Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 1001 posts

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

#711

Post by _-david-_ »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #522
craftinator wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate your approach to this argument. You really cut through any strawman fallacies by pointing out that there's a debate along a spectrum about what protecting free speech entails, but that the President needs to have limitations in his power over private companies. I think this final point is not debatable in a legal context; he does not legally have that power.

Darn right he does not have the power. Either the president does not know the constitutional limits on his power, or he knows them but still thinks it's a good idea to claim power that he does not have. I'm not sure which is worse.

>Either the president does not know the constitutional limits on his power, or he knows them but still thinks it's a good idea to claim power that he does not have. I'm not sure which is worse.

Or he knows what he is allowed to do and is just saying stupid crap like he usually does. Trump doesn't have a filter and just says/tweets whatever pops into his head. This could be another example of that.

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

#712

Post by A-Train »

Believe it or not but Sasha Baron Cohen made a great argument to everyone who thinks that Twitter should not interfere with freedom of speech.

Basically quoting Sasha's argument "freedom of speech is not the freedom of reach". Spreading lies, hate and false information is everyone's right if they do it in their home alone but they shouldn't be allowed to reach bigger audiences.

Video here: https://youtu.be/PVWt0qUc0CE

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

#713

Post by RubberSoul »

hadtodoit wrote: post #672
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…

If companies are going to self-moderate their platforms then they should not receive any kind of legal protection from user-generated content. I wholly believe companies have every right to dictate what is on their platform but they cannot have it both ways. If you can afford to moderate content you disagree with, you can do so for illegal content as well. If I own a store and someone injures themselves on the premis…

Store owners, at least in the US, are not 100% liable for injuries on their property. Their liability depends on several factors, which include the reasonableness of their behavior and the behavior of the visitor.

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

#714

Post by tootie »

qubex wrote: post #52

Wasn’t it Voltaire who said “ I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it ”? Nonetheless, this is pretty much par for the course for what the world has come to expect. Edit: It turns out that though phrase is often attributed to Voltaire, it was actually Evelyn Beatrice Hall, as noted by the poster below, to whom I am grateful for the correction.

When Voltaire was alive the French government was a monarchy that employed official censors that had the authority to prevent criticism of the church or state from being published by anyone. That kind of censorship is explicitly illegal under the first amendment. There is really no precedent for the mass publication of free-flowing content from anyone in the world prior the 1980s that would be relevant.

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

#715

Post by cryptonector »

unexaminedlife wrote: post #659
cryptonector wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete objectivity is impossible. This is why Ayn Rand's Objectivism philosophy was so broken. It's not just that humans can't be completely objective -- any AI can't be either, and you can't write have a human write an algorithm that yields 100% objectivity. It can't be done. There is no short-cut. The arguments have to be had. Consensus/democracy/institutions is all we've got, and we have to and will make that wo…

Not sure we're disagreeing here. But, an important point would be that we should be striving for objectivity. In Trump's world objectivity is not a goal. To him it's an obstacle.

Certainly we should be striving for objectivity. But our political divisions run deep, and many people have a hard time seeing the other side's point of view. Your assertion that "[i]n Trump's world objectivity is not a goal" is indicative that you aren't open to the possibility that he's being more objective than you think, therefore, if your view is less objective than you think, then clearly you're part of the problem. Of course, maybe you're right, but you don't seem open to the possibility that you're wrong. And that simply illustrates my point about the difficulty of arriving at objective truth in matters where we're so deeply divided.

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

#716

Post by ngngngng »

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…

It took all of 5 minutes for fact checking to become just as broken as the fake news it was trying to correct. Trump will clearly say something, and then I'll see people share directly conflicting fact checkers, one that says he said it, and one that says the words never left his mouth.

And just like before the fact checkers, people believe what they want to believe, nothing more, nothing less.

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

#717

Post by refurb »

frockington1 wrote: post #92
sp332 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is specifically on a tweet calling the validity of the election into question. It's blatantly wrong, but he needs his base to believe him when he says the election is rigged.

Hasn't the other side been #NotMyPresient and throwing a tantrum about the validity of the last election? Trump is not a trailblazer in this regard

Headline: Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...

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

#718

Post by cyberowl »

Gonna play some devil's advocate

Freedom of speech is a concept, and a legal definition in the US. It's true that Twitter has no _legal_ obligation to uphold free speech since it's not a government entity.

But if you support the _concept_ of free speech, Twitter is stiffing conversation by playing a moral judge on what is considered truth and what's considered lies.

The Constitution was written 200 years ago without any of the today's technology. Back then, all "speech" happens either live in person, or by individual printing presses. Government back then was the biggest threat to the concept of free speech, so it's indoctrinated in the constitution as a legal concept.

Today, public discussion space has moved onto social media platforms. Government is no longer the biggest threat to speech (because of the Constitution), but private companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc who can just ban anyone at will and cause them to lose the ability to reach their followers. If you want to protect free speech as a concept, then we need to update our legal concept to include any platform or service that's identified as critical to public discussion.

Similar to how electricity companies are regulated as utilities companies because they're so crucial to people's daily lives, social media platforms should be regulated as speech platforms because they're so crucial to today's conversations happening in society.

This is the hard truth. You won't like it because you hate the man. But it's the truth / end devil's advocate

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

#719

Post by sanderjd »

donw wrote: post #445
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…

Oh, I would disagree with that. It is amazingly easy to lie with statistical "facts", through careful sampling, use of technical language, and overly broad or narrow definitions: https://medium.com/@hollymathnerd/how-to-defend-yourself-fro... I could write a "factual" article claiming hundreds of mass shootings in 2020 (obviously false). I just need to define a "mass shooting" as an incident where four or more people…

In this example, the empirical facts are "hundreds of incidents where four or more people are injured" and "no incidents where twenty or more people are killed". Those facts still exist. The different definitions of "mass shooting" are spin, which obscures facts, but does not eliminate them. Yes, it is hard to pierce the spin to find the facts, but the facts are there somewhere.

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

#720

Post by nsgi »

Bombthecat wrote: post #707
m-p-3 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if he decided to "close" Twitter, it would actually be a clear case of censorship from the government and a violation of free speech. Twitter is merely labelling a tweet as being factually incorrect, it's not hiding the content.

But isn't that what all the tweets under the tweet from president probably do? They correct him? What would be the difference? The difference would be one is a company, the other a real person. No need for the company to get involved. People who ignore the correctios and other tweets will ignore the company anyway.

At least until recently the top tweet appearing under Trump's tweets was the one about John Mcafee giving away bitcoins, so I'd say that mechanism isn't working very well.
Post reply on HN