Fight Club is an amazing fictional film about an unnamed narrator meeting a bold adrenaline junky that goes by Tyler Durden. Throughout the film, Tyler Durden decides to work with the narrator to form a club called Fight Club which would consist of men who agree to fight each other until one of them taps out. Throughout the film, it starts to shine a light on the narrator’s life and how it was flawed before Tyler Durden came along, specifically the rat race mentality of going to work, pushing papers around, sitting at a cubicle, only to repeat this process the next day and so on. It also has subtle messages within the film about corporatism, and whether people truly have an identity in society. For example, after the narrator got his new apartment, he considered himself an “Ikea guy” since most of the furnishings he bought were exclusively from Ikea. After his apartment exploded, Tyler Durden mentions his Ikea guy label by saying “You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years, you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.” This quote addresses how people can get carried away with buying items to the point of being attached to the item as if it is a part of their personality. Tyler’s goal with fight club is to go against the idea of having material possessions own you by recruiting people through a process in which, everyone in the group has no identity at all, being put on a level playing field. Regardless of race, ethnic background, age, etc. One assumption that can be made based on the group members of fight club and what they stand for could be that most members are those who are in a lower economic class, part of the rat race, living paycheck to paycheck, and in Tyler Durden’s eyes, slaves to the elites. By forming the group, it gives the unnamed members a glimmer of hope that they will make names for themselves with the actions they take rather than the material they own. One example of this is when Tyler threatens an individual responsible for launching an investigation to try and stop fight club’s project called project mayhem which had an end goal of terrorizing buildings owned by big corporations such as credit card companies. “The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Do not f**k with us.” -Tyler Durden (1:34:00-1:34:55). The Threat in this scene signifies how people of higher rank and class tend to underestimate the power of the “little guy” that is responsible for making food, driving the ambulance, connecting calls, and guarding people of interest when they are most vulnerable to an attack. My takeaways from this movie are that your identity should consist of what you have accomplished as an individual, not the items that you possess, and that people tend to underestimate the power they truly have in society against the corporate elites.
Author: mullen.241
“Why is Big Tech Policing Speech? Because The Government Isn’t” – New York Times
Why Is Big Tech Policing Speech? Because the Government Isn’t
In this article, the author explores the idea of big tech with what she calls “policing speech”. I believe Big Tech has gotten so big that they are able to censor at will with no legal consequences. The problem is with Section 230 of the communications and decency act, a provision that allows online platforms which offer a public forum to avoid legal liability for posts that were from the users of the platform itself. The keyword here is platform, and one debate that has been conducted in congress is whether Big Tech should be considered platforms or publishers. A platform allows its users to post to the site and in turn, the individual user would be liable for what they post if legal action were sought out. A publisher is an entity that publishes pieces of work and media online with the ability to decide as an established publisher what gets posted and what does not with their name on it. In turn, they would be legally liable for what they post.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the article’s analogy. “Social media sites effectively function as the public square where people debate the issues of the day. But the platforms are actually more like privately owned malls: They make and enforce rules to keep their spaces tolerable, and unlike the government, they’re not obligated to provide all the freedom of speech offered by the First Amendment. Like the bouncers at a bar, they are free to boot anyone or anything they consider disruptive.” (Bazelon) The issue with this analogy is that it implies since the company is private, they can do what they want. Without further context, this is mostly true. There is just one problem, Facebook and Twitter consider themselves platforms to have protections with Section 230, but they also conduct actions of a publisher that wants to maintain credibility by adding banners to posts they disagree with and feeling obligated to crack down on what they deem to be misinformation. As a private company they are allowed to do this in theory, but modifying posts of the public and being a gatekeeper of information is the role of a publisher, which does not have any protection from legal liability. So, if Facebook and Twitter claim to be platforms but act as publishers, why do they get to have legal protections?
A better analogy would be if the internet consisted of libraries of information. Publishers submit books to libraries with their names attached as well as their reputation and credibility being on the line. It is one thing for a librarian helping you check out a book to express an opinion about a book since it is an opinion of an individual, not the library. But, it is completely different if librarians went through the pages and took a sharpie to scratch out sentences they disagreed with or added sticky notes stating “Independent fact-checkers say this book could mislead people”. They have the right to deny publishers or individuals the ability to offer their books in the library, but it is not their place to add disclaimers or modify any page or letter of the contents of the book that is inside of that library since they are not the author or creator of any of the books that are offered inside of that library.
Now, let’s delve deeper into censorship and the banners. Censorship is defined as the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. The keyword here is suppression. It has been argued that adding a banner can simply be a disclaimer or warning to the viewer, not censorship. I disagree because the platform having the ability to choose what they believe to be correct and adding a disclaimer to a work that is not their own. Doing this is acting as if the platform would be at risk of having their credibility be damaged is like a publisher that actually has their name on it and reputation on the line wanting to add a disclaimer to ensure it is clear that the piece with their name on it does not represent the opinions or beliefs of the entire publisher. It is not the platform’s job to warn users unless they consider themselves a publisher of the information being consumed, which they are not. By adding the banner with the intention of warning the viewer that the claims may not be accurate, it acts as a deterrent to suppress the overall viewership of the work before potential new viewers hit the play button. Also, most new viewers seeing this banner will automatically be more skeptical of the credibility of the author of the video or article before even watching the video which also makes the overall interactions with the upload to be lower which also affects how widespread the video gets recommended with the algorithm. With fewer views, likes and comments, it makes the video algorithmically reach fewer user feeds. Instead of naturally allowing the information to flow by allowing the users to do their own outside research and determine what is disinformation and what is credible by welcoming users to watch them and decide if it is worth sharing after watching it, there is an inherent obligation to be information police by doing their best to suppress who watches it if someone with the wrong view is interviewed or an unpopular opinion was shed in a positive light.
One example of suppression of speech comes from a John Stossel video called “The New Censors”. In this video, Stossel explains how Facebook added a banner that says “Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” below his video about climate change. This warning banner was so effective that some audience members even claimed that “Your story was so unfair, even Facebook tagged it”. 35 seconds into the video he shows a disclaimer that notifies him that the video is being seen by fewer people because of the Missing Context rating from the independent fact-checker. The reason? First, the independent fact-checking site quoted statements that were not even said in the video. Out of curiosity, Stossel got an interview with two of the reviewers of the fact-checker company Climate Feedback. Both reviewers even admitted that they did not even watch the video in question. Stefan Doerr speculated with Stossel that Facebook could have flagged the video because Stossel interviewed Michael Shellenberger who is controversial for his criticism on environmental alarmism. After Zeke Hausfather watched the video, Stossel asked whether the banner was a fair label for the video. Zeke responded “I don’t necessarily think so, while there’s plenty of debates around how much to emphasize forest management and climate change, your piece clearly discussed that both were at fault here”. Even with that being his answer during the interview, Stossel was later given an email to appeal the banner and was denied in the end and told by the reviewers he previously interviewed in a follow-up email that they now stand by Climate Feedback’s decision.
This example reminds me of the video about the danger of a single story. By being under the illusion of a single story and allowing that stereotype to define reality, it makes it difficult to fully understand the truth outside of the stereotype if the stereotype is considered the reality. Similar can be said about information if only one side of the story is presented fairly, how is it possible to have a productive conversation if one side is given an unequal advantage to be heard by individuals? Is it right to flag a video solely because an individual discussed their unpopular opinion, regardless of the context, opinion, or intention of the interview inside of the work in question?
This is what is unfair with big tech, they have been exploiting a loophole with Section 230 while the government has failed to enforce the rules in which companies have to follow to continue being considered platforms. Until the government decides to properly enforce the rules and ensure the companies protected actually act as a platform to maintain their legal protections, this exploit will allow Big Tech to have too much-unchecked power with no legal consequences. In the end, both the users of media seeking information and independent journalists willing to hear both sides of an argument, regardless of the popularity of the opinion are the victims of big tech’s power over the information that goes on the platform and how much it can spread to new viewers.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/magazine/free-speech-tech.html
John Stossel Video: https://youtu.be/punjBhQG__s
Adopted Families – “The Leavers” by Lisa Ko
In “The Leavers” by Lisa Ko, the story is about a mother, Polly, and her son Deming. Early in the book, when Deming was 11, he was abandoned by his mother and Deming was put into foster care short after. He was adopted by a family that is considered to be relatively well off financially and they live in a safer part of town too. In a way, being adopted gave him a better living situation and an opportunity to have the support of a loving family that was willing to take him in as one of their own and try their best to support him with an education and career as he grows up under their care. Since this story involved adoption, I wanted to look into the statistics behind adoptions and how the overall experience of adoption has worked with other families who have used the foster care system.
The research I found is in a research brief from the US Department of Health and Human Services, more specifically, the Office of The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (or ASPE). This research brief covers a 2007 study from the National Survey of Adoptive Parents (NSAP) and National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) about adoption. NSAP found that “86% of parents had a motivating factor of wanting to provide a permanent home for a child” (NSAP), and that 75% of the families surveyed claimed that their parent-child relationship was “very warm and close” (NSAP). This research tells me that most families have been happy to help provide a child a permanent home and that they were able to develop a close and loving relationship with the child after adoption. I hope for the sake of the children, and the families seeking to help a child who needs a home that this percentage has gone up higher since the 2007 study and continues to trend upwards. On the bright side, this study found that overall, most children adopted from foster care were doing well with parents who are happy with the adoption. But there is still room for improvement, with 25% of parents who adopted a child not saying their relationship as “very warm and close” and a small percentage that would probably or definitely not adopt the child knowing what they know now (NSAP). Overall, the foster care system has helped many kids, like Deming in the book, and with the proper awareness and action, I believe we all can help to improve this statistic so that the foster care system helps more children be adopted into homes with loving families and grow to have a warm and close relationship with them in the process.
Works Cited