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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

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

#401

Post by UncleMeat »

nautilus12 wrote: post #325
dathinab wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

This is ridiculous. The whole free speech argument is that people can decide for themselves when they have access to more information. Marketplace of ideas and all.

Now adding information is somehow bad? There is no consistency in this argument.

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

#402

Post by JeremyNT »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #263
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…

Reaching Idiocracy is a pretty big understatement. To be honest, it feels that the president should have a babysitter, if you look at his constant tweet tirades.

It only feels different now because this President's image is based on such bluster. He's speaking to his people in the way that they like.

A lot of past US Presidents were likely no more competent, but their images demanded that they appear such. Reagan was probably suffering from dementia. JFK was high most of the time. It's just that the PR strategy for those guys was different because their public personae were groomed for different expectations.

Well that, and neither had Twitter.

Idiocracy is an easy pull and rings true because of outward appearances, but the reality is (and probably always has been) closer to Vonnegut's Player Piano or Kubrik's Doctor Strangelove.

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

#403

Post by krapp »

bilbo0s wrote: post #328
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…

>Maybe we need a new word for it altogether?

It's called the "alt-right[0]."

And at the fringe of the fringe, right-wing accelerationism[1].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

[1]https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accele...

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

#404

Post by nmfisher »

nicc wrote: post #301
thatwasunusual wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, of course it is. Most people will all of a sudden ignore someone's message. I have no idea why anyone would argue in favor of Twitter. When has it become required to be an expert in the field to be granted the privilege of leaving a comment on a forum? When has it become unacceptable to lie? People lie all the time. Advertisements lie to you, politicians lie to you, your mom lies to you. It's really annoying tha…

Let me get this right - you're saying everyone should have the freedom to spread lies, half-truths or misleading statements, but that noone should have the freedom to call them out on it?

Twitter isn't requiring anything from anybody to comment on anything. They're just putting forward their own opinion. Much like Trump is putting forward his. The only difference is that people trust Twitter more than the current POTUS.

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

#405

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

kauffj wrote: post #170

However you feel about this, Twitter did it in pretty much the worst way possible. 1. They had someone with a clear history of strong anti-Trump and anti-Republican sentiment take the action ( https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/126545757821512499... ) 2. Twitter chose a prediction rather than a factual statement to fact check ("Mail-In Ballots will be..."). Why not start with a truly factually wrong statement…

I don’t understand why this is downvoted. You laid out good reasons to explain twitter did this in the worst possible way.

Do people here just not want to see it regardless of its factual nature? That seems like the eventual issue with “fact checking” social media posts.

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

#406

Post by zozbot234 »

chartpath wrote: post #320
NicoJuicy wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reaching Idiocracy is a pretty big understatement. To be honest, it feels that the president should have a babysitter, if you look at his constant tweet tirades.

What kind of oversight could even work though? We have the Queen in my neck of the woods but that is not exactly accountable and never does anything to check poor governance and only rips off taxpayers. We also have non-confidence votes which can bring down a Prime Minister, and it seems to work (in minority governments at least). How can a separation of powers approach still check itself? Like different term limits,…

> What kind of oversight could even work though?

Some New Confucians and Neo-Reactionaries argue that this kind of basic oversight should be provided by a novel council/board of "wise scholars", or people with real intellectual accomplishments which are not under serious dispute-- appointed with very long, perhaps lifetime terms. There's really no equivalent to this in the U.S. other than perhaps the Supreme Court, but the House of Lords in the U.K. is quite similar and does not currently have much of a political role, so it could be repurposed with relative ease.

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

#407

Post by Loughla »

2019-nCoV wrote: post #316
Loughla wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view? This statement concerns me, greatly. Its implication is that facts are merely point of view statements. That is just, well, it's just wrong. Facts are facts. The truth is the truth. They don't care what your beliefs are. If it is empirically true, then it is true. Why and when did it become okay to hand-wave and dismiss anything you didn't believe i…

How can a statement about the future be empirically wrong?

I don't know what that even means.

We're talking about facts established by research, indicating they have occurred in the past. I don't know what you're talking about.

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

#408

Post by username90 »

jcroll wrote: post #232
gjulianm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In a direct democracy like Switzerland, yes. In a very indirect democracy like the United States there is basically nothing you can do if your representatives are not doing their job properly except wait for the next election and hope the candidates get better.

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

#409

Post by catalogia »

2019-nCoV wrote: post #316
Loughla wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view? This statement concerns me, greatly. Its implication is that facts are merely point of view statements. That is just, well, it's just wrong. Facts are facts. The truth is the truth. They don't care what your beliefs are. If it is empirically true, then it is true. Why and when did it become okay to hand-wave and dismiss anything you didn't believe i…

How can a statement about the future be empirically wrong?

Tomorrow gravity is going to reverse and fling you into the sun.

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

#410

Post by donw »

exabrial wrote: post #205

I once got a strike on social media for posting an article about a German doctor that recommended whiskey to cure covid19. It was a joke, and any reasonable adult would know this is false. It's hard for me to feel sorry for companies that go down the fact checking route with algorithms; It always ends up causing more damage than value. 12 years ago we didn't have this problem, and I think that's mostly related to the…

> I once got a strike on social media for posting an article about a German doctor that recommended whiskey to cure covid19.

You mean I've been taking all this medication for nothing?

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