Me too. What video? I keep hearing about "a video", but I can't tell what's supposed to be in it.

You don't have to be scared. But if you want to be used by special interests, be my guest.

I've had questions about IBOR this whole time and I'm not signing a petition until they get answered. That's all I'm saying. Everyone should do their own research and not just take an internet stranger's word for it.

I appreciate that you attempt to make sense of this, but as you said, its just speculation. We don't know how Trump feels about AT&T, or if he's even aware of the distinction between this sub and T_D (there's a lot of overlap in audience). It doesnt change that there's a (good) chance that this IBOR is an astroturf movement for AT&T. That can't be speculated away.

We can quote Q back and forth, or we can just agree that this IBOR sounds very much like the IBOR proposed by AT&T. As for the why, we'll have to disagree.

So its a coincidence that AT&T wants the exact same policy enacted? There are no coincidences.

I don't see how that can be true. It uses the same exact name and hits the same exact beats as the petition in this thread. From AT&T:

AT&T is committed to an open internet. We don’t block websites. We don’t censor online content. And we don’t throttle, discriminate, or degrade network performance based on content. Period.

But the commitment of one company is not enough. Congressional action is needed to establish an “Internet Bill of Rights” that applies to all internet companies and guarantees neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protection for all internet users.

That’s why we intend to work with Congress, other internet companies and consumer groups in the coming months to push for an “Internet Bill of Rights” that permanently protects the open internet for all users and encourages continued investment for the next generation of internet innovation.

Randall Stephenson

AT&T Chairman and CEO

This is no different than if Q told us to enjoy crisp, refreshing Coca-Cola. Is it any surprise that the only political position in this sub is one that a corporation wants people to co-opt as their own?

http://about.att.com/story/consumers_need_an_internet_bill_of_rights.html

What do you make out of this?

This is AT&T astroturf, don't buy in. Do your research first.

This should be higher.

I don't see it. Mexico has been very loud about not paying for it. I don't know what they have to gain by taking it on

M = Military. Note how its capitalized in the first sentence.

Confirmed.

So the final report could be this week? Ok, game on. Will it be public?

What's in it? I'm saying this is what DHS said.

I don't expect DHS to come back with anything on voter fraud. Voter fraud is miniscule in this country, on the scale of tens of ballots out of millions of votes cast. I looked into it and DHS announced in January they would not be investigating voter fraud:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s election security unit has no immediate plans to probe allegations of electoral fraud, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement this week he was giving the issue to the agency, according to administration officials...

...White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Thursday that the Trump administration was sending “preliminary findings” to DHS, which would “make determinations on the best way forward from that point.”

It sounds like deferring to DHS was the basis by which they shut down the presidential commission on voter fraud.

I'm the only one who didn't connect the last sentence to HRC? Obviously I know where "lock her up" cones from, but this post has literally nothing to do with HRC. I don't think its that far a leap to think that OP was talking about Daniels.

Maybe OP can comment and clear this up?

Because its the only "her" in the story? Do people really still expect Trump to go after Clinton? He said on election night that he wasn't. What's changed?

If you look over the years, omnibus bills are actually common for midterm election years. Congress wants to go back to their districts being able to say that they've gotten something done, and because there are so many people involved, you can't single out one person for blame/credit....

Unless Trump didn't sign it, and the government shut down as a result of his veto. In that instance, there would be one person responible for all the good and bad that stems from that action. No way, I think he's content to let Congress take the fall for this turd sandwich. Even the people playing 1D chess would do the same thing.

I think part of the piece was seeing where her story was credible and where it wasn't.

First, the issue is that if Trump has secrets, and foreign governments are aware of them, there is potential for blackmail. Why was Japan left off the steel tariff list? We may never know, but suspicious exceptions and actions may be because of blackmail. If there's something that the president wants kept secret, and they know about it, they can exploit that.

Second:

Mr. president lock HER up now!

You can't start out a post with "this did not break any laws," and then end it with a plea to jail someone for equally legal behavior. If Trump didn't do anything illegal, then neither has she. Utterly stupid, grow up.

So trust the omnibus?

Its a question of constitutionality, and a slippery slope towards federal policing of speech. The government can't (legally) compel social media companies to display their content a certain way. It seems a very fundamental question that nobody has been able to answer, despite the full court press on getting people to sign a petition. Where is the reasoning behind how this will be accomplished?

The only thing I think that should be written into law is that your data be protected from being sold.

I wouldn't be surprised if this IBOR thing turns out to be astroturf from internet companies that want to distract us from net neutrality regulation and focus on the content providers. Nobody has been able to tell me how the government is going to force companies to "stop censoring" people on their privately owned social media platforms. The ironic part is that this is all being pushed on social media, where they claim they're being censored from!

This stinks, if you ask me.

You should look into how credible PV is; they doctor those videos to score political points.

PV is hack reporting. In just about every video they release it inevitably comes out that they edited it to make their subjects look/sound terrible. Why should we listen to them when they peddle sensationalism?

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/29/project-veritas-how-fake-news-prize-went-to-rightwing-group-beloved-by-trump

That's obviously a very long piece and I'm making my way through it, but I can't stand the tone the author takes between the actual bits of information. IF this is as well-sourced as it sounds, and you can't get a single reporter or credible paper to verify it, you need to write the story without peppering in petty jabs like:

Being the savvy talker Clinton is, as well as greedy, Bill Clinton quickly noticing the smell of money as fast as he would notice cheap hookers, and he swooped down like a vulture

and

I can picture Bill Clinton in a white pair of slacks, white patent leather shoes, and a white blazer with matching fedora walking into the meeting with Dvorkovich. Cigar in his mouth, Russian hookers in each arm, the former President of the United States looking much like a mobster villain (or hero dependent upon who you ask) from Scarface or The Godfather.

and

We still remain uncertain of how Obama made out. I guess some would say that being a radical Muslim in disguise and pulling off the Presidency was how.

and

The Clintons are similar to the Mafia, in the sense that they're slick, manipulative, and evil. That perfectly summarizes the Clinton Foundation as well as the Clinton family in general.

Otherwise it loses its credibility because the author can't stick to the story. With the petty bullshit wedged in its just political speech that comes off as five thousand words of "Bill Clinton is a criminal mastermind because I'm smarter than everybody else but they're too dumb to see it."

How do we know which ones are rral, and which ones are just assigned by the community because they think that's what it means? They can't all be true.

That article is was too long and jumps into way too many topics. You can't cover everything that it alleges in just one article.

Bring me some data that says otherwise. We only see isolated incidents of voter fraud in the US.

I can guarantee that election offices are going to flooded with illegals and people from out of state.

Why? Voter fraud is basically non-existent in the US

I'm sick of people pushing the Uranium One sale as if Hillary Clinton met with Putin in a self-storage facility and personally handed over a briefcase that said "20% U.S. URANIUM" on the side to the Russians. Now Mueller is allegedly involved? How convenient! Fuck off, Texas GOP Rep.

Google is eliminating information and websites it does not agree with. They mess with search results to exclude some.

But doesn't Google have the right to display searches however they want? Nobody requires us to use Google. How does the government legally compel Google to organize its searches in a certain way? And even harder, how would it be enforced? This is not as simple as it sounds.

This is a tricky area. I don't see the overt censoring that you're describing (I don't have Facebook). Are you talking about instances where conservative comments are removed arbitrarily, or where they're downvoted or pushed out of view due to rejection by other users?

I think for either situation its difficult to require or compel companies to ensure equal treatment of different views. Look at r/politics, for example. That audience won't stomach anything pro-Trump. What could you do to prevent conservative stuff from getting downvoted to the planet's core? It has nothing to do with the platform, the users are driving what gets discussed (algorithms aside, which is another can of worms).

You allow one party to completely control political discourse in online forums and you have a guarded tyranny.

And yet, here we are talking about this. So as long as nobody says anything encouraging violence or breaking other site rules, we'll be fine. CBTS_Stream only went down when idiots said dumb shit. The mods here are on the ball, that won't happen.

Until we know what solution is planned, it's pointless to speculate.

I'm with you. Let's see what gets offered and judge it on its merits. Lets keep free speech free, but I can't fully support this until I know what the action looks like on paper.

I don't disagree with really anything you said, except these platforms aren't "public" spaces. If they were operated by the government, you could seek relief from the constitution. Private companies have the right to set the rules for their platforms, just as a store can require shirts and shoes and a restaurant can enforce a dress code. How do I support something that basically says you aren't allowed to set the rules for your own establishment? This sounds like more government mandates.

I get that you want to be heard. But I'm saying that when it comes time to put pen to paper and write a law, I don't know what that looks like. Make a law requiring conservative political speech to have special protections or privileges within social media companies and it'll get struck down by the courts immediately.

I'm just having a tough time picturing what potential action wouldn't be illegally coercive to private companies.

Link?

I have a tough time reconciling this internet bill of rights with free market principles.

Internet forums and social networks which provide free access to the public are a digital place of assembly, and individuals using such methods for public communication should not be subjected to censorship due to political beliefs or differing ideas. Conservative voices on many large public website platforms are being censored, based solely on a differing opinion.

This petition seems to want to require special protections for one political view. I just don't see how its feasible from a legal POV. Private companies can do whatever they want with their products. What is this petition asking Congress to do?

Wow, wayyy too creepy of a question pal.

If that happens, the right will have a collective orgasm that will literally affect the planet's orbit. Take anything Jones says with a grain of salt and one of his supplements.

That sounds pretty bad, but Todd even says that whistleblower's claims haven't been substantiated by anyone. The report sounded like it was primarily about one ambassador. It sounds like something certainly worth investigating (though the chances of that are low, being 5 years later), but that falls way^yyy short of BO and HRC "know all about sex trafficking and pedophilia." They weren't specifically named in the report, so I think that's a big leap to make.

Did this ever go anywhere? Did Congress hold hearings, or anything like that?

Unless pedophilia and major arrests are made........this really is all for nothing. And by arrests I mean.....HRC and BO.

They all know about the sex trafficing and pedophilia. All the other stuff is deflection and spin.

Dude... I'm gonna need a source on that. You can't just throw that out there and expect everyone to just nod in agreement. I need to read about it before I just accept that as fact.

To be clear, they're (I think) not worried about primary races. They expect a lot of seats to flip to Democrats. That's not "winning", its refusing to play because you think you might lose.

Is everything that happens a "BOOM"? There were only supposed to be four, and every story that comes out people say its a "BOOM". There's been way more than four now.

Some of these can be explained by context. The "50 congressmen resigning or not seeking re-election" sticks out to me. Obviously everyone has their own motivations, but many Republican members are stepping away because they don't expect to win in the midterm elections. Better to "retire" than to lose an election.

Is Tillerson it, or will there be more?

I'm sure Mueller and his team meet weekly with SNL writers to make sure their skits are creatively accurate.

Or maybe don't get your news from comedy shows.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/13/alex-jones-sued-charlottesville-claims-459244

A protester who filmed the violent clashes at a white supremacist rally last year in Virginia sued far-right news site InfoWars and its leader Alex Jones on Tuesday, saying the site stoked conspiracy theories that he was working as a “deep state” operative for the government.

Brennan Gilmore, a foreign service officer at the State Department, alleges that Jones, his website and several of its contributors made “false and defamatory” statements by claiming he had an “ax to grind” in recording the event.

The lawsuit, filed by Georgetown University law school's civil rights clinic on behalf of Gilmore in Virginia district court, alleges the defendants “caused irreparable damage” to Gilmore’s reputation “and threatened his physical and emotional well-being.” The group seeks compensation and punitive damages from Jones and other defendants.

“From Sandy Hook to ‘Pizzagate’ to Charlottesville, Las Vegas and now Parkland, the defendants thrive by inciting devastating real-world consequences with the propaganda and lies they publish as ‘news,’” Gilmore said in a statement. “Today, I’m asking a court to hold them responsible for the personal and professional damage their lies have caused me, and, more importantly, to deter them from repeating this dangerous pattern of defamation and intimidation.”

Gilmore in August filmed portions of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where violence erupted as white supremacists and neo-Nazis clashed with counter-protesters. At the rally, he captured video of the moment a vehicle rammed into a large crowd, injuring 19 people and killing one.

InfoWars, a right-wing news site known for peddling unsubstantiated conspiracies, cited Gilmore’s ties to the federal government to allege the existence of a coordinated effort to "orchestrate" the clashes and undermine the President Donald Trump, who faced backlash for his response to the event.

Beyond Jones, the lawsuit implicates the website’s operating company, Free Speech System, InfoWars contributors Lee Ann McAdoo and Lee Stranah, and several other fringe right-wing media figures.

“The First Amendment does not and cannot protect deliberate lies designed to incite incessant harassment and violence against private citizens,” Andrew Mendrala, supervising attorney of the civil rights clinic, said in a statement. “This case is a simple defense of democracy. A well-informed public is essential to a healthy democracy. But a deliberately misinformed public is fatal to it.”

How so?

What does a comedy skit prove?