271–280 of 367 posts
I'm not sure what the solution is, even recent articles on proposed social media legislation[1] led to comments that Trump is trying to "censor the internet".
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Vacuum has nothing to do with it. Twitter is a platform, you are not compelled to use it. Don’t like it that is fine but popularity doesn’t imply it requires to operate any way other than the way it decides as a company. Why do we expect companies to act like a government we have control over?
Verizon is a public company would you allow them to block you from making a call because of a text you’ve sent 9 years ago?
If we want to reclassify social media as common carrier we need regulation to do so but that is not how the internet or social media companies work today. Sadly the internet in of itself doesn't even fall under common carrier.
Yes, yes, "everything on the internet is permanent". But every one of my social media streams could benefit from a "Automatically delete after one month" setting.
We grow, we learn. Why not let our social media represent who we are, not who we were?
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Vacuum has nothing to do with it. Twitter is a platform, you are not compelled to use it. Don’t like it that is fine but popularity doesn’t imply it requires to operate any way other than the way it decides as a company. Why do we expect companies to act like a government we have control over?
If POTUS communicates via Twitter primarily, there’s no option to ‘not use it’. Twitter crossed the line between just a company and a utility a while ago, together with Google and Facebook.
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No idea why you're getting down voted. This is a cogent, valid point.
I haven't voted on it either way, but while the point is reasonable, I'm not sure it's expressed in a way that furthers the discussion.
If "reasonable points" aren't furthering discussion, what are we even doing here?
Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai). If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need…
Twitter is not a democracy. They are a public for profit company first and foremost. They can censor, modify, change anything they want at any point in time. Expect that. Cash is king.
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You know, when I read that paragraph I was actually on board with the author. We’ve probably all said stupid things on the internet at one point. Then I read the actual tweet and lost all sympathy. It’s just so horrible, and, I think the author actually shows a lack of growth by dismissing it as this 9 year old “immature” mistake.
Is calling some one stupid or telling them to fuck themselves all that horrible to you? There wasn't even a threat of violence or attacking based upon "protected characteristics."
The tweet is hateful.
If we replaced Sarah Palin with some left-wing politician, I'm not sure this article would get any traction. People would be saying "their platform, their rules", "freedom of speech only applies to the government" and calling out author for his sexist slurs and throwing around the "hate speech" label. I'm not sure what the solution is, even recent articles on proposed social media legislation[1] led to comments that…
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>It is not a company operating in a vacuum but a public company in a democracy The US is not a democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. The Constitution limits the Governmental Powers to make laws restricting speech, the Constitution does not give individuals the right to use corporate places of business or platforms to disseminate their speech.
> The US is not a democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. This is facile: it is both, and there is no contradiction. > the Constitution does not give individuals the right to use corporate places Certainly it does: the right of free association. But that's not what you meant; you meant that the Constitution does not compel the corporate place to allow individual speech. Which is true but incomplete, since we have…
It is basic 7th grade civics, Section 4 of the Constitution:
>The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government
Founding Father John Adams:
>"No determinations are carried, it is true, in a simple representative democracy, but by consent of the majority or their representatives."
The word "democracy" appearing in the Constitution: 0
Extra fun fact, the US is not the first Constitutional Republic, it is the 2nd behind San Marino.
> there is no contradiction
If you used democratic republic there is not, where the people vote and elect the representative leaders, then there is no contradiction. But democracy comes from Ancient Greece where all citizens with a right to vote directly decided the issues with votes, issues were not decided by elected representative. Its a significantly different form of government not just a typical HN pedantic point.
>the right of free association
The right to associate has nothing to do with accessing corporate property to disseminate your speech.