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> Twitter co-founder: I'm sorry we didn't use our platform to silence an opposing view point.
Shame. Silencing someone else because you disagree makes you many, many times worse than them. Sunlight and exposure is the best disinfectant, not this play.
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're twisting his words, he doesn't say anything about censorship. He said that he hoped the technologic capabilities of Twitter would improve the world for the better and in his opinion they haven't. He doesn't say anything that thus people who didn't agree with him should be silenced...
If that is all he's saying I think it's pretty short-sighted. Surely Twitter has accomplished a lot of good.
There is no absolute standard for 'a lot of good'.
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
Totally agree with you. Twitter should be publishing whatever the user wants to convey (unless its violating any local laws). They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion.
I think it's an interesting question. If you build a tool that ends up being used as a platform to spread misinformation and lies, is that ok? Is it ok to censor that kind of thing?
Set aside laws and general feelings about censorship. If certain kinds of speech are genuinely harmful to society, and if you can actually objectively define that (I know, very hard if not impossible to do in many/most situations), should you still allow that speech?
It's certainly a judgment call, and a lot of people might get that call wrong sometimes or even often. But is it pointless or harmful to try?
Think about moderated message boards. No one would take issue with a moderated message board where the moderators act to keep things on-topic and civil. (Hell, HN tries to be that, and IMO does a pretty good job most of the time.) Twitter has chosen, with the exception of things like hate speech and threatening behavior (etc.) to be hands-off. Was that a good choice? I'm not sure. I don't think it's unreasonable to think they could do just as well -- if not better -- if there was moderation of some kind built in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're twisting his words, he doesn't say anything about censorship. He said that he hoped the technologic capabilities of Twitter would improve the world for the better and in his opinion they haven't. He doesn't say anything that thus people who didn't agree with him should be silenced...
If that is all he's saying I think it's pretty short-sighted. Surely Twitter has accomplished a lot of good.
I can relate to this. I remember thinking, back in the 90s, "once people can directly talk to people from other cultures, and see each other's common humanity, how will there ever be any more war?"
Turns out that was an extremely naive belief. Just the opposite is true in many cases: direct communication can aggravate differences. People's self-righteousness tends to escalate when they are directly exposed to their ideological foes.
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
Totally agree with you. Twitter should be publishing whatever the user wants to convey (unless its violating any local laws). They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion.
That's what they do.
> They shouldnt be deciding whats right or wrong based on their personal opinion.
Well, they could, but they don't and as such they are bigger free speech advocates than you are because you want to restrict what they can do on their website, which is a privately run entity and as such not subject to 'free speech' laws.
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
It's not unreasonable to combat that with moderation, which I don't consider to be "censorship" if done correctly.
I agree with claims that Postman predicted Trump's rise back in 1985:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-oursel...
The book is written about television, but the main ideas are still applicable to online newsfeeds and social media.
The book unpacks the phrase: "the ideas that are convenient to express become the content of a culture". If the most convenient form of communication is long-form writing in newspapers or pamphlets, people will get their information from (long-form writing in) newspapers or pamphlets. If it's television, they will get information from (visual, snappy, "entertaining") video. If it's Twitter, people will end up talking about ideas that can be conveniently expressed in 140 characters or less.
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
I still believe that freedom of speech is important because it is freedom for ideas, not "freedom for morons" as some are trying to argue.
>“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I despise this quote so much, and I'm far from a Trump supporter. If you need to censor speech in order for your side to win, maybe you have bigger issues than Trump's twitter account.
That's not what the quote is saying. First of all, the architecture of a service has important influence on the kind of speech that it will foster: for example, the 140 character limit insures that it's almost impossible to get a nuanced argument across. Second, the broadcasting model of twitter often leads to horrible dogpiles. I am a huge free speech advocate, and I don't like censorship but several key decisions a…