BC HISTORY
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

If you think "It's not censorship unless the government does it," I want to change your mind.

It's absolutely true that the First Amendment only prohibits government action to suppress speech based on its content, but the First Amendment is not the last word on censorship.

1/

 Here are some kinds of private speech-suppression that I think most of us can agree are censorship: when the John Birch Society burned mountains of rock records and novels - or when Tipper Gore's PMRC pressured record stores to drop punk, metal and rap albums.

2/
Or the Comics Code Authority, which signed up all comics publishers and retailers to block comics if they contained anything unfit for small children, which stunted American comics for generations while their European counterparts created entire sophisticated genres.

3/
Or MPAA ratings, in which a secret group of censors (falsely described as frequently rotated, randomly selected parents - really they're long-serving studio insiders) decides whether movies get NC-17 ratings and thus be blocked from nearly every screen in the country.

4/
(You can learn more about this from Kirby Dick's unmissable doc, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," which documents both how the MPAA misleads the public about ratings, and uses them to block LGBTQ content)

https://t.co/wTplK0Z9OY

5/
Do those feel like censorship to you? They do to me. They share a common thread, too: monopoly. In each case, the number of retailers, producers, distributors, etc is small enough that if they collude to block something, it effectively vanishes.

6/
Or the Inquisitions - which were not government censorship. The Inquisitions undertaken by Church officials, who were not part of any government - instead, they represented an unaccountable, transnational authority that governments were largely powerless against.

7/
Does that sound familiar? Our media, speech forums, and distribution systems are all run by cartels and monopolists whom governments can't even tax - forget regulating them.

8/
The most consequential regulation of these industries is negative regulation - a failure to block anticompetitive mergers and market-cornering vertical monopolies.

9/
When governments fail to block the monopolization of speech forums, they're enabling censorship, just not in a way that violates the First Amendment, so we have no recourse and no transparency and no right of action when it happens.

https://t.co/8LtuOxHUoA

10/
If we only call something "censorship" when it involves state action, then there's basically no such thing as internet censorship - not because speech is never suppressed, but because under that theory the First Amendment simply does not apply to the internet.

11/
Social media is a duopoly. If neither will admit you, you can't use it. So you start your own site! Cloud computing is also clustered into a handful of companies (with AWS, a major military-intelligence contractor, running >50% of that business).

12/
If they block you, you'll need to host your own server. The majority of data centers are also concentrated into a few hands, too. Oh, so are the domain registrars. And the payment processors. Also the anti-DDoS companies and CDNs. Search is run by one company.

13/
How many companies need to collude to make it impossible for you to have a detectable internet presence? It's less than 50. And really, since losing any part of this stack can be a definitive blocker, it can be as few as two companies (mobile apps), or even one (search).

14/
You won't be completely unlocatable - the Inquisitons didn't seek to snuff out every copy of banned works (indeed, they preserved many of them in their private libraries!) and the PMRC, Comics Authority and MPAA ratings board don't totally eliminate their targeted media.

15/
But your speech will be marginalized and buried in ways that would be totally illegal if this were the result of state action. Only this speech is sidelined due to government INACTION.

16/
Ironically, the only corner of the networked world where 1A gets a look in is city-run broadband services - the same services that conservatives who have newfound concerns about online censorship deplore as "government intervention in the market."

https://t.co/eDcq0uQ1IS

17/
40 years of antitrust malpractice created a situation in which censorship is up, speech is perilous, and the First Amendment doesn't apply in either case.

The answer is NOT to impose speech duties on private platforms.

18/
"Fairness doctrines" are why the @BBC spent years airing anti-vaxxers and climate deniers every time they had a story about why you should get vaccinated and vote for decarbonization.

Facebook and Twitter have demonstrated far worse editorial judgment than Auntie.

19/
The problem with the tech giants isn't just their bad judgment, it's how consequential their mistakes are. Trying to improve the judgment of the tech companies is a fool's errand, a project without precedent. No one's ever convinced a monopolist to turn benevolent dictator.

20/
If we can't stop the tech giants from making mistakes, at least we can reduce the consequences of their errors by making them smaller. Block mergers. Unwind mergers undertaken on false premises (like FB/IG/WA and Google/YT/Ad/Doubleclick).

https://t.co/yntTrVNg7P

21/
Force interoperability upon them as the EU's Digital Services Act and the US ACCESS Act contemplate, then take away their right to block other forms of interoperability:

https://t.co/Tw7DPaiiY4

22/
And for god's sake, stop talking about CDA 230 as an answer to any of this. "You must moderate all your users" is a death sentence to anyone who DOESN'T have an army of moderators - anyone who might challenge FB and Twitter.

23/
For Big Tech, a legal moderation duty is just an excuse to remove any speech that anyone anywhere might complain about: "Sorry we removed your anti-pipeline protest announcement, but we were worried we'd be sued if we didn't."

24/
When the government censors, it's "unconstitutional censorship," but there are other forms of censorship that have always been with us and that we should all be concerned about.

When it comes to communications tech, competition policy is speech policy.

eof/
ETA: if you'd like to read or link to this as a single blog post on a site that's free from surveillance, ads and trackers, here's a permalink:

https://t.co/K6i7guat0B

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
20 years on, #BushVGore is back in our discourse - an election stolen by mobs at the polling places, a media blitz, and a Supreme Court at its most antidemocratic and antimajoritarian.

1/


We remember this as an election that the plutes stole, but it's also an election that the Dems gave to them. That's why we're talk about it now. There will be an attempt to steal next month's election. Will we surrender again?

2/

The last surrender led to a war being fought today by the children of the soldiers who were sent into battle on day one. It led to climate inaction, monopolistic concentration, erosions to our right to vote and to our right to protest.

3/

Thanks to that surrender, voter suppression was expanded and reinforced, leading to the election of a fumbling liar who got to appoint more SCOTUS judges in 3.5 years than all Democratic presidents did in the previous quarter


You may be wondering how the Dems surrendered in 2020. For a detailed account of what surrender looks like, read @rsgexp's @jacobin memoir of her time as an @AFLCIO organizer sent to Florida during the
POLITICS
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
I spend a lot of time looking in detail at abusive situations where tech plays a starring role: stalkerware, bossware, remote proctoring, etc. But nothing I'd read really prepared me for the tale of @arisevsinc, an abuser without parallel.

https://t.co/olExnSwEcW

1/


Arise sells itself as a "virtual call center" and boasts of blue-chip clients like Disney, Carnival Cruises, Comcast, Airbnb, Intuit etc. If you've ever called one of these companies, you may have spoken to an Arise worker.

2/

But that "worker" was not an employee. Arise is a pioneer in worker misclassification, and treats all the people who work for it as "independent contractors." So even though these workers are more tightly supervised and managed than any regular employee, they have no rights.

3/

You have to pay Arise for the privilege of working for them. Not just buying your own computer, but also paying to be trained in how to pretend to be an employee of Disney or Airbnb and Arise's other customers.

4/

Execs at these giant corps listen in on your calls while they are in progress or after the fact - and if they detect so much as a squeak from a child, or a noisy neighbor, they can terminate your contract and you lose the money and unpaid labor you spent on training.

5/
SOCIETY , SOCIETY
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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
@doctorow
It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

1/


Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

2/

In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

3/

This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

4/

Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

5/
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
2022 is shaping up to be a bloodbath. The Trump census cooked the numbers to advantage Republicans, and GOP statehouses are poised to redistrict in ways that will hand potentially permanent minority rule to the GOP in Congress.

1/


There's a potential way out: #HR1, an omnibus bill of electoral reforms that would create durable, structural protections for voting rights and a level playing field for campaigning.

2/

To get a sense of how urgent the looming crisis is - and of how important HR1 is - listen to @ryangrim interviewing @schwarz and Rep @JohnSarbanes [D-MD] on this week's

In theory, HR1 could be blasted through - Dems control the Senate, Congress, and the White House, and the future of the party depends on it, but I'm far from confident that they'll find the discipline and political will to make it happen.

4/

The Democrats keep squandering their majorities and wasting opportunities to make real change - changes that are must-haves, not nice-to-haves; changes needed to head off existential threats to the nation itself.

5/
TRUMP
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a founding member of the EU, but it's also a rogue state, enabling massive corruption throughout the trading bloc; while Cyprus and Malta will sell any corrupt robber-baron EU citizenship, it's Luxembourg that leads in laundering their money.

1/


As the @TaxJusticeNet's @nickshaxson memorably put it, Luxembourg is "a criminal enterprise with a country attached" - a country where corporations are guaranteed "an easy ride on taxes, disclosure, financial regulations, and criminal

2014's #Luxleaks exposed some of the worst corruption, whereby @PwC worked with Luxembourg officials to secure illegal tax benefits for major corporations and the world's richest

Luxleaks lead to a 2018 EU directive that required member states to publish registers of the true owners of the companies they registered.

4/

Luxembourg published theirs in 2019, and @lemondefr partnered with ten media orgs for a year-long analysis of the register, which was published this week: #Openlux. The findings reveal that Luxleaks was just the tip of the
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More from History

Pulp Librarian
Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian
On 23 September 1984 the BBC broadcast the apocalypse: the story of nuclear war and its effects on the people of Sheffield. Filmed on a shoestring budget it still causes nightmares to this day.

This thread is not for the squeamish.

This the story of Threads...


In 1965 the BBC had filmed The War Game, a fictional docu-drama about a nuclear attack on Britain. However under pressure from the government the BBC withdrew it from screening. It was finally released in 1966 as a film in selected theatres.


For many years the withdrawal of The War Game had rankled many at the BBC. Surely it was a public broadcaster's duty to show the public what the reality of nuclear war would mean. Finally in 1982 they did so.


A Guide To Armageddon was a documentary for the BBC's peak-time science series Q.E.D. Produced by Mick Jackson it graphically depicted the effect of a one megaton explosion on London. It also explored how well people could survive such a blast if they were in a fallout shelter.


Jackson had carefully researched his subject and knew how under-prepared the UK was for nuclear war. The physical and psychological effects of atomic attack would catapult what was left of Britain back to a 14th century mode of living, a time when bubonic plague killed millions.
HISTORY
Dr Robin George Andrews \U0001f30b
Dr Robin George Andrew...
@SquigglyVolcano
Buckle up, everyone, this story is *wild*.

The 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery, in which nine students died at the hands of an unknown force, has likely been solved thanks to the movie Frozen and gruesome car crash experiments.

Me, for @NatGeo + thread!

In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg—nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II—headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing expedition on January 23, 1959. 1/x

One student turned back after experiencing joint pain.

He never saw his friends again.

2/x

The team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain” in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people. Ominous, sure - but these were experienced mountain hikers. 3/x


The nine were never heard from again.

When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. 4/x
HISTORY
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Gareth Harney
Gareth Harney
@OptimoPrincipi
1) The Temple of the Divine Claudius was a vast temple complex on Rome's Caelian Hill, overlooking the valley that would later be occupied by the Colosseum. Though almost nothing now remains of the structure, its scale and grandeur once rivalled anything in the city.. #LostRome


2) The 'Claudium' was intended as a sacred complex to revere Claudius and the imperial cult. Construction began soon after the death and deification of the emperor in 54 AD, initiated by his widow Agrippina who was likely responsible for his supposed death by poisoning. #LostRome


3) The sprawling temple complex sat on a gigantic podium that spread across the Caelian Hill, measuring 180 x 200 metres; with towering retaining walls of travertine that raised the structure 20 metres above the valley below. #LostRome


4) The elevated sacred area was likely entered by steps facing the temple on the west side. The temple itself had a projecting hexastyle porch and was surrounded by gardens and a grand portico, probably the 'porticus Claudia' mentioned in Martial's 'On the Spectacles'. #LostRome


5) Statues of both Agrippina and Claudius’ ill-fated young son Britannicus, sculpted in sumptuous dark Egyptian greywacke, were discovered among the ruins on the Caelian Hill in 1651 – and had almost certainly been displayed in the temple precinct. #LostRome
HISTORY
Scott Huffman
Scott Huffman
@HuffmanForNC
#BlackHistoryMonth In the Navy, I was fortunate to serve at Commander Cruiser Destroyer Group 2(CCDG2). I reported to duty in 1981 as Radioman Seaman Apprentice(RMSA), and served through 1985 in the communications division achieving the rank of Petty Officer 2nd Class(RM2/SW) /1


This was my first duty assignment. But my first is not important as the first African-American who served as CCDG2's Commanding Officer prior to my arrival, Rear Admiral Samuel L. Gravely, Jr. He was a trailblazer. He was commissioned an Ensign on November 14, 1944. /2


He enlisted and then became one of the first commissioned African-American officers in the US Navy. He was denied housing and even jailed for impersonating an officer. He withstood a cavalcade of abuse and racism and still managed to rise through the ranks of the Navy. /3


He became the first to serve under combat conditions during WW2. He served during the Korean & Vietnam War. He was the first to command a fighting vessel, and commander of the 3rd fleet. He served as Communications officer on the USS IOWA BB-61 /4


He served as the first African-American to command (USS Theodore E. Chandler (DD 717)); command a major warship (USS Jouett (DLG 29)) - and was the first African-American to achieve the rank of Captain in 1967. /5
HISTORY
Advaid \u0d05\u0d26\u0d4d\u0d35\u0d48\u0d24\u0d4d
Advaid അദ്വൈത്...
@Advaidism
Folks who don't know history just tweet whatever they want.

On Feb 1935, Bose attacked the Nazis as he was angry as Indians were described as Sub-Humans in Mein Kampf. The British arrested Bose in April 1936, because he insulted the Nazis.

#Thread


The West at this point had a soft spot for the Nazis. France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Poland all gave the Nazi Salute during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Even during the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939), the Western powers observed neutrality as the Fascists rose in Spain.


In 1937, Hitler told British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that one of his fav movies was ‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’. Why?

‘The Lives of a Bengal Lancer’ depicted a handful of "superior race" Brits holding sway over an entire Indian subcontinent (Sub-Humans).

"Shoot Gandhi. If necessary, shoot more Congress Leaders (Nehru & Bose)."

- Hitler to Lord Halifax, Britain's Foreign Secretary

This statement by Hitler in 1937 angered many pro-Leftist leaders of the INC including Bose.

Bose reached London in Jan 1938, and he met many leaders of the British Labour Party including Attlee.

1938 & 1939 were two huge years for the Indian National Congress. As i always say, the 10-year phase from 1938 - 1948 shaped modern India and it began in 1938 Haripura session.
HISTORY

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November is here, and that means a massive shift is coming. And by "massive" I am of course referring to the redefinition of the kilogram unit of mass that the world has been building up to for more than 100 years. Let me explain:


1/ I've had an unhealthy fascination with metrology (the study of measurement) ever since my 2nd year as a physics major when I took a class devoted to duplicating historic physics experiments, so please indulge me for going into heavy detail (get it?) about the kilogram.

2/ So what actually *defines* a unit of measurement? If you're American, you probably know a mile is 5280 feet and a foot is 12 inches and an inch is 2.54 centimeters etc. But where does this chain of definitions end? Is it turtles all the way down?

3/ It's actually not! For all units (even the imperial units used in America) the answers all end with the Système International (SI) unit definitions established and maintained for over 100 years by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIMP) in France.

4/ At the base of this tower are the SI base units. Just 7 SI base units define every other unit in existence. They are:

Kilogram, kg (mass)
Meter, m (distance)
Second, s (time)
Kelvin, K (temp)
Ampere, A (electric current)
Candela, cd (luminous intensity)
Mole, mol (quantity)
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RANI NAIKI DEVI AND THE BATTLE OF KASAHRADA

Mohammad Ghori, the young Ghurid Prince conquered Ghaznavids in Afghanistan in the year 1173 CE. He conducted some successful raids into the Indian territory, which even Mahmud Ghazni & the Persians couldn't do.


First&foremost,Ghori invaded states of Multan &Uch in India.After this he turned to southern states of Gujarat &Rajputana.Everybody knows this about Ghori,but what most pple r unaware of is the defeat he suffered at hands of Chalukyan Queen Naiki Devi in 1178 Battle of Kasahrada.


When he marched southwards, his first target was the prosperous fortified town of Anhilwara Patan.
It was the capital of Chalukyas(also known as Solankis of Gujarat) which was established by Vanraj of Chapotkata Dynasty in 8th century.


American historian Tertius Chandler states that it was the 10th largest city in the world at that time. The history of Chalukyas has been written by many historians, but the valour of the Great Queen Naiki Devi remains unsung.


Born to the Kadamba King Paramardin of Goa,Naiki Devi was well trained in sword fighting, horse riding, strategy & every other subject of Statesmanship. She was married to King Ajaypala of Gujarat who sat on throne in 1171CE. Unfortunately,the King died within 4 yrs of his rule.
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PC\U0001f30e\u262e
PC🌎☮
@pc_432
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel was previously CEO of bioMerieux in France from 07-10.

Alain Merieux, who owns bioMerieux, was instrumental in the creation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology P4 Lab.

The same people who helped create the virus, also helped to create the vaccines...


Moderna partnered with French Pasteur Institute in 2015 to develop mRNA vaccine technology.

Pasteur Institute partnered with the Wuhan P4 Laboratory in 2017 along with the Merieux Foundation to study emerging viruses...
https://t.co/yFsHwrNYaK
https://t.co/9M5lydBKhM


Nobel prize winning scientist Luc Montagnier asserts that Sars-Cov-2 is man-made and originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Montagnier did extensive work with the Pasteur Institute in France which was partnered with the Wuhan P4.

Merieux Foundation & the Chinese government have worked together since 1965, and partnered to study emerging pathogens in Africa in 2015.

Their research included "PATHOGENS CARRIED BY BATS" that provoke respiratory diseases.

🚨🚨🚨
https://t.co/gVwpT0ssqI
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A thing which I unironically and enthusiastically believe which is unpopular among smart people of my acquaintance: financial engineering has in the recent past and present contributed substantially to human welfare. We should hope to see more of it.

Maybe more geeks need to meet someone who says “My job is teleporting value across time and space.”

Financial engineering is sort of a squishy term. I don’t primarily mean payments infrastructure or financial rails, although both of those involve substantial engineering.

I mean more “We took a thing and performed some alchemy, and now have a new thing.”

Except instead of alchemy it is generally quite a bit of math, a huge amount of contract law and due diligence, often an impressive amount of ops work, and a dusting of technology that web devs would recognize as such.
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Light travels at about 1 foot per nanosecond.

Hold your hand up 12 inches from your face: you’re seeing your hand as it was a nanosecond ago. Everything you look at is, to one degree or another, in the past. The farther away in space, the more ancient in time.

You can’t see the Sun as it is now, but you can see it as it was about 8 minutes ago. You can’t see Alpha Centauri now, but you can see it 4.4 years ago. You can see the Andromeda Galaxy as it was 2.5 million years in the past. And so on.

With powerful telescopes, we can see galaxies whose light has been traveling to us for more than 13 billion years. We see them shining in a universe that’s still young, where gravity has just begun to pull matter together into stars and galaxies.

We can see something even more distant, and more ancient, than the first galaxies. If we peer out far enough, in between the galaxies, we can see parts of the Universe that are so far away, it has taken the light from that distance almost the entire age of the cosmos to reach us.
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