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

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

#561

Post by anewdirection » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

thebouv wrote: post #189

0x5002 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that base…

> essentially create a public(1) forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights(2) (and, legally speaking, rightfully so(3)). I cannot help but to find this very concerning. (1) Private forum, displayed in the public. (2) Those rights protect your speech from being suppressed BY THE GOVERNMENT. (3) Correct if you meant legally as a private company running a private forum, they can manage the content…

Privately owned areas are still often public (as opposed to publicly owned) spaces in the physical relam. While the digital is indeed different, you seem overly dismissive of this fact by omission and unnessarry capitolization.

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

#562

Post by asabjorn » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:13 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…

I find it absolutely ridiculous that this is being voted down. news.ycombinator.com is not what it used to be, or maybe I've changed.

I guess this demonstrates the tactics that is highly unfavorable to help people make up their own mind:

1) mislead by ignoring evidence, pushing a narrative using "authoritative sources" that fall far short of objectivity standards

2) if #1 fail vote down (shadowbanning, downvotes, etc etc)

3) if #2 fail censor and ban.

4) if #3 fail tell people to ignore those showing contrary evidence, by without evidence claiming they belong to bad group X or because they can't possibly understand due to having identity characteristic Y

This is so boring and trite. It should be clear to everyone at this point that enough people are awake to these tactics to force a discussion on equal terms. With all truths on the table.

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

#563

Post by colinmhayes » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

chlodwig wrote: post #476

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…

It is not at all a solved problem. Fact-checking has the ancient "who watches the watchers" problem. Who facts checks the fact-checkers? And more broadly, censoring harassing tweets has the problem that a lot of activism looks a lot like harassment, and censoring "conspiracy theories" looks a lot like powerful people censoring those speaking truth to power. For anyone who believes that Twitter should be in the busine…

I would fact check 4 only if it was posted by Trump or someone with a similar level of authority and following. As far as I can tell that's the only one that is provably false.

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

#564

Post by cma » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

> There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government.

The companies would also presumably have to allow commercial spam.

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

#565

Post by giancarlostoro » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

I wasn't going to post anything because of the direction HN seems to lean and because they get enraged about these sort of discussions. Hear me out and feel free to respond instead of shunning me out.

The bigger issue is these platforms only get those free speech protections because they're platforms. The moment they start editing content like this, they become editors to a publishing platform, and they should be held liable for all that they've published. You can't just have your cake and eat it too, today they make you happy to censor the evil orange man, tomorrow they may censor those you support.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We're seeing with YouTube that they're deleting posts against Communist China:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324695

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317570

Worse what happens when you cross Facebook imposing Chinese censorship on the whole world?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018770

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12479990

What happens when Google is used to push liberal bias?

Vimeo deletes videos claiming such bias from Google despite clear evidence in video:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302010

"If we break things up, we can't stop Trump" replace Trump with any political candidate you've ever supported by the way to understand why this sort of thing is dangerous:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20265502

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20697780

I am sure I will get into fire for this comment, considering my citations were flagged to death because people don't agree with others. But mark my words, if the tables were flipped and they were censoring all your favorite candidates, you'd be outraged and against anything that would hinder free speech.

If you take away anything from this post be sure to be this:

Twitter, Google, Facebook etc are considered "platforms" the moment they editorialize content, they become publishers. Platforms are protected for obvious reasons, they cannot reliably contain every single thing a user posts, but a publisher dictates what is published, and is definitely liable for what they publish. These platforms want to be hybrids, but that gives them dangerous power to push agendas as they claim they are trying to stop.

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

#566

Post by koheripbal » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

0x5002 wrote: post #94

Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that base…

The obvious way around both of these arguments is to offer consumers more choices. If someone is censored from a particular platform, there needs to be another that they can use.

There are a tiiiiny number of companies that are controlling global communications, and that should make us all uncomfortable.

Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world.

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

#567

Post by __s » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #101

Can this even be considered a free speech issue? They aren't deleting his tweet, only displaying it alongside a fact check. Of course you can try to call into question the impartiality of the fact check but that is a long way from not deciding not to show the content.

If Trump can levy something vs Twitter then soon enough he'll be using the same mechanism to say fake news is censoring him when they report on what he's saying

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

#568

Post by anewdirection » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

jdashg wrote: post #552

metrokoi wrote: post #425

Almost no one is ever happy with fact-checking, it often just leads to more disputes about whether or not the fact-checking is correct or warranted. To me it seems much more efficient to simply teach people not to take anything posted on social media seriously and to better think for themselves. One may say that the president should be an exception because of the number of people he reaches, but what about a famous a…

We have tried teaching people not to believe everything they read on the internet already. We need solutions that actually work. It's wishful thinking at best to believe that Twitter replies can effectively refute arguments. They don't establish public dialog unless the OP retweets the responses. You can't call it a dialogue if, effectively, there's only one person talking. Even simple refutations fail on Twitter. "W…

So when 'fact checkers' end up with a right-wing bias will that still seem prudent? History is full of people in power, expanding their powers only to see their opposition use them more effectively against them.

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

#569

Post by koheripbal » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #542

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…

Is this comment a joke? Are you a bot? You haven't heard these issues mentioned before? The proposed conundrum is a major fixture of the mainstream discourse.

Focus on the last line...

> how do you lessen the spread of misinformation?

...and provide constructive content please.

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

#570

Post by localhost » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

0x5002 wrote: post #94

Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that base…

Here is the entire text of the first amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Note that it says that CONGRESS cannot make a law that abridges freedom of speech. It says nothing about individuals or companies abridging freedom of speech for others.