to create a technology or idea that renders it pointless. Ulbricht may not be the one to lead the charge, but his simple Medium post certainly opened a door.

Gavin Hanson (born in ’96) is the Editor-in-Chief of Catalyst

Published with permission from Catalyst. Read the original article here.

The post Regulation, Moderation, and Social Media Decentralization appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

We can add Section 230 to that list, an obscure provision of the Communications and Decency Act (1996) that was previously unknown to most.

Section 230 is a frequent target of President Trump’s ire, and as such it can now frequently be found trending on Twitter, being debated in Congress, and featured in primetime media coverage. All in all, dozens of bills to repeal or modify Section 230 have been introduced in 2020.

TechDirt journalist Mike Masnick writes, “If you were in a coma for the past 12 months, just came out of it, and had to figure out what had happened in the last year or so solely based on new bills introduced in Congress, you would likely come to the conclusion that Section 230 was the world’s greatest priority and the biggest, most pressing issue in the entire freaking universe.”

But while it is a recurring topic of discussion, it seems the incessant chatter has only left Americans more confused. This explainer is here to break down the code and the debate swirling around it.

What Is Section 230?

So what’s the truth about Section 230? What does it actually say and what are its implications? Fortunately, the original author of the bill, Senator Ron Wyden, is still around and on record when it comes to the current dispute.

“Republican Congressman Chris Cox and I wrote Section 230 in 1996 to give up-and-coming tech companies a sword and a shield, and to foster free speech and innovation online. Essentially, 230 says that users, not the website that hosts their content, are the ones responsible for what they post, whether on Facebook or in the comments section of a news article. That’s what I call the shield.”

“But it also gave companies a sword so that they can take down offensive content, lies and slime — the stuff that may be protected by the First Amendment but that most people do not want to experience online. And so they are free to take down white supremacist content or flag tweets that glorify violence (as Twitter did with President Trump’s recent tweet) without fear of being sued for bias or even of having their site shut down. Section 230 gives the executive branch no leeway to do either.”

It can seem complicated, but it’s actually fairly straightforward. Section 230 simply says that only internet users are responsible for what they write, not the private companies whose websites host the commenters. Secondly, it affirms what the First Amendment already implies—that private companies don’t have to host speech that violates their values.

Section 230 was written early on in the internet age, long before social media companies even existed (although much of this debate has focused on those platforms). Within the bill, the authors explicitly say the law is “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services.”

And it has been successful. The government got out of the way and the internet expanded rapidly. Private companies invested millions to build their online enterprises, encouraged by provisions like Section 230 that secured their rights against unjust legal charges that would have otherwise put those investments in severe jeopardy.

Online companies want and need internet users to interact with their content and share feedback on their platforms. That goes for publishers (like Vox.com and us here at FEE.org), platforms (like Twitter and YouTube), and everything in between. But they shouldn’t be held liable because someone writes something untrue on their pages, nor should they have to host content that they find offensive.

Ronald Reagan once said,“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

Individuals should be held accountable when they break the law or violate the rights of others. But it would be morally wrong to hold society at large, or even parts of society like private businesses, responsible for the action of an autonomous individual. In fact, this course of action would let the party actually responsible for harm off the hook while punishing a third party who did nothing wrong.

Shoshana Weissmann, the head of Digital Media and Fellow at the R Street Institute, recently wrote a punchy (and hilarious) article illustrating this concept—tying Section 230’s protections to Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom “reveal” earlier this year. For those who’ve forgotten, Toobin accidentally exposed himself on a work Zoom call. As Weissmann points out, without Section 230, Zoom itself would have been liable for his lewd content rather than Toobin being held responsible.

Thankfully, we have Section 230 which creates a just and sensible legal apparatus for the internet and conduct on it. Without this protection, it is highly unlikely that the internet would have taken off and grown to its current state, much less produced the social media websites, online news outlets, and other user-reviewed services (like Yelp) we all now enjoy.

What Do Both Sides Want To Do About It?

Section 230 became a hot topic in the fall of 2019 when President Donald Trump drafted an executive order requiring the Federal Communications Commission to develop rules that would limit its protections. Ultimately, that order never went through, as even the mention of it was met with confusion and alarm by regulators, legal experts, and First Amendment advocates.

The storm died down until May of this year when Twitter found itself in Trump’s crosshairs after slapping one of his tweets with a violence warning. This feud reignited Trump’s fury and determination to do away with Section 230.

Since then, Trump and his allies have regularly called for the repeal of Section 230. Trump believes that social media companies are unfair to him and his agenda, and his response to that is to use the government to force the private companies to act in a way he deems appropriate. He also believes that doing away with Section 230 would block social media companies from “censoring” information on their websites.

There has, of course, been pushback against all this. Many conservatives and libertarians have pointed out that Trump and his supporters fundamentally misunderstand the legal code and its implications. Supporters of Section 230 say it upholds the right to free speech in the age of the internet, and that it protects the free market as well.

Meanwhile, others like Republican Senator Roger Wicker have called for modifications to the law that would leave the liability shield in place, but that would force companies to host content that may violate their values.

Social media companies, who have incurred the bulk of the derision in this debate, are left between a rock and a hard place. Democratic leaders want them to censor more and guard against “fake news,” while some Republicans want to take away their rights for any content moderation.

True defenders of free speech, limited government, and the free market are largely being drowned out by the tidal wave of politicians and their supporters pushing for big government responses to a societal issue they dislike.

What Would Happen If It Was Repealed?

While opponents of Section 230 think that its removal would force companies to host their content and not “censor” information the company does not like, it would, in fact, have the opposite effect. If companies were liable for content posted on their pages by third parties, they would instead have to censor vigorously.

We’ve already seen a preview of what this would look like with the passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTRA). Signed into law in April of 2018, FOSTRA carved out an exception to Section 230 that essentially said websites would be held responsible for content promoting or facilitating sex trafficking or prostitution.

Internet companies reacted quickly, even those whose primary purpose had nothing to do with sex work. Craigslist removed its personals section altogether. Reddit and Google also took down parts of their websites. Notably, these actions were not taken because these sections of their websites promoted prostitution, but rather because policing them against the possibility that someone else might advertise illegal services was an impossible task.

It is almost inevitable that further eroding Section 230 would have similar impacts throughout the internet. Consider, for example, a company like Twitter. If it could potentially be sued for the millions of user posts on its platform, it would have to start censoring many more of them, or even running them through a pre-approval process. This would likely slow down the flow of information on these channels as the companies would be forced to sort through and approve content. Ultimately, these actions would result in all of us having less of a public square, fewer information streams, and a less rich internet experience.

Especially concerning is the impact these actions would have on smaller companies and start-ups, many of whom cannot afford losing liability protections. Ironically, those who seek to harm Facebook or Twitter by repealing this law would actually end up entrenching their power even more by putting their competitors out of business.

Take Parler for example. It is a growing, popular competitor of Twitter’s that many conservatives are flocking to. Should Section 230 be repealed, this new company would almost certainly be put out of business tomorrow as it does not yet have the revenue to withstand litigation. Twitter, on the other hand, would have the resources to survive and adapt.

“If Section 230 were to be repealed, or even watered down, this next generation of platform will likely be thwarted by liability threats. “Big tech” firms have the resources to comply with new mandates and regulations, so erecting this barrier to entry to nascent firms will artificially lock currently dominant firms in their lead positions.”

-An open letter to Congress from a coalition of conservative and libertarian think orgs, including Americans for Prosperity, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedomworks, and more

What If It Was Modified?

Some bills seek to modify Section 230 instead of repealing it. There are too many to name in one article, so we’ll focus on the worst and the most prominent: Senator Josh Hawley’s “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.”

This legislation would remove liability protections for companies with more than 30 million US users, 300 million global users, or $500 million in annual revenue. The bill also says that these large companies can apply for immunity from the bill if they go through a process that allows the FTC to screen their protocols and attest that their algorithms and content removal policies do not discriminate on the basis of political views.

So Hawley wants to fight “censorship” with – wait for it – actual government censorship of private companies.

Real censorship almost always involves the government, because without this tool of force, it is unlikely information could be totally suppressed. While people like to call social media content moderation “censorship” it really isn’t, not in the true sense of the word. Those who have their posts removed from one platform can easily go post them elsewhere. But what Hawley wants to do, which is use the government to censor the protocols of private companies, actually does constitute censorship as it would force them to allow the government to dictate what speech they would (or would not) host on their websites.

The notion that it would ever be wise to give the government this kind of power is quite jarring to encounter in America. It’s easy to see how this system would quickly eviscerate our fundamental rights to free speech by allowing the government to determine what belongs in the public square of discourse.

And, it’s important to remember that Biden appointees will soon be running these departments. This is an important reminder that the government bureaucrats who decide what counts as “neutral” will not be picked by your team forever. It would be prudent to stop giving the government more power that will only one day be used against you when your “team” is no longer in charge.

What’s next? Will they call to nationalize these platforms? This approach is antithetical to the ideals of limited government, free markets, and free speech.

“This bill forces platforms to make an impossible choice: either host reprehensible, but First Amendment protected speech, or lose legal protections that allow them to moderate illegal content like human trafficking and violent extremism,” said Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association.“That shouldn’t be a tradeoff.”

Myths About Section 230

While many seem to think that Section 230 makes a distinction between ideological publishers and neutral platforms, and that companies who act as publishers do not enjoy its protections, this isn’t true. Section 230 applies to all internet companies and makes no such distinction between publishers and platforms.

Section (c.) of Section 230 specifically addresses this point and speaks to the protection of companies who block and screen offensive material. It immediately states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. It goes on to say that when it comes to matters of civil liability, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lews, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”

Publishers can be sued for defamatory language online, just as they can be sued for it in print. So can Twitter or Facebook, if they issue a statement or a post. But that isn’t a relevant scenario to Section 230, which again, merely maintains websites are not liable for content you may choose to write on their pages.

Removing content they find offensive is well within their First Amendment rights, and within their Section 230 rights. It doesn’t change their status as a company or their protections under the law.

Many advocates for repealing Section 230 have hung their cases on the “publisher vs. platform” argument in an attempt to mislead their followers. But the good news is, Section 230 is relatively short. You can literally read it in less than five minutes for yourself and see that the publisher vs. platform discussion is a non-issue.

There are also those who claim that Section 230 is a special protection or an exemption for social media companies. This argument also fails to hold water.

One of the few, legitimate functions of government is to uphold the rights of individuals; when that is done businesses have a secure and just climate to operate within. That is exactly what Section 230 did. When the internet came about, it opened up an entirely new marketplace and one that needed such rights affirmed in order for people to invest in it.

Section 230 merely applied the same types of laws we see in the tangible world to the online marketplace. Would Burger King be liable if you came in and shouted obscenities at their customers? Should they be forced to host you on their premises and allow your attack on their clients to continue? Of course not. The same rules should apply to an internet company, and thanks to Section 230 they do.

Furthermore, without this provision to protect an online free market, the courts would likely be bogged down with frivolous lawsuits, which would cost taxpayers dearly. Even sorting through and throwing out such suits is an expensive and time-consuming process.

The Right Way To Handle Social Media Bias

On this issue, those who believe in limited government and free markets need to put their principles over short-term political expediency. Individuals, whether acting alone or jointly through a business, have the right to free speech, meaning the government has no right to tell them what they can or cannot say. While we may disagree with their choices to remove some users or throttle access to certain content (and I do), it would be a violation of their fundamental rights to force them to host speech they disagree with.

This argument is akin to one that caught the attention of many conservatives years ago: The Christian baker, Jack Phillips, who famously refused to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding citing his free speech rights. Just as the baker had a First Amendment right to not endorse a message that violated his beliefs, so too do the owners of social media companies. If we dislike the ways in which they run their platforms, the proper solution is for us to create or fund their competitors—not use big government as a weapon to tread on them.

This is the beauty of the free market. We don’t need the federal government to get involved in this picture outside of creating a fair legal apparatus in which companies can flourish. With Section 230 they got this right, and consumers now enjoy a wide range of options online thanks to its provisions.

If users are unhappy with Twitter or Facebook, they can take their business elsewhere and vote with their feet. If enough users do that, Twitter and Facebook will willingly change their policies to attract users back, or they will cease to exist.

Some have noted that the network effect makes it difficult for social media competitors to attract new customers, referring to the fact that for some products users find more enjoyment in them when a large number of their peers partake in the experience. But MySpace used to have the network effect advantage, and it still lost out to upstart competitors. And the recent (and impressive) success of Parler shows that there is still room for competition in this picture.

As always, free people are far better equipped to solve this problem than the government.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The post What Is Section 230 and Why Does Trump Want to Repeal It? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Mary Margaret Olohanon December 2, 2020

The mayor of Austin, Texas flew private to Cabo San Lucas where he filmed himself telling citizens to “stay home.”

Austin Mayor Steve Adler hosted 20 guests at an outdoor wedding and reception for his daughter at a hotel in downtown Austin in early November, the American-Statesman reported. The following day he boarded a private jet with seven of the wedding guests and flew to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for vacation at the family timeshare.

“We need to stay home if you can,” Adler said in a Facebook video message to Austin residents. “This is not the time to relax. We are going to be looking really closely. … We may have to close things down if we are not careful.”

Adler filmed the Facebook video message from Mexico, one night into the trip, the publication reported.

The mayor told the American-Statesman that his family carefully considered how to host the wedding and vacation safely and consulted interim health director Dr. Mark Escott before the wedding. Guests under-went rapid COVID-19 tests and social distanced, he told the publication, though he said that the guests were “probably not” wearing the masks that were distributed.

“At that point, I am with my family group and people who just tested,” Adler told the publication. “It is not perfect. Obviously, there are infections that could happen, but I think all of us should be minimizing risks as best we can.”

Interim health director Escott said at a press briefing the day after the mayor’s party went to Mexico: “If you’re going out to a restaurant, go out with your family, the people who live in your household, not with family and friends outside your household and start to decrease those travels outside of your home that are not necessary.”

The mayor also told the publication that he did not violate his regulations and his actions were not inconsistent with his message at the time. Adler did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Everyday since March, I repeat that being home is the safest place for people to be,” Adler said in a Wednesday statement, according to the American Statesman. “Only at our most trying moments, like around Thanksgiving, have I asked people not to travel as part of extra precautions. It is safest to stay home. However, we aren’t asking people to never venture out. We ask everyone to be as safe as possible when they do.”

The post Austin Mayor Flew Private To Cabo San Lucas Where He Filmed Himself Telling Citizens To ‘Stay Home’ appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Joey Gibson posted about the ban on his Parler account.

Carmen Estel, one of six admins of the page who also had their personal accounts removed by Facebook, posted to Parler as well.

The Libertarian Republic spoke to Carmen Estel about her removal from Facebook.

According to Carmen, there was no communication from Facebook or warnings regarding her account. It was simply removed.

Carmen stated there is no additional information in the Help Center regarding her removal from Facebook.

The reasoning for the removal was later reported on by NBC News. 

“Patriot Prayer has hosted dozens of pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies, and attendees have repeatedly clashed with left-wing groups around Portland, Oregon, where one group supporter was killed this week.

Facebook took down the pages as part of efforts to remove “violent social militias” from its social networks, spokesman Andy Stone said.”

The company updated its policies last month to ban groups that demonstrate significant risks to public safety.

Its dangerous organizations policy now includes groups that celebrate violent acts or suggest they will use weapons, even if they are not directly organizing violence.

Gibson, who espouses non-violence but is accused by anti-fascist groups of provoking confrontations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After the shooting he cautioned supporters not to seek revenge, but rather ‘push back politically, spiritually.'”

Carmen stated she is unfamiliar with the term violent social militia. “I’ve never heard this phrase before, and it sounds broad and made up; something that they can paint anyone with,” Carmen told The Libertarian Republic. “It seems now that Facebook is behaving as a publisher rather than as a platform.”

Patriot Prayer has been known for clashing with Left Wing activists in the past; however over a year ago Patriot Prayer seemed to have abandoned their street marches that drew those counter demonstrators.

According to Carmen, that transition occurred following their participation in the movement to Free Hong Kong. Carmen and Joey traveled to Hong Kong to attend those protests on the 4th of July in 2019.

Carmen states that since then, Patriot Prayer has been much more refined, focusing on local issues.

Joey Gibson has since spent much of his time lobbying local governments in Washington State to not observe new gun regulations imposed on the state from Initiative 1639. He has traveled across the state from Battle Ground to Whidbey promoting the idea of 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Cities.

From Whidbey News Times:

“The group’s founder, Joey Gibson, said it’s one of many he has been holding across Washington state in response to the gun control initiative that passed last November.

During the meeting, Gibson and other speakers will be urging Whidbey residents to push elected officials to sign an ordinance that prohibits public figures and public funds from going toward ‘enforcing unconstitutional laws.’

‘It’s going to be focusing on the Second Amendment,’ Gibson said.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Carmen states that both she and Joey have been participating in Reopen America events, and supporting business owners who had refused local orders to shutter their stores. Carmen has been participating in these events in California, where she has previously stated that someone called Child Protective Services to report her for attending.

The incident in Portland changed everything, when Aaron “Jay” Danielson was gunned down in the street by Michael Reinoehl. 

Reinoehl told Vice News in an interview that he acted in self defense. 

Very shortly following that interview, law enforcement shot and killed Reinoehl during an attempt to apprehend him.

However Reinoehl’s claim of self defense did not appear to be accurate as CCTV security footage showed that Reinoehl stalked the victim before firing. Reinoehl hid behind the entrance of a parking garage before approaching them from behind and firing when they turned around.

Below are examples from pages 16-18 of the criminal complaint against Michael Reinoehl, which can be read in full here.

Facebook banned Carmen Estel, along with the other admins and Joey Gibson immediately upon the release of the criminal complaint against Reinoehl.

Carmen states that they were about to get a lot more attention following that report being released, and believes that is why Facebook removed them at that very moment. She believes that Patriot Prayer was about to receive a lot of new interest, and Facebook stopped that from happening on their platform.

“The report was proof that Jay was executed in cold blood. I don’t like using the word executed, because Jay didn’t commit any crime or do anything to deserve it. More like assassinated. That’s the word I use,” Carmen told The Libertarian Republic.

“Jay was a friend of ours. He was just so nice. Always had a smile. He did nothing to deserve it. He was just walking down the street, wearing a Patriot Prayer hat.”

The post Facebook Bans Friends Of Murdered Portland Man appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Chris White on September 3, 2020

Facebook has labeled the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting a mass murder and has removed posts from users who argue he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed two people during a riot last week, a company spokesman told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Facebook placed the 17-year-old Rittenhouse on the company’s list of “dangerous individuals and organizations,” according to the spokesman. The spokesman did not respond to a question about whether Facebook will make a distinction between users who post content suggesting Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and those who use his actions as a way to express support for shooting rioters and protesters.

The spokesman cited a post from YouTube personality Mark Dice as an example of content that will be removed. Dice, a conservative writer, wrote an Aug. 28 Facebook post in which he described a video showing Rittenhouse helping a wounded protester in Kenosha. The post was removed, Dice explained in a Sept. 1 tweet.

“Facebook just removed a video I posted showing Kyle Rittenhouse offering help to a wounded protester in Kenosha,” Dice wrote in the tweet. Facebook is now “threatening to delete my entire account” as a result of his decision to publish the post, said Dice, who linked to the video.

Rittenhouse was arrested after being accused of shooting and killing one man while being chased around Kenosha, according to a criminal complaintAxios obtained. He then ran into the road before tripping and falling. Once on the ground, Rittenhouse fatally shot another man in the chest and a third in the arm as they rushed at him, the complaint stated.

The Facebook spokesman also directed the DCNF to an Aug. 27 tweet from Brian Fishman, Facebook’s director of Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations, that reads: “Yesterday we designated the shooting as a mass murder and removed the shooter’s accounts from Facebook & Instagram.”

Fishman added: “Per standard practice in these situations, we are also removing praise and support of the shooter and have also blocked searches of his name on our platforms.”

Fishman said that Facebook was unable to find evidence that Rittenhouse followed the Kenosha Guard Page, which created an event before the shooting encouraging users to “Protect our Lives and Property,” the Verge reported Aug. 26. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an Aug. 28 video post that “the page violated our policies.” Not removing the page up was a “mistake,” he added.

Rittenhouse’s attorney meanwhile believes the teenager was acting in self defense. “Kyle did nothing wrong. He exercised his God-given, Constitutional, common law and statutory right to self defense,” Pierce Bainbridge, the law firm representing Rittenhouse, said in an Aug. 28 press release.

Rittenhouse is facing six charges, including first degree intentional homicide and attempted intentional homicide.

The post Facebook Labels Rittenhouse Shooting ‘Mass Murder,’ Removes Posts Defending Teen appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

The boy was riding his bike on the way to kindergarten when eyewitnesses say the boy was shot in the head by Sessoms, according to The Blaze.

“[You] can’t imagine what it’s like to hold your son in your arms with a gunshot wound to the head, and his blood is running down your arms,” Austin Hinnant said.

However, some people don’t believe that Darrius Sessoms was the trigger man in the killing of the child, in fact, a Facebook group exists to support Mr. Sessoms entitled “Justice for Darius Sessoms.”

The group was initially created in 2014 and went through a wide range of bizarre name changes, including, but not limited to, “Justice For Dennis Turner (Back the Blue),” “Christians Against Michael Vick and and “Kobe Bryant Memorial (RIP).”

The group’s description  reads:

“Darius Sessoms has been accused of a heinous act that he didn’t commit. This is all propaganda from the far right trump propaganda machine to make black people look bad. we can not sit idly by while our president plays fast and loose with the laws. that’s why we need to back Darius against these outrageous allegations. #blacklivesmatter”

Thanks to insider information, it was discovered that among the group’s 20,583 members, there are many that appear to have black supremacist sentiments.

Warning – some viewers may find some of the following images disturbing.

Before considered for entry into the group, new members are asked security questions regarding their views of “Black Lives Matter” and if the person believes that white privilege exists.

Among the posts were one group member saying that Sessoms should’ve also killed the boy’s sisters, a photoshopped image of the Hinnant family at a KKK rally, and a meme which depicts the statue of an African man with a large penis next to a statue of a Greek man whose genitals were much smaller with the caption “This is what started racism…”

Of all the posts that were seen, only one black female called out the group and its administrators for their racist sentiments.

This group and many others which pertain to pedophilia remain alive and active despite being reported while Facebook continues to censor individuals like TLR’s Squiggly Line Guy for exposing the platform’s double standard.

The post Facebook Allows Group Supporting Cannon Hinnant’s Alleged Murderer appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

My name is フィンガーケビン, also lovingly known by many as Squiggly Line Guy. Facebook did not racially discriminate against me. They did however racially discriminate against my wife and children, my extended family, and my real life social circle. Worst of all, they did this to protect pedophiles. This may sound like a stretch to you, but I assure you it is correct. Here, I’ll make the case for it. It’s quite a story; first requiring a backstory, but I’ll keep it as short as I can.

I’m a white male. I’m also bilingual. I speak English and Japanese. Not in the Weeb sense of throwing around a Japanese word or two from the 10 words they know in an English sentence. It’s the primary language we speak in our home.

When I was in middle school, a close family friend was a host family for Japanese international students attending a local college. Every year they would host a student from the Japanese program. They were 19 years of age going on 20 every single year. I was 13 when I took interest. Even being younger, that student was always happy to oblige me in linguistics and pop culture. Every year.

Also around that time my father showed me the miniseries Shōgun which he had recorded on VHS. I would go on to read the book a few years later. Shōgun was a historical fiction book, but based on real people and complicated politics that would eventually end the feudal civil war era and usher in a unified Japan. I would also go on to read the non-fiction book Samurai William, who the character John Blackthorne was based on. I would even later in life visit the Tōshōgu Shrine in the Tochigi prefecture of Japan; the final resting place of Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu, on whom the character Lord Toranaga was based. I’m sorry to tell you that Anime doesn’t really factor in anywhere—though I’ve seen a couple, especially since having children.

But eventually, I would reach the age myself where that Japanese exchange student being hosted by our family friends would be my age, when I reached the age of 19. The student staying with my friends became both a friend and a peer, as I was his age. We had by that time developed a tradition of taking them out for their first night in America. We told the student and their host family we were going to the billiards. So off we would go with the student to the billiards, except instead of making the right turn into the billiards, we would make a wrong left turn into the strip club. Of course this was on purpose, but they were never disappointed. They always had some superior bragging at their college orientation the next day. They would rub it in to their buddies from the program about their first night in America. This year’s student was the 2nd annual.

At that time, finally being the same age the students were, I was taking classes at the same community college. Including Japanese courses. That would give me a much more solid foundation that I needed to continue learning organically. But one girl I met, well, she happened to be from the same program as my host student friend. The man put in a good word. She and I began dating, and the following year when she went back to Japan, we kept a long distance relationship. Emails, international phone cards, and taking turns visiting each in their country. For eight years.

Today, we are married with three children, right here in America. Our children learned Japanese first as their primary language. Of course, this puts them in ESL, (English as a Second Language), or EAL (English as Another Language) or ELL (English Language Learner) depending on whatever the hell your school calls it. 

They each began a local Japanese children’s language school when they were 3 years old. This leads us to our social circle. Their primary friends are other children they know from the school. They focus on socializing with whom they can communicate. These other children are good kids with good parents. So our social functions are in the local Japanese community.

フィンガーケビン is not only a name I use in real life, it’s what I’m most commonly called. Everything you have read so far testifies to this. Simply because others may find it unusual, does not mean it is incorrect.

Now we get into what this has to do with Facebook. On Facebook, my name was フィンガーケビン. It is the pronunciation of my actual name in the Japanese phonetic alphabet Katakana. It’s written as it would sound when a native Japanese speaker pronounces my name. Why was my name written on Facebook this way? Before I joined Libertarian circles where my page expanded and I became known as Squiggly Line Guy, the majority of people on my page were local Japanese contacts, family in Japan, and a large number of former students from the program I’ve known from over the years.

They may not be the majority anymore on my Facebook list since friending so many Libertarians, but that doesn’t factor into what your name is allowed to be on Facebook. They only require that you go by a name you use in everyday life, per their own community standards. For me, that is フィンガーケビン. 

Here is the page from Facebook’s Community Standards that constitutes what your name is allowed to be:

To be clear, symbols are things like [$#@?!.], and this name is written in only one language, not multiple.

Yet, my Facebook page is currently down due to my name being written as フィンガーケビン. This is also a little bit of a story.

Many on my page know me as a Pedophile Hunter, alerting people to groups that share photos of children and allow pedophiles to network, so they can be mass reported and removed. There is absolutely no shortage of failures here either, with Facebook stating continuously that sexualized pictures of children do not violate community standards.

[Read more about my findings of Pedophile activity on Facebook in this article where I’ve chronicled pages I found, where users who reported the pages were told that these pages did not violate community standards]

During this process, I was retaliated against by pedophiles. No more than 10 minutes after a raid, Facebook suspended and deactivated my profile and required me to submit a Photo ID. This was due to someone from one of those groups reporting my name as fake. I submitted my photo ID three weeks ago, but Facebook has left me on ‘read’. They don’t seem to know what to do with it.

The raids consisted of reporting these groups (though Facebook often declined to remove them), and scrolling the profiles of group members, commenting on photos that they are tagged in from friends and family. We would alert those people that the individual is a pedophile. These comments would generally be accompanied by disgusting and sexual comments they made about children in the group we found them in.

[For a much more in-depth report on this incident, read my interview with TLR Writer Caleb Shumate]

In removing my account over the name フィンガーケビン, per Facebook’s own community standards, they have discriminated against my social circle. They are invalidating what I am called in real life, and in breach of their own policy. While I have been operating through an Alt Account, I made the decision to terminate that as well. I will no longer actively be a part of a platform that protects pedophiles, allowing them to keep sexualizing children and allowing them to keep their groups where they network. I will no longer be an active part of a platform that discriminates against my entire real life social circle by stating how they say my name is invalid and not real. I will not attempt to rebuild on this platform.

The phenomenon of Facebook ignoring these reports of groups and profiles that network pedophile content has also been reported on by Heavy:

“The commenter told Heavy about the page they reported, asking that their name not be included: “It’s so sick I can’t even write it,” they wrote to Heavy. “Looked to be a young person being made to do something to an adult. And then I got freaked out that I was even on the link to report it, and jumped out fast.”

They were later told by Facebook, as shown in the screenshot above, that the page didn’t violate Facebook’s standards. Several other people came to Heavy sharing that they too had reported disturbing groups to Facebook, but the groups had not been removed.”

When people left Myspace in favor of Facebook, it was during the time period of the 3G iPhone. Video wasn’t a thing. Video messenger nor livestreaming were things. The entire selling point was that Facebook displayed more aesthetically on mobile, despite how primitive mobile was at the time. Myspace was still a superior platform technologically when people started making the switch en masse. 

Maybe people will start making a switch again. Perhaps not even over aesthetics. Perhaps they will be simply fed up with trivial bans while pedophilia is allowed to run rampant.

I’ve taken a page out of the playbook of Elon Musk, and have exited Facebook.

Find me on Twitter: @GuySquiggs

Find me on Parler: @SquigglyLineGuy

The post Facebook Racially Discriminates And Protects Pedophiles. So I Left. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Shumate: For our readers at The Libertarian Republic who don’t know about your personal crusade against pedophiles, can you tell us what started this whole thing and how you became known as a pedo-hunter?

SLG: Certainly. People who prey on children are the lowest form of human—if they can even be called that. My sort of “awakening” to the problem on Facebook began when a “Libertarian” named Sean Windingland went on Facebook Live to prove a disgusting point about “age of consent” where he obtained his young daughter’s consent to touch each other sexually. Apparently this wasn’t just proving some point. He had gaslit her into giving permission to be molested. Sean was sentenced to many years behind bars. Some pedos only get off with one year, and I have no idea why. It went from that to shaming people who argued philosophically that children can consent.

Then, later on I started going after groups. This was an off and on thing as they popped up. Recently, with the death of Mary Kay Letourneau, we got to see a little bit of the double standard, where child rape was essentially romanticized because the offender was a woman. But it also seemed like her death sort of opened the 9th Circle of Pedo Hell. There’s been group after group springing up right here on Facebook, to procure buyers for images of child porn.

Shumate: My awareness of your desire to expose the evils of pedophiles on Facebook came when you did a piece on Cecil Ince the Former Vice Chair of the Missouri LP—fantastic work by the way—how long would you say you have been in the business of exposing pedophiles’ evil on Facebook?

SLG: March of 2019. That’s when the Sean Windingland incident occurred. Some people had philosophically come to his defense. I took them to town. I shared screenshots of their justifications for child abuse based on their belief that a child could consent to any such thing. This resulted in people disassociating from such bad actors.

Shumate: To that point, what would you say to the people, self-professed Libertarians in particular, who say that sex between an adult and a minor is morally acceptable as long as consent is acquired?

SLG: I would say that children are not capable of making such decisions, especially with potentially harmful consequences, whether physical, psychological, or financial. All of those are potential factors.

Regarding consent, not just in my state but in many states, mutual combat is legal. If two people consent to a fight in front of the cops, the cops cannot actually intervene. Of course, this doesn’t apply to adult vs minor. Should I be allowed to fight a 10-year-old if they agree to it? After all, most 10 year olds have more experience fighting than they do with sex. And I happen to be the polar opposite. Much more experience with sex than with fighting. If the question was really about consent, then this shouldn’t be a problem for those folks who believe a child can consent. So issue isn’t really about consent—it’s people who want to prey on children for sex.

Shumate: Many Libertarians talk a lot about the non-aggression principle. There could be a very strong case that pedophilia violates the NAP, so why do you think so many pedos are being exposed in supposedly libertarian circles lately?

SLG: I think there are a number of people who want to have philosophical arguments and choose a very poor hill to die on. Somehow they view themselves as intelligent or scholarly, making these uncivilized arguments. They may reference some “historical” tradition of some third world culture to justify their claims. I say that the term “historically” isn’t a very good qualifier for many things.

Some people argue it doesn’t violate the NAP. I argue it does. But then again, as Austin Petersen noted, neglecting your child or starving them doesn’t technically violate the NAP as it is not an act of proactive aggression. And this is why he always said the NAP is imperfect. Yet many Libertarians have since interpreted the NAP to mean that parental responsibility is required. I believe part of that parental responsibility is feeding your kids and not molesting them. And protecting them from molesters. And anyone who tries to sleep with a child is violating that.

But it’s still not an argument I’m very interested in, because this is one of those areas –  I simply don’t care about the NAP. I believe pedophiles will need to answer to God. It will be a very uncomfortable conversation. And I’m in favor of expediting that meeting.

Shumate: Your crusade has gotten you quite a bit of attention lately, both good and bad including a Facebook group of your allies in this cause and people attempting to get you banned from the platform can you speak to that controversy?

SLG: I have several friends that are aiding me in this cause. Some of the groups I find and call for mass reporting I find on my own. Others are sent into my inbox by others who know I have the traction. And they don’t want any of the potential retaliation associated with being the original poster, and are content with sharing my posts. So I have built a little bit of a network for getting this stuff out there. And it seems like it takes forever for Facebook to unpublish some of these groups. The worst I’ve seen here on Facebook was a group that shared PG-13 photos of children, where the photo caption was a serial number. In other words, the PG-13 photo was the cover photo of a set. And everything else in the set is exactly what you think it is. It took nearly 24 hours of mass reporting this group to shut them down. And when Facebook unpublishes a group, they still archive everything. In other words, it “freezes” all the photos and comments on their end. So it would be much more in their favor to do this, but it feels like pulling teeth with them.

Yet, despite the many screenshots I see from friends who receive messages back from their reports that the page “doesn’t violate community standards,” they were quick to freeze my account because someone reported my name as being fictional. Facebook nuked my account, and I’m currently awaiting for them to review my ID to bring it back. And yes, it was pretty clearly retaliation for my posts exposing pedophiles.

Shumate: It certainly appears that Facebook is at the very least tolerant of pedophilia, wouldn’t you say?

SLG: Facebook claims that they remove 99.5% of pedophilia groups and content. Yet, we manage to find a gigantic amount of that supposed 0.5%. So there are two conclusions that could be drawn from this. Either pedophilia has hit relative mainstream, which I doubt. Or Facebook is much more tolerant than they claim to be. And with as long as it takes to remove a group, receiving messages that they don’t violate community standards, my bet is that they’re tolerant.

Shumate: Given your current circumstances verifying the authenticity of your account, will this affect your activity on the platform or deter your mission in any way?

SLG: I think if my real name is used, it may prove as a little bit of a deterrent for me, just like having my name listed in Japanese phonetics was a little bit of a deterrent to being doxxed. Though Facebook only requires that you use a name you are called in real life, as opposed to your legal name which is what they seem to expect of me. And with my wife being Japanese and my kids being half, and being immersed in our local Japanese community, in real life I am often called by how my name phonetically sounds in Japanese. So yes, we are approaching a discrimination issue, as their conclusion would be that those people are not valid people.

Shumate: Will you push this if Facebook challenges your authentication?

SLG: I think I may if they force me to use my Anglicized name. I don’t think it would be a good look for them. And it would give a larger platform to explain how this all came about, giving Facebook more uncomfortable questions to answer.

Shumate: So it’s a pretty safe bet Squiggly Line Guy isn’t going to stop any time soon I suppose?

SLG: Squiggly Line Guy is forever.

Shumate: Is there anything you’d like to say in closing to your fans, to those who wish to sexually abuse children, and to Mark Zuckerberg and the people at Facebook about pedophilia being allowed on the platform?

SLG: Absolutely. To those who have reported the pages I’ve shared, and shared my posts— your reach extends my reach by light years. And I’m thankful for you.

To pedophiles or pedo sympathizers— while I do not believe electroshock therapy can alter a valid sexuality, I believe it can cure pedophilia if the voltage is high enough.

I don’t have anything to say to Zuckerberg. In fact, I should probably keep my mouth shut from here on out if Facebook forces me to Anglicize my name, and consider any possible recourse. I’ll plead The fifth on that for now.

Shumate: Thank you for sitting down with me, Squiggs, and may God be with you on your righteous endeavor.

We are indebted to the liberty movement’s favorite pedo-hunter Squiggly Line Guy, and it’s safe to say he will not rest until Facebook is purged of sexual crimes against children.

You can follow Squiggly Line Guy on Twitter @GuySquiggs.

The post The Liberty Movement’s Pedo Hunter appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.