Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms • Hacker News Board

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#231

Post by zarkov99 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

tuna-piano wrote: post #133

There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet. After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome (and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries). So what should the social media companies do? Censor…

Its a big problem. On the one hand social media companies are utterly unsuitable for the role of arbitrers of truth. All they do is enforce the fashionable, safe truths, which might end up not being safe or true. On the other hand there is definitely disinformation out there, carefully crafted to achieve specific goals. We need a sort of peer review for social media, some sort of trust network that you can use to assess the reliability of information. The fact check is one such mechanism, though who checks the checkers is still a issue..

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#232

Post by jcroll » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

gjulianm wrote: post #174

itchyjunk wrote: post #151

Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment. Is there no way to consider social media a…

> Is there no way to consider social media as unreliable overall and not bother fact checking anything there? The issue is that this is not just a random social media post, it's coming from the President of the US, and most people expect that someone in that position will not post clearly false messages, specially when those messages affect something as fundamental as the election process.

Democratic elections are supposed to be the failsafe for that no?

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#233

Post by C1sc0cat » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

OliverJones wrote: post #104

A "conservative" government threatens to shut down private businesses. Wait, what? Maybe the billionaire hotel magnate from New York should arrange a leveraged buyout of the business he doesn't like, and shut it down when he owns it.

Its not real "conservative" views that get censored is it its entryist far right views.

Its like in the UK when Corbyn's crank supporters claim ultra far left positions are main steam labour views when they are not.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#234

Post by neuland » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #124

Putting aside concerns about overreach government powers, would ending social media as we know it really be a bad thing?

Although it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, social media has had a net negative effect on a LOT of people. There's people that have had a big positive effect to. So, it's not obvious where it ends up on net if that even matters.

But, yeah. There's a lot of people that would be better off not on social media. But it's so addictive that they can't help themselves.

I, for one, have stopped using social media (unless you consider HN social). And I've had a lot less friends because of it. But it's been a huge improvement in my mood and outlook on life.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#235

Post by Ididntdothis » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

I feel like we are slowly reaching the state the movie “Idiocracy” describes. I feel very torn about this. On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. On the other hand I find it hard to believe that the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up. It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters in 2016 and the commission they started disbanding quietly after finding nothing. And now publicly spreading rumors about killing somebody.

It’s insane how little respect the US has for the integrity of its political system. As long as it may hurt the “other” side everything is ok without regard to the damage they are constantly doing the health of the system.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#236

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

collegecamp293 wrote: post #23

Twitter has opened a whole can of worms. There are several official state agencies with their propaganda PR arms on Twitter. Will they fact check them too and risk being banned in those countries?

It's a moral question that Twitter has to answer for themselves; are they willing to risk getting banned in those countries? Are they willing to risk having the government of the country they operate from shut them down?

I mean I want to say they should let that happen, but the US is toothless in that the population wouldn't revolt if it happened. Twitter would end but nothing would change.

But it's not going to go there, Twitter will sit with the government, they'll make a deal, some palms will be greased and they will bow to their government overlords.

Companies are fucky like that; on the one hand they influence public discourse and voting behaviour, on the other they're morally flexible and will grovel for their government masters if they get to earn money there (see also Google and China, Hollywood films and China, etc).

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#237

Post by foobar_ » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

This should have happened a long time ago. Flag people / tweets but don't taken them down. Ignore flagged tweets. Create public black lists of spammers/trolls.

People are still waiting for twitter to clear up all the bots. From what I am aware the challenge is not bots but people masquerading 1000s of accounts manually, so it's actually a misnomer to call them bots.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#238

Post by nojito » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

alharith wrote: post #157

nojito wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

twitter is a private organization. Regulating the speech of private organizations is a dangerous slope to be on.

Private organization that enjoys the legal protections of a platform. Reclassify them as a publisher. Can't have it both ways.

Yup I agree. Internet companies have enjoyed the cost benefits from being classified as both a platform and a publisher.

It was clever of them to convince the internet community that it's about "free speech" when it's actually always about the costs.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#239

Post by tzs » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #6

Good, I hope this forces them to decide whether to be neutral platforms or publishers. They've been having their cake and eating it too for far too long.

If that's a reference to the protections under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it doesn't work that way. The whole point of section 230 was to say that being non-neutral does not subject a platform to liability for content supplied to that platform by users.

I'm not sure why, but a lot of people seem to think it is the opposite: you have to be neutral to be protected. There was a court case that ruled that way before section 230. Congress wrote 230 specifically to reverse that.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#240

Post by nautilus12 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #126

From a free speech/free press standpoint, private company Twitter absolutely has the right to editorialize Trump's tweets, while Trump trying to silence Twitter would be the government infringing on the right to free speech/press.

But if that were true then they would be personally liable in a court of law for tweets that break the law. Seems like they want to be treated as both an "editor" with the right to change user content and "just a distribution platform". They can't have it both ways.