Ummm, Mr. money Mustache?

[iris lilies]

What is the bullshit happening over there?

New pay-to-play system? Must agree not to post

…”false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this forum…”

yeah, like I will trust those bozos to determine what is “inaccurate.” And if we cannot have a little fun with obscene and profane, well, Count me out.

[LDAHL]

I guess a private organization can impose any sort of censorship the market will bear.

My problem is when government sets itself up as the arbiter of truth. I see California recently tried prosecuting a parodist under its new “truth in elections” law. A federal judge spoiled the fun for them, though.

[rosarugosa]

Wow, I always thought obscenities were encouraged there.

[iris lilies]

Wow, I always thought obscenities were encouraged there.
I know, right?

i wonder if the tight-assed (sorry, but they are!) little moderator fellows had a hand in writing the the creepy new agreement. They do NOT do a ton of moderating but when they do, it is often badly done. It is the usual business of kicking conservative voices off the platform for trumped up reasons.

[iris lilies]

I guess a private organization can impose any sort of censorship the market will bear.

My problem is when government sets itself up as the arbiter of truth. I see California recently tried prosecuting a parodist under its new “truth in elections” law. A federal judge spoiled the fun for them, though.

oh sure, it is the government we really have to worry about but still, this MMM caper annoys me.

[frugal-one]

I guess a private organization can impose any sort of censorship the market will bear.

My problem is when government sets itself up as the arbiter of truth. I see California recently tried prosecuting a parodist under its new “truth in elections” law. A federal judge spoiled the fun for them, though.

There should be truth. It is so bogus the disinformation being spread! That IMO is not free speech but bulls..t! Look at the troubles caused to people in NC where trump gave false FEMA information!

[iris lilies]

There should be truth. It is so bogus the disinformation being spread! That IMO is not free speech but bulls..t! Look at the troubles caused to people in NC where trump gave false FEMA information!

Fortunately my free speech is constitutionally protected from IYO.

[LDAHL]

Fortunately my free speech is constitutionally protected from IYO.

I hear 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter saying the First Amendment has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

[iris lilies]

I hear 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter saying the First Amendment has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.
No, what? Is this a joke?

[LDAHL]

No, what? Is this a joke?

That’s up to the courts to decide.

[frugal-one]

Fortunately my free speech is constitutionally protected from IYO.

?

[frugal-one]

I hear 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter saying the First Amendment has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory….

[Rogar]

I hear 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter saying the First Amendment has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

This is the closest I can come to an original source in short order. Best I can figure, it's a formal objection to probable Russian interference in an election campaign and revolve around Hunters laptop or some other concocted theory. So I don't get the point. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 For lack of another evidence in the discussion. The original letter seemed like it was a national security issue around election interference and was a harmless statement of opinion. Heavens knows there enough false conspiracy theories around without help from the Ruskies.

I also visited MMM and read their registration agreement. In theory they are probably trying to keep thing civil and I would guess any enforcement of things would be up to the moderator's interpretation. I remember back in the old days Jonathan would try to keep discussion in track with simple living here, which has pretty much gone out the door, but did have some relevance. I'd not seen their website and forum for among time, but I still enjoyed the articles and discussion. I could not see any big issue worth making a point over.

If I were a younger person just stating to figure out investments, some version of FI, and life direction, MMM would be an excellent reference. I especially like their attitude and discussions of the environment as related to simple living. It's a big unfortunate that YMOYL approach and people like the Nearings are mostly past history.

Personal experience from my recent brief social encounters is that when you get onto the issues of politics people are getting pretty testy over things and can get quickly out of hand in terms of civil rhetoric.

[iris lilies]

Since one of the moderators didn’t know what was going on with the MMM forum I have to assume it is some sort of glitch or perhaps a software upgrade that caused all of this consternation. For a while the entry asked for money, now it does not.

I now assume the overly restrictive wording of the “agreement” is a boilerplate piece, is not something crafted specifically for MMM. The old agreement was summed up by a moderator once as “don’t be a dick” which I like, so this new one has too many tentacles to be summed so succinctly.

[Rogar]

I can imagine if a post used the word, sh**storm on MMM, like I've seen here, the moderator might consider it a violation of the user agreement. I'm ok with that.

An example of mostly unmoderated free speech can be found on the comments from the Breitbart articles. I do suspect Russian bots, there. It's ugly and often hateful and untrue, but there is a free speech outlet people of such thoughts. My few comments following NYT articles go through a moderator before they even get posted to keep out such trash.

I see today where the FTC has banned fake online reviews. A violation of free speech?