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Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

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Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#201

Post by metaphorm »

JackFr wrote: post #121
zeteo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tweeter and all others you mentioned are private corporations. Their goal is to turn profit to their shareholders - NOTHING MORE. Not sure what that's supposed to mean. Would it be OK for a food company to use expired ingredients if it increased their profit, or for FedEx trucks to run over people if it helped their bottom line? Private corporations have various degrees of responsibility to the general public, depe…

I think your analogies are strained. A better analogy might be to a broadcaster, who because of a monopoly on a scarce public resources, does have certain responsibilities. But Twitter isn't a broadcaster (nor are they a public utility), and their value is in their network, which they literally have spent billions of dollars creating. It's theirs to do with as they see fit.

> It's theirs to do with as they see fit.

I don't think you should take for granted that this is true. Even privately owned things still must abide by the law of countries they operate in, and even that is just the most crude level of regulation and responsibility a public service has.

Yes, public service is still public even if privately owned. Anything operating open to the general public in this way has certain responsibilities (above and beyond the law) that go along with that. We live in a civic society and we depend on participants in that society living up to their responsibilities as citizens (including corporate citizens).

A lot of the problems we have in our society now result from the abdication of those responsibilities by the people (and corporations) that act in public without taking responsibility for those actions.

edit, for clarification:

my point is that private ownership does not remove a thing from social responsibilities. I understand that some people disagree with this, but it astonishes me that they do. The basic premise of civilization is finding ways to live together in ways that are a net-benefit.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#203

Post by reaperducer »

arca_vorago wrote: post #111
AlexandrB wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wonderful, so Twitter is now a tool for corporate propaganda, Google is providing Censorship-as-a-Service API, Facebook is removing links classified as "Fake News(tm)", Reddit is deleting whatever mods don't agree with etc. This was inevitable. All the above-mentioned services are funded - in large part - by ads. When it came to choosing between serving the users vs. the advertisers the latter would always win in t…

It makes me wonder if perhaps the internet is ready for an ad-free, paid news and communication as a service site? I mean, I personally already do (in the form of various services, such as usenet), but I'm talking about larger portions of the internet. I think maybe the exclusivity via paywall of the right service might actually draw users in.

Been there. Done that. Compuserve, GEnie, Delphi, etc...

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#204

Post by nommm-nommm »

metaphorm wrote: post #201
JackFr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analogies are strained. A better analogy might be to a broadcaster, who because of a monopoly on a scarce public resources, does have certain responsibilities. But Twitter isn't a broadcaster (nor are they a public utility), and their value is in their network, which they literally have spent billions of dollars creating. It's theirs to do with as they see fit.

> It's theirs to do with as they see fit. I don't think you should take for granted that this is true. Even privately owned things still must abide by the law of countries they operate in, and even that is just the most crude level of regulation and responsibility a public service has. Yes, public service is still public even if privately owned. Anything operating open to the general public in this way has certain re…

>A lot of the problems we have in our society now result from the abdication of those responsibilities by the people (and corporations) that act in public without taking responsibility for those actions.

Such as?

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#205

Post by root_axis »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #194
root_axis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like we are going full steam into a dystopian society Gonna have to roll my eyes pretty hard at this. These are privately owned servers, they can delete whatever content they want off of them, if you don't like it, you're totally free to host your own server and content.

> if you don't like it, you're totally free to host your own server and content. You're obviously still seeing the world through this fanciful lens of Mom And Pop corporate libertarianism. But there's more to that story. The more power you pour into Mom and Pop, the less they resemble their usual run-of-the-mill town grocer, and the more they become The Town itself in their own right. Corporations are graduating from…

First of all, I'm not a libertarian, I'm a pretty solid liberal and think the government should regulate corporations when they break the letter or even the spirit of the law or when they harm the market or consumers for profit or otherwise. My objection is to the idea that twitter meets the criteria of harming consumers, because people use the services provided by twitter, for free, of their own volition. Twitter does not provide a unique service that is especially useful or necessary, there are hundreds of other discussion boards and messaging apps on the net, and if someone doesn't like how twitter operates, nothing is stopping anyone from moving to another platform.

Compare this with something like the ISPs, where consumers have to choose between one and often no alternative options in order to access internet services which are critical for participation in the economy. Unlike any individual ISP, If twitter disappeared overnight, it would have a minimal impact on the economy, society, or even the internet community in general, as most people would immediately shift over to one of the many alternatives like facebook, snapchat, or the explosion of competitors that would hit the scene or suddenly gain traction within days.

Twitter is not powerful, it is a popular messaging app where celebrities post publicly. The government isn't necessary here because consumers are not harmed by twitter sucking.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#206

Post by Cozumel »

paulcole wrote: post #144
jerf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This was inevitable. All the above-mentioned services are funded - in large part - by ads." Unsustainable situations always seem to go on for longer than you expect, but I wonder if we're finally getting to be just a year or three out from Adpocalypse, when the ad-supported internet companies finally end up having to face head on that you can not serve two masters. I wonder if there's going to be a market developing…

>I wonder if there's going to be a market developing for services that look like current services, but actually cost money somehow. Probably a billion-dollar-level opportunity for figuring out how to charge for a Facebook or Google or Twitter a couple of bucks a month. You're really overestimating people's willingness to pay for a service that's already free and convenient. There's really no good comp for tens of mil…

There are tons of alternative social networks to Facebook, I run several of them. People are more than happy to pay a few $$ a month to not be tracked, censored or advertised at.

Even completely free you can be profitable just selling 'credits' to send e-gifts etc. Facebook is functionally crippled, they still don't even have a dislike button.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#207

Post by pasquinelli »

artursapek wrote: post #149

> Do you think rich people on their own jets get TSA patdowns the same way? No. What we are creating is a state of freedom for the rich, and compliant abuse for the majority of the citizens. Rich people aren't going to hijack their own jet and kill themselves in the name of Allah.

But they could. Is that a risk we should take? How many lives are you willing to jeopardize based on your hunch that a passenger on a private jet won't use it as a weapon. Remember, a jet is basically a bomb with wings, etc.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#208

Post by mod »

dopamean wrote: post #200
bshimmin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm not actually bad at spelling, it was a reference to http://www.snopes.com/trump-sends-unpresidented-tweet/ - but I should probably know by now that cheap one-liners don't go down well on HackerNews...)

People here can be rather humorless.

I think we all understand the humor, but the comments that are appreciated here are insightful comments that enhance the conversation and add to the article.

Jokes are not appreciated, but not because they are not understood.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#209

Post by CaptSpify »

ManlyBread wrote: post #172
CaptSpify wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, private companies can do what they want with their own platform, blah blah blah. But there's no law against being outraged at a private company. Just because something is legal doesn't mean I forfeit all rights to be mad about it.

My previous comment was supposed to be sarcastic, guess I failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law strikes again

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#210

Post by chc »

root_axis wrote: post #205
Lambdanaut wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't like it, you're totally free to host your own server and content. You're obviously still seeing the world through this fanciful lens of Mom And Pop corporate libertarianism. But there's more to that story. The more power you pour into Mom and Pop, the less they resemble their usual run-of-the-mill town grocer, and the more they become The Town itself in their own right. Corporations are graduating from…

First of all, I'm not a libertarian, I'm a pretty solid liberal and think the government should regulate corporations when they break the letter or even the spirit of the law or when they harm the market or consumers for profit or otherwise. My objection is to the idea that twitter meets the criteria of harming consumers, because people use the services provided by twitter, for free, of their own volition. Twitter do…

> if someone doesn't like how twitter operates, nothing is stopping anyone from moving to another platform.

This statement is weirdly detached from reality. The value of a social network is the ability to connect to people. Unless you're, like, Oprah, you cannot unilaterally decree that everyone you follow and everyone who follows you is going to move to another social network. So yes, there is a huge thing stopping most Twitter users from moving to another platform.

This is kind of like saying, "There's nothing stopping you from eating sand." It's technically true, but eating sand will not yield the same results as eating food.

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