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

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

#431

Post by tinco » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #363

tinco wrote: post #270

Of all the things Trump has said, why add a fact check on this point that includes all kinds of vagueness? How is it a fact that mail-in ballots will not lead to rigged elections? Just that there's no evidence to support it doesn't mean it can't be true (however unlikely). If we're really to police politicians, surely it should be only on absolutely logically false points? The point about that only registered votes w…

> Just that there's no evidence to support it doesn't mean it can't be true (however unlikely). That's the thing. If there is no evidence to support it, it cannot be asserted as an unequivocally true statement. Trump doesn't claim that it "might" be true, or he "believes" it to be true, he says, effectively, "this is the unarguable truth". And Twitter says "not so fast".

But the whole idea of democracy is that we elect politicians based on their beliefs and ideals. We pick either conservative or progressive, not based on any evidence of their efficacy but on our feelings about those views. And the idea is then that the aggregate of those feelings (especially over time) leads to a prosperous and stable nation.

Maybe I have to yield this point, and say that Twitter should also call out politicians on making baseless statements. (Which will be all of the time because twitter doesn't have a very neat way of including footnotes, and politicians are not known to publish tweets as academic papers) but even then the commentary should be something like:

- the trump administration has not published evidence to support the statement that mail-in ballots lead to rigged elections.

Which is very different from just saying it's a false claim in my opinion.

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

#432

Post by Ididntdothis » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

nkingsy wrote: post #313

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've been watching Mrs. America, and it does a great job of showing an earlier, developing version of wedge politics leading up to the Reagan revolution. Where we are now feels like the inevitable conclusion to the process of eschewing norms for political gain.

“Where we are now feels like the inevitable conclusion to the process of eschewing norms for political gain.“

Agreed. Congress should be ashamed of themselves.

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

#433

Post by catalogia » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #233

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.

Corbyn is ultra far left? The way he was getting slandered as some sort of neonazi, I assumed he was considered too rightwing or something.

British politics can be confusing to outside observers..

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

#434

Post by mgkimsal » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #343

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…

> the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up [to those voting down: these are convicted cases of voter fraud. If you are in favor of fact-checking these cases demonstrate the core question: who deserve this power?] Let's fact check these fact checkers. Here are some cases convicted in court of election fraud, a lot of them involve fraudulent use of absentee ballots https://www.whiteho…

"Although there is no evidence that the millions of missing ballots were used fraudulently, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which compiled the public data provided from the Election Assistance Commission, says that the sheer volume of them raises serious doubts about election security."

So... no evidence of fraudulent use.

28 million out of how many? "almost 1 in 5". so roughly 150 million ballots mailed out over multiple years and elections, and What does "unaccounted for" mean? They knew they were mailed out. All I can divine from that is 'not returned'.

"There’s little doubt that as the number of mail-in ballots increases, so does fraud."

Yet, right above that in the article, it says of the 28 million - "no evidence of fraud". How many more mail-in ballots do you need to get evidence of fraud? 200 million? 300 million?

What is the insinuation? People are mailing their ballots back, but they're getting "lost"?

It seems that when there's evidence found - as in, criminal investigations turn up fraud and people are charged and prosecuted - "there's evidence of fraud!". When no evidence is found... that's also evidence that it's going on, but not discovered yet. That's how I read this hysteria over 'mail in ballots'.

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

#435

Post by phkahler » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #368

phkahler wrote: post #281

If Twitter wants to fact check, fine. But posting links to pieces by anti-Trump news outlets is not fact checking.

Calling normal news outlets "anti-Trump" is just falling for his crybully antics.

Not really. They do have a bias. Regardless of that it's still not fact checking.

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

#436

Post by JimDabell » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #340

yesplorer wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatsapp forwards is largely a solved problem. Now you can't forward whatsapp messages to more than 5 people at a go. And if you try doing 5 people at a time consecutively, your account is automatically deleted even before you reach 30 total forwards. Some people adopted a strategy of adding users to a group and dropping whatever message they have but that too is solved by allowing only known contacts to add you to g…

Your solution is to ban humans from talking to more than 5 others at once?

Forwarding WhatsApp messages is a tiny subset of "talking to people".

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

#437

Post by heurist » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #288

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.

“Fact checking” is a nice exercise and somewhat helpful but a lot of people say half baked or stupid things all the time, including myself. Part of a healthy discourse is the ability to say questionable things and having a discussion. Once you start fact checking where does it end? A lot of people have different views on different things and there is no clear right or wrong. What I would like to see is that the US po…

Public officials choose to live a live under intense scrutiny and should expect to be challenged on their positions and able to provide well-reasoned arguments for their opinions and actions. "Fact checking" is a necessary component of a functional democracy. As small and local news outlets die en masse from the social media takeover, someone needs to pick up the slack.

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

#438

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

node-bayarea wrote: post #253

nxpnsv wrote: post #169

Why not just kick him off for tos violation and be done with it. That would be an article worth reading...

He is the President of the United States! And 50% of the people like his policies (if not his personal behavior)

"his policies"?

This is something I don't understand about current politics, a leader uses their people to create greatness. If it's "Trump's policies" wth is everyone else in the political system doing? In the UK we get "Boris says" but it's quite clear all policy decisions are being made under Cummings, and he gets them presumably from liaison with Tory donors.

Trump/Boris clearly know nothing about medicine, epidemiology, public health care so if ideas actually there's they should probably be rejected.

Why this focus on individuals, as if one person should be holding power in a democratic government. That's clearly wrong.

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

#439

Post by mistermann » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

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? We have...that is not exactly accountable and never does anything to check poor governance...

> How can a separation of powers approach still check itself?

If you approach the problem (and it is in fact a very real problem) from an engineering/computing perspective, would a possibly useful approach be to develop an AI that consumes all (or as much as possible) relevant data, and then spits out instances of events where accountability is lacking? Tune it on the overly eager side so it spits out lots of false positives along with legitimate issues, and then a bipartisan committee that consists of representatives from various factions (government, corporate, unions, finance, law enforcement & military), as well as the general public to sort through what comes out.

This would obviously be a fairly major undertaking, but nothing beyond all sorts of other things we do on a regular basis I wouldn't think, and from the amount of news stories and forum comments on the matter, I think the problem is big enough to spend a fair amount of time and money on coming up with some solution.

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

#440

Post by badRNG » Wed, May 27, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

spinach wrote: post #277

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.

Twitter already regulates speech though, to their own agenda. I got into the gender debate recently (a big mistake), and so many gender critical people get suspended or banned just for believing in reality (that males can't be women) and standing up for women's rights. A man (Zuby) got suspended for simply saying 'dude' to someone. People get their accounts deleted for 'misgendering' people. Twitter is already, hardl…

I can immediately think of sites that are open to gender critical discussion. Voat, 4chan, and many other message boards exist for such. It isn't a topic I'm particulaly interested in, but if you start there I'm sure you can find more spaces where that type of discussion is accepted and embraced.

"Freedom of speech" isn't freedom to force private businesses to provide a platform for your content. There are plenty of businesses besides Twitter that will provide a platform for the type of discourse you are looking for.