I had never heard of Block before, but I visited their website and downloaded one of their open-source projects, Goose (an OpenCode alternative). I ran a very simple prompt on one of the projects I’m working on to implement a small feature. It ended up going into what seemed like an infinite loop and consumed three-quarters of my monthly Poe subscription on a single prompt. I uninstalled it immediately.
Never heard of them either. But the link in the title is to Jack Dorsey's tweet. Now him I have heard of. Didn't know he was involved in that company too.
"After the first set of files was published, various technology and media journalists said that the reported evidence demonstrated little more than Twitter's policy team struggling with difficult decisions, but resolving such matters swiftly. Some conservatives said that the documents demonstrated what they called Twitter's liberal bias...
In June 2023, lawyers working for Twitter contested many of the claims made in the Twitter Files in court. According to CNN, 'the filing by Musk's own corporate lawyers represents a step-by-step refutation of some of the most explosive claims to come out of the Twitter Files and that in some cases have been promoted by Musk himself.'
You can repeat that all you like. Wikipedia is bullshit on that and you know it.
Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi were both outcast from liberal media for their extensive reporting on it.
Obama, Trump to a small degree, and Biden Admin to a massive degree pressured a private company with threats and access unless the removed otherwise legal content. Specially legal covid discussion including jokes.
The guidelines apply regardless of the topic or side, and our role is to uphold the guidelines, nothing more. We don't care (and often don't even know) what side or position you're arguing for. It's irrelevant, and we just don't even have time to get into it.
The paragraph ”You can repeat that all you like. Wikipedia is bullshit on that and you know it.” is plainly not consistent with curious conversation.
Why would I need to explain something I never brought up? I have no idea what musk said or what his claims are. How about you provide any citation? You brought up Musk as a strawman.
You’ve multiple times claimed the Twitter files are a “nothing burger”…
The truth is that there is concrete evidence of the Biden administration, pressuring media companies to sensor specific posts about Covid that they considered harmful to the narrative. Direct first amendment violations.
You seem to not give any indication that you can have read Weiss or Taibbi’s articles.
Jack Dorsey admitted it was true. So did Zuckerberg. Wild position you seem to have forced yourself into.
It did before the internet. See Marsh v. Alabama where publicly accessible ( private sidewalk) on private property was ruled the people there still could exercise 1A rights and could not be trespassed for doing so even if the owners forbid it.
How does freedom of speech allow you to walk somewhere you have been forbidden from walking? Does that mean you can just go into any building you want and use your 1A rights to not be arrested?
You can read the case. Basically it was a privately owned public space that they could have been otherwise trespassed from, but not for the reason of their speech. Since the reason for the trespass was their speech, it was prohibited. They were not otherwise "forbidden" from walking there were it not they expressed something that was disapproved of.
A weak analogy (I know analogy are never allowed here because "they're not the same") is that you can fire someone at will. Unless it turns out you fired them because they are black (yes I know being black is much different than expressing an opinion). It didn't mean you can't fire them at will, just that you couldn't for that specific protected reason.
Although at this point we're well well past the goalpost of "Freedom of speech has literally never prevented a private company from controlling the content on its platform" and down into the weeds of how it happened. The case clearly prevented the company from fully controlling the content of its sidewalk platform.
Yes, there are definitely problems, but at least you can criticise the speech laws. And fight to change them. In fact if you feel strongly about it you can do something about it. The article mentions the Free Speech Union in the UK. There is also the EFF in the USA. Democracy requires that we fight for it. Otherwise it will disappear.
In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.
Imo the biggest problem in Western democracies is that in a lot of ideological cases we don't have democracy at all. It doesn't matter what majority thinks as no major party is going to implement it.
I get why democracy has to be indirect when it comes to many complicated, interconnected issues but things like free speech laws, abortion laws, public decency laws, smoking bans etc. should all be decided in a direct vote (repeated every N years).
As it is we often have a situation where significant majority have a different view but a small strong group is able to influence the law. It's not a democracy but a farce in my view.
Some, mostly-western, US states have citizen-initiated state constitution amendment processes. [0]
I especially like Nevada's -- a majority in two successive general elections.
Sustainable democracy needs a jury nullification-like direct popular escape catch to solve legislatively-intractable issues (term limits, party primaries, redistricting, etc).
You can criticise things, but if you are effective, or if you criticise the wrong thing, you risk jail, harassment, ostracisation, threats, campaigns of vilification and slander, etc. Your doctor visits and lawyer visits will be surveilled, your basic diplomatic rights violated. You can be tortured in public view.
Wikileaks' Julian Assange is perhaps the archetypal recent example, but there are others.
Westminster has undergone a violent authoritarian shift in recent decades. Stating that clearly is a prerequisite to beginning a fight for "democracy", as you put it.
> In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.
There is always opportunity to speak out.
In dictatorships, it usually costs more energy, money and sometimes lives. It tends to culminate in revolutions, and then the system changes.
In censored quasi-democracies like what we see in "the west", it tends to culminate in being ignored and the status quo being maintained or gradually worsened. Alternatively, you may become a pariah and either have to self-exile [0] or suffer years of isolation and torture [1].
I'm not sure I follow the logic. I mean all the arguments are valid when taken separately, but the construct fails me. You mean, the dictatorship is then better because you might die but the survivors can have a revolution? Why couldn't then a democracy have a revolution as well, by exactly the same argumentation? And how's all this black and white thinking, like because democracy is not perfect, dictatorship becomes suddenly acceptable???
First, I don't really consider what exists in "the west" as actual democracies. They are oligarchies or autocracies disguised as democracies instead. They've always been that, only now it's becoming more obvious.
> the dictatorship is then better
No, not at all. But it does have a clear path toward something better. This doesn't make it better, but it is a silver lining.
> Why couldn't then a democracy have a revolution as well
It could, but more frequently what happens are coups - and they descent into authoritarianism. Or the authoritarians get elected.
> And how's all this black and white thinking, like because democracy is not perfect, dictatorship becomes suddenly acceptable???
Is it? Having lived in one and having studied it extensively, I don't think there was a single moment in time since the coup all the way throughout the 21 years it lasted when the people fighting against had doubts about what they had to do and where they wanted to get.
I'm sick of all this doomsaying coming from the bench. If somebody thinks the dictatorship is around the corner, then please get on your ass and do something about it! Organize, vote, find your own way. Because the world has zero uses for more oracles, but a lot of use for _involved_ people.
> but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy
There isn't a singular "western" democracy. Different countries have varying levels of (dis)functional democracies and freedoms, and choose different tradeoffs. E.g there are more hate speech restrictions in countries like Germany and France that literally saw what happens when evil is left unchallenged and many innocent paid with their lives; Germany has a federal state against too much power centralisation, France does the opposite due to absurd failures of governance in the past.
None of the various failures or wins of democracy in "the West" are inducement of "western democracy".
As long as you can vote and the vote is recognized you are a democracy, there is a reason why liberal democracy and democracy aren’t just synonyms.
Foundational freedoms sounds like a fixed definition of freedoms but history showed it’s highly subjective and selective by culture and country.
Not all cultures value individual freedoms like western culture does, and few cultures grant all their freedoms to people outside their culture or country.
Societies always have to balance between what’s good for all, most, some and one.
Illiberal democracies are also democracies if we treat 1950s era US, Australia, UK, and Canada as democracies.
Much of the Western world only saw a shift to Liberal Democracy (as in the enshrinement of civil liberties and limits to majoritarianism) in the 1960s to 1990s.
Liberal Democracy can be protected only if it's norms are enshrined in jurisprudence, and a lot of Liberal Democracies like the UK didn't do so.
Not really? If freedom is restricted to the point that people can't meaningfully influence their governance then you no longer have a democracy, even of you continue to hold ceremonial or sham elections. A democracy that allows voting to stop being a democracy is fundamentally unstable and will eventually cease being democratic.
"People" can - sure. What we have instead is a situation where people are not voting on those issues. On many issues there is no choice at all not matter what the majority thinks
No-one voted for this. The police in the UK are using a combination of existing powers (for example, intimidating people by using their powers to question people), non-statutory instruments that politicians have told them repeatedly to stop using, and laws that are being applied to the online world in an expansive way (the current PM is the former head of government prosecutions so is basically the worst person possible to prevent this, the person who passed one of the most infamous laws, Tony Blair, has said it is problematic).
Just generally, this model doesn't apply to the UK. There is an extremely long history of people voting one way and the government doing something else. This is because the country is led by people whose views are shared by no-one, and the tremendous power of the Civil Service (elected officials have limited powers to direct civil servants and cannot remove all but a handful of civil servants...there was an example recently of a senior civil servant giving incorrect information to a minister, the minister was forced to resign, that senior civil servant stayed in for several years, another minister attempted to remove them, the civil servant sued and won a substantial settlement then chose to retire early on a full pension...he was responsible for several massive issues in his department too, Windrush was one, there were many others).
A more nefarious factor is that turnout has collapsed because voters, correctly, understand that their vote doesn't actually matter. The government is unable to do things so why bother voting. Turnout is significantly higher in Russia presidential elections.
To give you an example, the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population. No-one supports this. The government knows no-one supports this. Immigration has stayed high for multiple years, we have had elections, it doesn't matter. If we elected someone to fix it, they would be unable to fix it. Labour have tried to fix it...they spent years in opposition saying the Tories couldn't fix it with their policies...they get into government, within a year they are now trying the exact same policies...because Parliament has no real control, whether in theory or in reality, to change anything, the government gets in, the civil service present the same choices that won't work...you have to be actually mad to think voting makes a difference. The idea that you can fix things by voting is the reason why things are stagnating.
I think the entire West is experiencing this problem. Things like immigration laws are determined not by elected officials but by bureaucrats and judges/lawyers who it turns out are often on the same side. It's a very sticky problem. The Nomenklatura of the USSR is probably the most similar description.
At least in the US, we have discovered an even more complex situation where many of our government organizational low-mid-low/high level leaders all lean left, same for judges, but then our supreme court leans right as well as high level leaders (appointed by right president). It's as off the extreme political polarization our nation suffers from has also manifested itself in our own institutions.
> are determined not by elected officials but by bureaucrats and judges/lawyers who it turns out are often on the same side
"Fixing" that is an awfully slippery slope towards dictatorship though.
The entire reason that system exists -- to preserve competence and skills in government despite political leadership change and to provide independent checks on elected officials' power -- is because of historical abuses by elected officials.
Ergo, I'm enormously suspicious of suggestions about tearing down the barriers to change...
... because those barriers exist for a damned good reason.
Imho, people should talk more about adjusting the balance in the system, but preserving all the independent components, and less about vilifying specific pieces of the balance of power.
I am concerned about how lawyers may be a closed off group. Especially with grads from the top law schools who often work at NGOs or become judges in high courts that end up deciding major things. I think precedent could be set in a way that reflects the tastes of a small and detached group of people.
ok I think being independent is fine, what I meant was a little different. Let me just ask you something instead which might clarify my thoughts. What did you have in mind when you said dictatorship? Like what is the historical precedent you are basing that on?
I'm not sure it can be attributed to political parties in the UK.
By most standards, the British political tradition has remained paternalistic in it's mindset, and a lot of the shifts in civil liberties happened fairly late (1980s-90s) and without the requisite judicial scaffolding being built in place.
Furthermore, a lot of the same powers and institutions used for internal security during the Troubles were redeployed during the GWOT and never pushed back against legally speaking.
For example, London was the first major city to deploy centralized CCTV surveillance en masse.
And this isn't a UK only thing - across Europe, mass surveillance laws and government perogative are much stronger than their equivalents in the US, and given tensions on the eastern border of EU+ due to a belligerent neighbor like Russia and Azerbaijan using grey zone tactics, I think we might see a further regression on this front, because NatSec will always trump liberties.
By most standards, we're in an interregnum period similar to the 1930s, the "Dreadnought Wars" (1906-1914), or the 1950s that can spill over.
Yes, the Troubles are a huge factor, the security services play a huge and unwelcome part in our political process. I think I mentioned elsewhere, I assume most people are familiar with this but most of the media campaigns that accompany legislation are pushed by the police/security services.
Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time.
And it is a legacy of things like the Troubles where you have massive internal political instability and these kind of things become normal. These powers aren't formal though, it is all informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context).
> Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time.
That's actually a bit of a dumber story than that.
Basically, a well connected and knighted documentary maker (Beeban Kidron) made pornography regulation her sole personal mission after she became a mother.
The UK being a fairly small political playground and her significant network thanks to Miramax made it easy for her to lobby and get private and public support in the UK and California.
Once she was inducted in the House of Lords in 2012, she went gung ho lobbying for it.
> informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context).
Yep. A lot of the Cold War era rules and regulations remain in place
A big part of this is caused by (as I understand it, open to correction!) the UK's fundamental lack of free speech rights (by individuals and groups).
The UK has free(ish) speech, that usually works well enough in practice, for most things.
But at the end of the day if the UK government and/or security services and/or wealthy people want to really put their foot on suppressing speech... they have legal tools to do so.
The UK has never really squared the circle on free speech even and especially when it's inconvenient to power.
That's a binary right. Either you have it, or you don't.
Okay...and you are presumably aware that every government since the 60s has tried to reform the Civil Service? And how has that gone?
Parliament is not sovereign because this is an administrative issue. As I explained, elected officials have limited direct control over ministries. And an even bigger issue is that the Civil Service is unionized, so if you were actually looking to reform it wholesale then you would have to shut down government for months with irreparable damage done in the media by civil servants briefing daily against you...so I am not aware of a way to do this. You can't reform ministries, you can't reform the whole thing...so what is the solution?
The reason why politicians blame the civil servants is because they are bad. No-one thinks otherwise. The past three heads of the civil service have acknowledged there are massive issues with competence at every level, this is not new. But it isn't possible to reform.
I am not sure how anyone can think Parliament is sovereign in this matter either. It makes no sense based on the evidence of repeated issues with competence and multiple governments being unable to fix that.
No system is perfect or never in need of reform, including the UK civil service.
However, recent attacks on the civil service from the political right are almost always a consequence of reality colliding with politics, i.e. the civil service pointing out that ministerial decisions may be unlawful, etc. There are legions of examples of this conflict arising under the previous Tory government.
As such, it is indeed within the power of parliament to change the law so that their political objectives may be met. It is not up to the civil service to break the law when that is convenient to ministers.
The tories activly campaigned on the platform of regulating internet speech.
> Windrush was one, there were many others
mate, windrush was down to May and her spads. They knew the problems, but decided that the press was worth it.
> the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population
Immigration has halved this year.
The problem is that has tradeoffs, like social care isn't going work anymore.
I understand your frustrations. I hate that no matter who I vote for I seem to get reform-lite dipshits.
Thats not the fault of the civil service (although there is an entire subject in it's self) thats the fault of the press and political class being too close.
I would read about what actually happened. There were multiple failures in the Home Office, in particular some statistics were incorrectly reported by the Rudd (I am not sure why you are talking about May) based on figures she was told by civil servants, she then had to resign. Not only that but the correct figures were actually leaked to the press shortly after (this is something that has happened in the Home Office before).
Okay, and it has halved to the highest level ever. If you want to have ones of these interminable discussions about your favourite politicians, please stop. I am not interested in hearing which colour rosette you prefer, and how everything is the fault of the other guys. It is complete and total nonsense. The reason why we have the system we have is because it is too easy for a politician to claim they will fix everything (the drop in immigration is nothing to do with Starmer either, it was to do with the Tories whose legacy on immigration is unspeakable, it has halved to a level that is unbelievably high).
Yes, it is the fault of the civil service because, as I assume you don't understand, ministers legally have a limited set of options when they are making policy (this was one of the issues the Tories faced, Rwanda was a variation of a policy that had been explored since the early 2000s...it wasn't a new policy, which is why Labour are now going down the same route...we had an election, same policies). They come into office, explain to the civil servants what they want to do, and then they are given a choice of policies...if a minister chooses not to one of these things then the policy can later be challenged in the courts, and legal discovery can be used to overturn the policy if there is no legal basis for it (essentially, whether it was approved by the civil service).
Every new government comes in finding the same thing. You are already seeing people in Labour complain about Reeves...well, guess what? There are no alternatives. Your comment about Reform-lite is ridiculous, every party is Reform, every party is Labour, every party is the Tories. The game continues as long as people like you give it credibility by suggesting that voting has any impact and will change anything...it won't. A lot of the briefing that the press get is from the civil service too...I can't understand how you can talk about immigration and then complain about the press...why do you think Johnson increased immigration? The press, relentless briefing from lobbyists, relentless pressure from civil servants in the Home Office briefing against the government (the Home Office is notorious for this btw, as I just explained above, I remember Charles Clarke complaining about this...unbelivable).
Yes, they have to make decisions that conform to UK laws. Rwanda is/was such a stupid idea that even if ministers had removed the relevant laws preventing them from implementing it, it would have cost hundreds of thousands per person, and not solved the issues it was supposed to.
The initial idea was, instantly deport as many people as possible (without due process, basically anyone who arrives without a visa is instantly classed as an illegal migrant, regardless of circumstances, and sent back to country of origin, even if that means death), and those that somehow do manage to claim asylum, send them to rwanda.
The policy then was "honed" as follows, so that it was actually legal, but no less stupid:
1) make it effectively illegal to claim asylum
2) buy housing in rwanda to house all successful asylum seekers, but only upto low thousands
2.1) pay over inflated costs to keep those people there for ever. They can't work there, so we have to pay them for ever.
3) make it effectively impossible to process any asylum claims.
4) because its impossible to process claims, you cant deport failed claimants, because they've not been processed
5) exhaust all short term housing in the UK for claimants, because they can't be processed and deported.
6) pay ever increasing bills for short term housing, and piss off locals, because the number of claimants increases for ever, because they can't be processed.
7) claimants abscond and are never seen again, living without a paper trail in the UK
It was so fucking mind bendingly stupid and expensive, you too would try and stop it.
Of course the press and the twitter sphere loved it, because it was a deterent. Regardless of the cost or stupidity.
What labour have floated, is that failed claimants be immediately moved to a 3rd party country pending appeal. Which much less stupid, but still expensive. I imagine it'll be dropped. The solution is to actually process asylum claims properly(which is what is being done, hence why those migrant camps are reducing).
> The game continues as long as people like you give it credibility by suggesting that voting
You seem to suggest that its the civil service that runs policy. I really would suggest reading the actual laws that are passed, and the research provided to the commons library. Civil servants can only do what the law allows. And often, those laws are fucking stupid, and done to chase a headline (see johnson/sunak)
Labour as not reform, you and I both know that. Labour are just shit and have painted themselves into a corner. Moreover, the current PM doesn't acutally publically stand for anything, which means that making decisions as a minister is very hard. (its partly the same reason sunak was so useless, most of it was he had useless ministers)
> why do you think Johnson increased immigration
because we have a chronic skills shortage, and to keep a lid on wage rises, and to stop the care sector grinding to a complete halt, we needed immigration.
Look, the issue is this, public finances are fucked. Until taxes are reformed, or we somehow grow the economy 10%, everything will be salami sliced to nothing.
both the tories and labour were dishonest about taxation. The press failed to actually tackle them on it. Mind you, if they had, would people listen. Nobody likes to bother about public finances.
"everyone is the same" is just not true, thats how we get extremists, like reform.
If that 1¢ gets you straight to Inbox then the signal-to-noise would take a very bad nosedive. If not, then it will change nothing anyway. Phone calls cost money and there are still plenty of SPAM calls.
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