I'll take a second opinion from somebody who isn't ESL, thanks. Foxi4 didn't have the same sort of hangups or need the same sort of clarification of my statements. You aren't ever here to discuss politics or news, only remedial semantics. At this point it would be nice to see you take a definitive stance on ANYTHING, rather than perpetually playing the "mUh BoTh sIDes" card despite the fact that your political allegiances are practically tattoo'd on your forearm.
For the record, I’m also an ESL, I just happened to teach English, so my brain farts are usually caused by predictive text rather than a different logic system (and they are different, which causes some comprehension issues, but this isn’t a thread about translation studies). Let’s not attack each other with pointless ad hominems, that’s not productive.
@tabzer Does it *really* matter if
@Xzi originally misspoke or if you misunderstood his intentions? An argument about phrasing never has any actual merit, he clarified his position.
@Xzi You accuse him of fence sitting while moving the goal post. Your position has shifted throughout the thread, if ever so slightly, but you’ve made no mention of that besides saying that you “understand the trepidation” when it comes to government involvement in how private companies run their social media sites or communities. You can cop to that, there’s no harm in reconsidering things, that’s kind of the point of having a discussion.
It would be more productive if we talked about whether “censorship-by-proxy” is something we should be concerned about. I think I stated my opinion quite clearly, I believe it has a chilling effect of sorts. To use an analogy, it’s like having a dinner with a nice lady versus having dinner with her and her family. Most people would keep the rizz in check because mom and dad are watching, even if they’re not actually *saying* anything that would indicate imminent hostility. It’s funny how quickly people can revise the way they speak or behave depending on the circumstances, wink wink.