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

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

#321

Post by dspillett » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

thatwasunusual wrote: post #258

Ididntdothis wrote: post #235

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 st…

> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. Is it really _censorship_ to fact check tweets? I mean, Twitter hasn't _removed_ (i.e. censored) any tweets from Trump, just added an annotation.

> Is it really _censorship_ to fact check tweets?

Not at all. Free speech in both cases. He is free to say what he thinks, we (us as individuals, Twitter as a company, everyone) are free to say we think he is talking complete and utter balderdash if that is what we think.

A president trying to silence Twitter's statement about what he has said by intimidating them is an attempt at censorship though.

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

#322

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #235

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 st…

I couldn't disagree more-- with the "slowly" part, that is. As some people might say, "there are no brakes on the Trump train". Enjoy the show!

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

#323

Post by hunter2_ » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

neuland wrote: post #234

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…

> unless you consider HN social

Why wouldn't we? Pseudonyms? Reddit is considered social, I think, and that tends to be even more difficult to map to IRL identity.

Edit: just barely not inb4!

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

#324

Post by devurand » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

gtCameron wrote: post #152

mabbo wrote: post #140

> Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit or host you while you share it. > The 1st Amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences. > If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show cancelled, or get banned from an internet community, your free speech rights aren't being vi…

https://stratechery.com/2019/tech-and-liberty/

I think the position of this article requires a poor assumption with regards to the "marketplace of ideas." It assumes a majority of rational, fact-checking, good-faith actors which is just not the case in the real world. And without that particular check in place, falsehoods gain an undeserved advantage in the "marketplace of ideas."

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

#325

Post by nautilus12 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #298

Ididntdothis wrote: post #235

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 st…

> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. True, but the think is Twitter did not censor his post . They added a "fact-check" hint that just pointed out that he was speaking made up thinks containing a link to an informative article. This is very different to censorship. People can still freely decided to believe him, or read the facts and don't or read the facts…

For people that treat a "Fact Check" as an automatic "filter out this information" (I think there is a huge subset of the population that does, people don't thoughtfully take into account Fact Checks, they just treat them as a rebuke), it has the net effect of censorship. The move by twitter is kind of dumb in that sense because the population has already polarized into groups that think anything trump says is false, and those who do not. They are just basically putting an official seal on which side of that argument they land.

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

#326

Post by zentiggr » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

101404 wrote: post #303

Ididntdothis wrote: post #235

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 st…

I think that's just symptoms of the real problem: the extremely profit oriented media industry. Senselessly creating and reporting on "conflicts" and "scandals" makes them the most money. Trump is just playing their game.

Trump plays no game but his own. There is no world to him except what he perceives, even more so than 99.9% of people his own self-supporting delusions drive his entire existence. No one can puncture that bubble, at least not that I've seen.

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

#327

Post by WhyNotHugo » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

What amazes me about the US, is that there's no accountability for any actions.

If I start lying to me team at work, I'll have a very uncomfortable meeting with my boss.

If our sales people start lying to clients, the company may get dragged into courts.

If head of state lies when publicly addressing the country in many other countries, they'll be held accountable before congress.

But US seems to be about absolute freedom, and not about following ANY rules, no matter how basic. I never get why people accept such a system.

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

#328

Post by bilbo0s » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:09 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.

Just to distance myself from the current "conservative" establishment, I would argue that their views are not conservative so much as they are a relatively newer form of fascism. Typically with fascism there is nationalism that prioritizes the citizens of the nation above all else, but with this new "conservatism" in the US, the nationalism is a bit more race-based. But other than that it's much more close to fascism than what we in the US typically considered "conservatism".

Maybe we need a new word for it altogether?

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

#329

Post by iso1631 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #216

Forget about the free speech albatross. To me, what Twitter is doing looks like a clear case of election interference. They are basically giving free ads to the opposition of Trump. He tweets something, they annotate it with a link to media sources that are heavily biased toward the democrats. Will they be giving the same treatment to @joebiden? He has been known to lie and plagiarize throughout his political career.…

They give free ads to Trump by providing him a platform in the first place! He doesn't have to use that platform.

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

#330

Post by jobigoud » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

asdkhadsj wrote: post #220

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…

As a straw man for discussion; I'm not too familiar with what Twitter is doing, but in an ideal world I think the solution would look something like what Twitter sounds like. Notably, posts containing objectively false information would be flagged, but not necessarily censored. With that straw man though, it's fairly easy to poke holes. How do we ever even implement that? Even if we ignore the sheer volume of posts,…

One avenue that has been taken by Youtube for example with the Coronavirus news is to not try to detect lies/truths but just detect the controversial topic and add a banner under the video with a link to official sources. It's much simpler to implement. A disadvantage is that it becomes so ubiquitous that people probably don't care about the link.