OK, Laptop was real. MSM corruption

[Foosters 17734]

1 minute ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

when I become a racist, anti-Semitic, slanderous, steroid gobbling gun nut with a tank and a mansion, the transformation will be complete, mwahaha

The difference between Alex and me is he's all hung up in the Second Amendment and I am the First. And the First is being fucked with right now in ways the Founders never could have imagined.

Hahaha

[aggie08 21434]

2 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

The difference between Alex and me is he's all hung up in the Second Amendment and I am the First.

Odd that you're unaware of the first five words then.

[SaucyJack 3487]

42 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

It. Is. Not. Just. Facebook.

It is also Twitter and Google with its algorithms.

I guess some of y'all believe that the boardrooms of these organizations have not been infiltrated by bright-eyed, bushy tailed little CIA agents by this time. Lol. They've always been in the media and they always will be, and social media as gatekeeper to the media media is even more important. 

 

8 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

when I become a racist, anti-Semitic, slanderous, steroid gobbling gun nut with a tank and a mansion, the transformation will be complete, mwahaha

The difference between Alex and me is he's all hung up in the Second Amendment and I am the First. And the First is being fucked with right now in ways the Founders never could have imagined.

I can understand why the world is a difficult place for you.  Might wanna get away from the screen... go outside.. breathe.

 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

12 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

My man, American media has suppressed leftist messaging as long as American media has existed.

You don't think I know that? My son is named after John Henry fucking Faulk. We are entering a terrifying new phase of not just leftist messaging but anything that disturbs the gazillionaires. 

[wildcat09 29260]

6 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

when I become a racist, anti-Semitic, slanderous, steroid gobbling gun nut with a tank and a mansion, the transformation will be complete, mwahaha

The difference between Alex and me is he's all hung up in the Second Amendment and I am the First. And the First is being fucked with right now in ways the Founders never could have imagined.

The framers didn’t really intend for the first amendment to be nearly as robust as it is today. We’re talking about the same people who after ratifying it turned right around and passed the alien and sedition acts.

The modern first amendment is basically 100 years old. Really much of it is only about 50. Not that long ago it was considered perfectly fine to lock leftists up for their speech. The first amendment was expanded to its present status to allow the KKK to threaten people.

[bolverk 29405]

21 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Um, no, not if you knock down that fucking straw man of yours.

Social media is selectively boosting and sinking certain stories. That is what this controversy is about and it should alarm you.

Yes, it's a concern that these social media behemoths have such a degree of power over what gets prioritized, and I understand where you're coming from based on your line of business. And, as you know, I follow you on Facebook because I like you but do recall seeing the post on my FB feed. I rarely interact with anyone or any posts any longer because of the algorithms after watching "The Great Hack" and "The Social Dilemma". And if it showed up on my feed, it probably wasn't suppressed. The more likely explanation is that not many people are willing to come out and say anything "in public" with their real names in defense of Russians right now.

 

Now, more specifically, let's get to the issue about Twitter not allowing the original NYPost article about the laptop to be shared for a few days:

A NYTimes article states from 10/14/2020:

Quote

Hours after the Post published its article, Facebook said on Wednesday that it had decided to limit the distribution of the story on its platform so it could  fact-check the claims. Twitter said it was blocking the article because it included people’s personal phone numbers and email addresses, which violated their privacy rules, and because the article violated their policy on hacked materials.

And, yes, if you click to the original NYPost article, you do see that emails and a phone number are shown in the image files that accompany the article even to this day. Maybe someone with a big megaphone should go tweet out someone's email and phone number without their permission to test what happens.

 

More recently, the NYPost stated yesterday:

Quote

Though The Post exclusively revealed in September 2020 the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the potentially compromising material contained there, (1) the story was censored by social media companies at the behest of the Democratic Party. Mainstream media outlets — including (2) The Times — attacked or ignored The Post revelations, while the Biden administration falsely suggested it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The NYPost here makes two specific specious claims:

1. Social media companies suppressed the story because of Dem pressure. In light of the fact that a contemporaneous article provides a rationale for not allowing a tweet to be shared (personal phone number and email addresses), it's pretty safe to say that this retroactive assertion can be reasonably questioned, especially since no evidence is provided to back up that claim.
2. The second one is simply false. The NYTimes most certainly did not ignore the story. And, if you go back to my post from earlier this afternoon, laid out a pretty thorough article discussing it. Yes, the reporting appeared skeptical, but they did not "attack" it. Maybe they did in the Op-Ed pages (I haven't checked) but not in any attempt at factual reporting.

 

Given these two examples, please excuse me or anyone else for giving a side eye to shit from a tabloid like the NYPost says. I think treating them with a good bit of skepticism is generally warranted.

 

[SaucyJack 3487]

Having been around high level govt action for 35 years, I can honestly say that Hunter Biden is the only relative of an elected/govt official I can remember using the family name/connections for personal gain/employment.

Oh, and I've never seen it in the business world.

 

 

 

[Biff Tannen 45499]

1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

this boils down to certain people getting mad that propaganda is getting harder to spread.

change my mind.

Or easier.  But yes, your point is valid.

[henrygandorf 29179]

30 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

You can say you are glad they are controlling disinformation

let's isolate this half-sentence.  let's stop finger-pointing and assume for a minute that the premise is true, that social media platforms are controlling disinformation.  not in general, just for the purpose of this conversation.  ok, are we there?

now ask yourself, why are they controlling disinformation?  what prompted this to happen?

take your own anecdotal self-interests or affiliations out of it and try to answer the questions honestly.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

10 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The framers didn’t really intend for the first amendment to be nearly as robust as it is today. We’re talking about the same people who after ratifying it turned right around and passed the alien and sedition acts.

Over much opposition from the people like me of their day.

10 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The modern first amendment is basically 100 years old. Really much of it is only about 50. Not that long ago it was considered perfectly fine to lock leftists up for their speech. The first amendment was expanded to its present status to allow the KKK to threaten people.

Yeah, I am sure that was the goal of the heroic Jewish lawyers in the ACLU whose legacy you are now spitting on.

Look, Trump took a dookie on press freedoms and relations with the executive and in some instances the mass media has overreacted, and allowed social media to become their enforcement arm. What this does is just funnel the information you do get to see through tinier and tinier apertures. Do we really trust them to treat critical stories about them fairly on their feeds, or can they just not, if not mute, but turn down the volume on them? Like it or not, they shape the news now. 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

5 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Yes, it's a concern that these social media behemoths have such a degree of power over what gets prioritized, and I understand where you're coming from based on your line of business. And, as you know, I follow you on Facebook because I like you but do recall seeing the post on my FB feed. I rarely interact with anyone or any posts any longer because of the algorithms after watching "The Great Hack" and "The Social Dilemma". And if it showed up on my feed, it probably wasn't suppressed. The more likely explanation is that not many people are willing to come out and say anything "in public" with their real names in defense of Russians right now.

 

Now, more specifically, let's get to the issue about Twitter not allowing the original NYPost article about the laptop to be shared for a few days:

A NYTimes article states from 10/14/2020:

And, yes, if you click to the original NYPost article, you do see that emails and a phone number are shown in the image files that accompany the article even to this day. Maybe someone with a big megaphone should go tweet out someone's email and phone number without their permission to test what happens.

 

More recently, the NYPost stated yesterday:

The NYPost here makes two specific specious claims:

1. Social media companies suppressed the story because of Dem pressure. In light of the fact that a contemporaneous article provides a rationale for not allowing a tweet to be shared (personal phone number and email addresses), it's pretty safe to say that this retroactive assertion can be reasonably questioned, especially since no evidence is provided to back up that claim.
2. The second one is simply false. The NYTimes most certainly did not ignore the story. And, if you go back to my post from earlier this afternoon, laid out a pretty thorough article discussing it. Yes, the reporting appeared skeptical, but they did not "attack" it. Maybe they did in the Op-Ed pages (I haven't checked) but not in any attempt at factual reporting.

 

Given these two examples, please excuse me or anyone else for giving a side eye to shit from a tabloid like the NYPost says. I think treating them with a good bit of skepticism is generally warranted.

 

As with anything from Rupert's empire, I loathe them. I am old-school, a hipster in this regard because I lived in England in the early '90s and saw his practice run there. But it is not just that -- outlets like Mother Jones and the Socialist Workers Daily saw their numbers drop precipitously because Facebook and Twitter et al gave in to pressure from the right to sacrifice leftist outlets to match the hard-right Nazi outlets they were taking down. Facebook is aiming to create a consensus of their own devising. dunno about you, but I don't trust the likes of Mark Zuckerburg to decide what American Consensus is.

[wildcat09 29260]

Look man, on the list of current threats to free speech, social media companies tweaking their algorithms to not promote Rudy Giuliani’s obvious bullshit is extremely low on the fucking list. They’re bad for a hundred reasons, but this ain’t one.

[totallynotabuttpirate 5342]

34 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

And the First is being fucked with right now in ways the Founders never could have imagined.

I'm sorry, I must've missed the part where social media companies transformed themselves into the House and Senate and passed a law restricting free speech. 

[henrygandorf 29179]

Just now, totallynotabuttpirate said:

I'm sorry, I must've missed the part where social media companies transformed themselves into the House and Senate and passed a law restricting free speech. 

if the right is screeching about something, there's close to 100% chance that they do not fully understand it.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Just now, henrygandorf said:

if the right is screeching about something, there's close to 100% chance that they do not fully understand it.

I am the farthest thing from the right on this site, and I do understand it, and it's frightening.

[Captainant 27467]

1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Social media is selectively boosting and sinking certain stories. That is what this controversy is about and it should alarm you.

That's literally how advertising works lol. You're describing the Facebook business model. They sell access to their user data and micro targeting mechanisms so that businesses can selectively boost their message and drown out their competition.

[henrygandorf 29179]

2 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I am the farthest thing from the right on this site, and I do understand it, and it's frightening.

then go exercise your free speech and answer my question.

[bolverk 29405]

1 minute ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

As with anything from Rupert's empire, I loathe them. I am old-school, a hipster in this regard because I lived in England in the early '90s and saw his practice run there. But it is not just that -- outlets like Mother Jones and the Socialist Workers Daily saw their numbers drop precipitously because Facebook and Twitter et al gave in to pressure from the right to sacrifice leftist outlets to match the hard-right Nazi outlets they were taking down. Facebook is aiming to create a consensus of their own devising. dunno about you, but I don't trust the likes of Mark Zuckerburg to decide what American Consensus is.

I just told you I don't trust their algorithm to curate my news feed anymore, especially politics. I used to follow a whole slew of news sources there but have stopped because of the algo and now only follow a select few that are geared toward specific interests like astronomy, anthropology, urban planning, strange maps, Texas ephemera, and other non-political shit like that.

[jimmyjazz 45560]

49 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

when I become a racist, anti-Semitic, slanderous, steroid gobbling gun nut with a tank and a mansion, the transformation will be complete, mwahaha

The difference between Alex and me is he's all hung up in the Second Amendment and I am the First. And the First is being fucked with right now in ways the Founders never could have imagined.

No, it isn't.  Not at all.

[Dahobbs 17449]

58 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

when I become a racist, anti-Semitic, slanderous, steroid gobbling gun nut with a tank and a mansion, the transformation will be complete, mwahaha

The difference between Alex and me is he's all hung up in the Second Amendment and I am the First. And the First is being fucked with right now in ways the Founders never could have imagined.

Say that you don't know what the first amendment is without saying that you don't know what the first amendment is. I'm going to guess that your "business" is writing or selling bullshit. Personally, I'm glad it is suffering. 

[TwiceHorn 31283]

1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I've made a living in the media for 20 years. I know this.

What's new is that there is a whole new level of gatekeepers with interests at variance to what is ostensibly the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And that is Silicon Valley. I really don't know how hard this is for y'all to grasp. You can say "Quit using it," but that is as practical as telling someone to live without a cellphone. You can say "don't get your news from there," even as you do it yourself, or as if they were content creators themselves. Really -- where do you get your news from if not your curated feeds? Are you going to tell me you log in to several different newspapers / magazines daily without  any sort of "guidance" from social media, including this site? You can say you are glad they are controlling disinformation, but wait until the shoe is on the other foot. 

I only get the twatters from here.  And they usually cause me to check source materials, if I can find them, most especially if they trigger  strong agreement/disagreement reaction.

I use news aggregators like feedly and the google app, and banish from google app sources that feed me bs too often, or try to.

It's a problem for the hoi polloi.  I don't know how to solve it.

I've said it several times, but it is truly astonishing how, when some item or talking point seizes right-wing attention these days, it propagates through literally hundreds of sites that just quote the same stuff over and over without elaboration or helpful elaboration.  Wading through the search results for something factual or source-y is a pain in the ass.

[Thatguy 8505]

  I never thought I would see the day that Americans would think that Facebook was suppressing their freedom of speech because they shut down disinformation. Facebook is a business that plenty of people like my father refuse to use, and those people keep rolling right along in life without a care about the platform much like I do with Tik Tok. Being America and all, Facebook has the freedom to do whatever the hell they want inside the structure of the law. Let me break it down to you another way.

   Facebook, being a business, has one obligation and that is to make money. Last year at the height of the bullshit I lost about 20 of my friends through stupidity on FB. Quite a few of those people got angry enough to deactivate their accounts. I imagine that was happening all across the platform. That is less clicks and therefore less income. Their platform was ground zero for family splits, and long time friendships ending. It was war on there. They had to do something AS A BUSINESS, to calm the storm. You may not agree with their decision, but it was their right to do it. Had they not made a move you may have had businesses start pulling their advertising.

[Jhawkmvp 1489]

Passive Aggressive Coach drops a deuce in the punch bowl and exits. Everyone argues over if the punch tastes shitty or not.

 

He has not posted since his original four posts. He doesn't care. You all like to argue too much sometimes. 

[Irwin F Fletcher 3550]

I only get the twatters from here.  And they usually cause me to check source materials, if I can find them, most especially if they trigger  strong agreement/disagreement reaction.
I use news aggregators like feedly and the google app, and banish from google app sources that feed me bs too often, or try to.
It's a problem for the hoi polloi.  I don't know how to solve it.
I've said it several times, but it is truly astonishing how, when some item or talking point seizes right-wing attention these days, it propagates through literally hundreds of sites that just quote the same stuff over and over without elaboration or helpful elaboration.  Wading through the search results for something factual or source-y is a pain in the ass.

This needs repeating.

[henrygandorf 29179]

so the argument presented here is that social media platforms are manipulating popular news stories, by either highlighting or suppressing them, in order to promote their agenda to their users.

the counterpoint is that known propagandists are using social media platforms to try and manipulate stupid people that use the platforms.

maybe i should start a poll. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

What if the government came up with some sort of Fairness Doctrine?

[Irwin F Fletcher 3550]

Can I just interject. We are all engaging with a troll who is propping up Tucker as a bastion of reason and intellect.

It was entertaining early on, now it's just embarrassing that we keep engaging.

[henrygandorf 29179]

12 minutes ago, Irwin F Fletcher said:

It was entertaining early on, now it's just embarrassing that we keep engaging.

i only came in here to ask directions on how to get away from here.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

3 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

It's not the media, it's the media being muzzled by a new layer of censors in Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook, Google and Twitter mute or turn down news they don't like or that harms them. Just the other day I posted how Facebook now says it's okay to kill Russians on their platform. I have 3500 Facebook "friends" and I can pretty much fart on there and get dozens of responses. (It's a professional thing; I have to do it.) I got exactly one response to that post. One. 

It's hard enough to get a controversial story into print just from within your own office, and now we've added a whole tier of gatekeepers with no obligation to journalistic ethics or anything else other than their bottom line.

This can and will be weaponized against the Blue Team, too. 

 

Fox News won't give me some of their airtime cuz they said all I was going to do was make fart noises, which is technically true, but that's not the point. The point is these free enterprise assholes won't amplify me, and that's muzzling, so I'm promoting a trucker convey to protest sex robots. 

[mchookem 16225]

guys, it's almost time for PAC to punch in... can't wait to see what he has in store tonight! 

 

[AnTiM 1659]

Does anyone have a clue how many orgasms Passive Aggressive Coach has had watching this shit storm he started?  I am still waiting to see him come in here for the debate he said he wanted.  

[ChiTownDoc 21102]

2 hours ago, AnTiM said:

Does anyone have a clue how many orgasms Passive Aggressive Coach has had watching this shit storm he started?  I am still waiting to see him come in here for the debate he said he wanted.  

You can blame Vlad for cutting off his internet.  

[Captainant 27467]

7 hours ago, Irwin F Fletcher said:

Can I just interject. We are all engaging with a troll who is propping up Tucker as a bastion of reason and intellect.

It was entertaining early on, now it's just embarrassing that we keep engaging.

Well we can't crowdsource trolls anymore, @immamac will just give them a rep booster because he values discourse or some stupid shit like that.

[brown water 3761]

14 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

I have an idea for an app that would tell you when a Trumpkin or a Russian is lying. I need a good coder to help me put all the subtle nuances into a script.

Basically, I want this: You hear or see a Russian or a Trumpkin say something, so you hold up your phone, tap the "Are They Lying?" app, and right there, on the spot, the app tells you "Yes."

Pls call this the Magic Hateball 

[Guest Lobo]

And instead of black, make it Orange (I know that's the 5 ball, we'll sort something out)

[hpslugga 4044]

8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I am the farthest thing from the right on this site, and I do understand it, and it's frightening.

If you’re drawing inferences to the First Amendment from how social media controls the publishing of posts, then no, you do not understand it.

[horn4life 3755]

What if people were smart?

[immamac 42520]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Well we can't crowdsource trolls anymore, @immamac will just give them a rep booster because he values discourse or some stupid shit like that.

This just isn't true. I did that 1 time because someone admitted in a thread to literally history stalking the person which is not what crowdsourcing is there for. It's there for multiple people negging and the situation being automatically handled. Use the ignore function and stop accusing me of stupid shit like this.

[Nivek 16861]

12 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

ok, sure.

except that anyone who believes any of the shit these same 3 guys post will not care how truthful and obvious the rebuttals are.

I don't think we are trying to convince the shitposters and russian troll farmers, but rather the fence sitters and ourselves and to prevent this place from being overrun by trolls or vocal morons.   LSU's tigerdroppings and Texags are perfect examples of the trolls/morons run amok.   

 

[Johnny Sack 8397]

10 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

I mean, it came under highly suspicious circumstances.  No one had done any forensic analysis on the laptop.  It's not really a smoking gun. It contains some useful hearsay for certain points of view.

It's not like proven facts were buried by the actual media.

 

They weren’t quite as discerning on the Russia collusion horseshit.  Neither were all the lefty homers on this very board.  

[Underdog 28457]

8 hours ago, Jhawkmvp said:

Passive Aggressive Coach drops a deuce in the punch bowl and exits. Everyone argues over if the punch tastes shitty or not.

 

He has not posted since his original four posts. He doesn't care. You all like to argue too much sometimes. 

Does have a little wang to it…. Good though. 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2022 by Underdog

[AnTiM 1659]

19 minutes ago, horn4life said:

What if people were smart?

A person is smart.  People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.  (Men In Black)

Edited March 21, 2022 by AnTiM

[Nivek 16861]

OK Computer.

[bolverk 29405]

14 minutes ago, Nivek said:

OK Computer.

fitter, happier, more productive

[StassneyHorn 6540]

The real question is why we don’t know the names of those who make “intelligence” reports. I’m smarter than them.

[wildcat09 29260]

47 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

They weren’t quite as discerning on the Russia collusion horseshit.  Neither were all the lefty homers on this very board.  

Are you referring to the investigation that led to indictments of 34 individuals and 3 companies?

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

39 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

They weren’t quite as discerning on the Russia collusion horseshit. 

Agreed. Social media repeatedly amplified Trump- the guy who pays off media to coverup stories in attempts to keep them completely out of the public sphere- claiming the Mueller Report absolved him which Mueller explicitly specified it did not do.

[Brisketexan 104628]

So, just a few decades ago, all flavors of moonbattery -- kennedy is still alive, pedos run a ring in the basement of a pizza parlour, italians hacked the election using satellites and alien tech, etc. -- existed.  And they were communicated, without government prevention or interference.  Now, it was done by pamphlet and such, handed out by the guy with a decked out van with lots of weird bumper stickers in the parking lot of the SAXET gun show, instead of amplified by algorithms (and often amplification by foreign actors intended to sow misinformation here) on websites, but it was the same shit.

There is no right to compel private amplification of utter bullshit.  Shit, there was no right to compel PUBLIC amplification of utter bullshit (back when the FCC truly regulated the airwaves, had the fairness doctrine, etc. -- there was no demand for equal time to broadcast loony-ass conspiracy theories, of which there were many back then).

Note that this doesn't change my opinion of Facebook, for example -- I think that its focus on monetization has made it a genuine force for evil.  It happily raked in dollars promoting all kinds of harmful utter bullshit.  It was a key tool in undermining our elections and the rule of law. It has been weaponized by the anti-vax movement (supported and amplified by foreign trolls who have a clear goal of undermining American society and government), and FB profited from that.  Now that FB is trying to perhaps exercise some modicum of responsibility, they'll fuck that up, too. 

But the answer to all of this is that there is no law stopping third parties from starting their own social media enterprise.  Truth Social is waiting for your sign-in.  Want to blather your Q-drops over there?  Go for it.  But nobody else is obligated to amplify your insanity -- just like the local fishwrap was never obligated to publish the screeds in the pamphlets from weird van guy in the SAXET parking lot.

[henrygandorf 29179]

37 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Are you referring to the investigation that led to indictments of 34 individuals and 3 companies?

the victory lap taken on the russia situation reminds us yet again how low the fucking bar is on that side.  as long as trump himself stays out of cuffs, then he's totally exonerated #witchhunt.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

9 hours ago, Thatguy said:

  I never thought I would see the day that Americans would think that Facebook was suppressing their freedom of speech because they shut down disinformation. Facebook is a business that plenty of people like my father refuse to use, and those people keep rolling right along in life without a care about the platform much like I do with Tik Tok. Being America and all, Facebook has the freedom to do whatever the hell they want inside the structure of the law. Let me break it down to you another way.

   Facebook, being a business, has one obligation and that is to make money. Last year at the height of the bullshit I lost about 20 of my friends through stupidity on FB. Quite a few of those people got angry enough to deactivate their accounts. I imagine that was happening all across the platform. That is less clicks and therefore less income. Their platform was ground zero for family splits, and long time friendships ending. It was war on there. They had to do something AS A BUSINESS, to calm the storm. You may not agree with their decision, but it was their right to do it. Had they not made a move you may have had businesses start pulling their advertising.

False premise -- they are deciding what is and isn't disinformation, and in their "even-handed" attempt to curb what they have decided is disinformation, they are muting solid new sources as well as wingnuts because the wingnuts demand "fair play." Facebook can't just take down Q and Nazi sources without those bitches whining about how the commies get to keep theirs, so it's buh-bye to the likes of Mother Jones, the Nation, and Socialist Worker's Daily, as if those were the equivalents of Der Sturmer and the Comet Pizza Watchman.

And items critical of Facebook, for example, are disinformation to them.

They have acquired too much power to fast over a vital sector they have no business making editorial decisions in whatsoever. 

I guess what I am arguing for is there needs to be a check to balance them, a board of journalistic pros who advises them on who to mute and deplatform and who not to. Or at the very least they need an Ombudsman to explain why they are treating Mother Jones like a hate group. Or why they have decided its okay to wish death on Russian soldiers. (This came a week after I was suspended three days for saying Russians were weird.)

Y'all are so fixated on the de jure element of 1-A. The de facto part is what matters in practice, and practice, we have allowed a brand-new tier of censors to control what we get to to read and see. 

Censorship begins within each writer. There are many, many times a writer doesn't even pitch a story he / she knows to be true and important, but that their editor would never let them go for it -- see, the entire business desk at the Houston Chronicle prior to the fall of Enron. They rah-rahed that company right over the brink to oblivion, but one of them, Cragg Hines, later claimed that they knew all along it was a bogus outfit. "We didn't want to be the ones who started the run on the bank," was his lame excuse, verbatim, but I understand. Nobody in Houston was doing that story; I was in the room when two investigative reporters were shot down pitching examining why Jeff Skilling really stepped down. We were given no public, staffwide explanation as to why that was not worthy of exploration beyond taking ol' Jeffy at his word that he felt bad about neglecting his family.

Maybe it's too expensive to investigate via man-hours. Increasingly the cash-strapped media has become too leery of even frivolous lawsuits to take on certain subjects who can just shut them down even if they are guilty of what the story would or does allege. Next, the editor has to decide if the story is one her bosses would go for. Does it offend their primary advertisers? (Yeah yeah this is not supposed to matter but it does.) A personal friend of someone above the editor's pay grade?

Note: none of this has fuck all to do with Congress and their laws. 

So then you get your report out their and if it is controversial enough your afflicted power will come at you with a PR counter-attack you can't match. And if you think these flacks don't know how to manipulate social media you are naive. And it will only get worse as the social media moguls integrate more fully into the traditional power structure.

Tl;dr: It's hard as fuck to get the truth out there as it is, and we don't need a whole new tier of untrained editors squelching what does get out.