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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

#741

Post by paultopia »

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.

constitutional law professor with a phd in political theory slowly raises hand

No, it cannot even be considered a free speech issue (except insofar as Trump proposes to censor Twitter). Those of us in the con law/democratic theory community, and everyone else in the universe who is even semi-rational, use them term "counterspeech" to describe what Twitter did.

Traditionally, counterspeech is seen as the virtuous alternative to censorship---as the thing that us snotty free speech people tell those who call for their opponents to be censored to do instead. John Stuart Mill would jump up and down and pop champagne in celebration of what Twitter did.

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

#742

Post by lowbloodsugar »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #55
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.

Mail-in ballots make it much easier to commit voter fraud, I don't see how anyone could possibly argue to the contrary. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...

Well I read that document you've provided as strong evidence that mail in voting is safe. You've sourced a document that is from the "mail voting is unsafe" team, and they've only been able to find a very few number of such cases, spanning thirty years (it goes back to 1990 at least), and almost all of those cases were caught before the votes affected the outcome.

Can you maybe explain your thinking?

Have you done the math? The document you reference is absent of impact analysis, even vague on the numbers. 1,071 incidents but how many actual votes? How many votes were actually cast? How many were caught before they were counted? Let's take Alabama. 14 reports, but actually first four are all the same incident. So 11 reports. Not off to a good start there. Nine of the remaining were single instance voting. Two were a conspiracy. One conspiracy was caught, in 1994 when it occurred, but is labeled as "Disposition: 2005", which I initially assumed meant that they were caught in 2005, and had gotten away with it. But in fact they were caught at the time because they submitted 1,400 votes in a county of 7000 people. The one that got away with it was caught at the time, and earned the role of a city commissioner of a city of 68,000 people. And yet the person was elected anyway, despite the evidence. So you've got "14" incidents, that are really only 11, and only 1 that got away with in a small city election where even they were caught yet allowed to win. So with just this one state, of the 14 claimed, there was only 1. So for 1071 that's 76. Over 30 years. There are 20,000 cities in the usa. So ~600,000 elections of all sizes they found 76 instances of successful fraud, and only in non-state-wide elections. And that's just me spending thirty minutes with your primary document.

What's interesting is that the Heritage Foundation didn't publish that math. Didn't get into detail.

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

#743

Post by mc32 »

kgin wrote: post #661
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 think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- but for exercising their own right to free speech alongside the free speech of others (in this case the president). There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech, regardless of how you interpret the right to free speech.

Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward. Will they get into the business of fact checking everyone over certain number of followers? Will they do it impartially world-wide? How can they even be impartial world wide given the different contradictory points of view, valid from both sides? Cyprus? What’s the take there?

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

#744

Post by ummonk »

localhost wrote: post #570
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…

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 nothin…

That's the first amendment, not the concept of free speech. The concept of free speech can apply to private and public spaces, just as it can apply to government regulation of speech.

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

#745

Post by icelancer »

supportlocal4h wrote: post #450
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.

Imagine if a U.S. president were to flagrantly make up a claim that some other country was developing weapons of mass destruction. Imagine that there was no way to verify this claim. Imagine that the president insisted on invading said country on the basis of the unsupported claim. Do most people still expect that someone in that position will not post clearly false messages, specially when those messages affect some…

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" is up there as well.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-y...

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

#746

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

One alternative is to ban politicians from using these private websites as "official pulpits". As private websites they are under no legal obligation to allow anyone to use them. If politicians want to communicate with constituents, then let them do so through government websites. Why does the US government not create its own "Twitter" service? Government websites are subject to laws and regulations that private websites are not. Unlike private websites they would be required to honour free speech protections under existing US law.

As we know, the private websites have incentives to allow politicians to use them as pulpits because it drives "engagement" and, in some cases, because they want to sell political ads or ad services.

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

#747

Post by joe_the_user »

koheripbal wrote: post #566
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…

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.

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

I don't think that quite describes the situation. Those with no money often have no recourse against Google, Facebook or CNN. But those with money whether individuals or corporation (even outside the media world), have many ways of shaping opinion, whether that shaping is public relations, SEO, media-creation or legal action.

Just during the time that Facebook has attempted to spread the standard, cautiously wide mainstream view of covid and the shutdown through their information center, I've received an ocean of polarizing false-claims about Covid and the shutdown through sponsored ads. Those ads cost money and they certainly show how today, money, any money, has a voice.

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

#748

Post by caseysoftware »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #732
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…

What bugs me is that so many people always jump straight to the most base and rudimentary catch phrase arguments on the topic. It's always "private companies != free speech for others, just for them" or the opposite "we should be able to say whatever whenever", inevitably followed up by a "but you don't have a right to consequence/response free speech"... it's tiring and shallow thinking on the subject. I just ctrl+f…

It's further complicated by the people who sued Trump for blocking them. They won, he had to unblock them.

Considering they could log out (or open a private tab) and view the content, obviously it wasn't access to the information that was fundamental but the act of the President taking a step to reduce someone's access.

With that in mind, the underlying host taking a similar action is either a) Okay because it's their system? or b) Bad because they're blocking or altering the message?

We're in this really weird spot of free speech vs private property vs public forum vs free access vs..

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

#749

Post by thephyber »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #689
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…

And on the flipside, these companies have grown to the point they could be considered a public utility or even monopoly. There certainly is precedent for governments compelling utility providers to not restrict their services arbitrarily.

You are playing word salad with lots of different concepts and it looks like you are making hypotheticals with what we could make companies do.

Companies growing does not make them into utilities. Utilities are providers of very specific commodity services which are specifically defined by statutory law.

Monopolies (as in anti-trust law) are companies which abuse their power to hurt the consumer. Traditional anti-trust law doesn't work against social media companies because consumers pay no cash for the transactions. We could change anti-trust law, but since there is no analog, it's not clear what we would change it to.

> There certainly is precedent for governments compelling utility providers to not restrict their services arbitrarily.

There is also precedent for governments to uphold a concept of "decency" (the same government that defines it as "I know it when I see it") which communities can judge for themselves, without a written definition. I, personally, don't see the judgements that social media companies make as "arbitrary" (they do have written ToS and they attempt to give their content moderators guidelines/baselines for judging decisions).

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

#750

Post by zentiggr »

whatshisface wrote: post #339
zentiggr wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it incredibly easy to believe that the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing him up. It started decades before the 2016 illegal voter claims, and has been a flagrant, constant, malignant part of his personality since childhood. Research the constant streams of lawsuits and other allegations against him, his companies, and many of his closer associates. And then wonder how someone…

Has there ever been a time in history where politicians weren't slimy lying weasels? I feel like a lot of people came of age during the Obama era, which had a friendly media, and never realized the truth about how presidents usually are until we got to the Trump era and the media started doing its job again. Does anyone remember how we got in to Iraq?

I came of age with Reagan in office, I've seen plenty of politicians.

How many other presidents have had a lifetime of lying publicly and being caught at it over and over for decades, and still lying and spouting obviously false BS, over and over, throughout a lifetime?

Every other prior president that I have any knowledge of their lives prior to office, has never displayed the level of inability to see anything but what they want to, and an inability to see facts and corrections as anything but personal attacks.

He is a classic narcissist, unlike anyone that's ever held the office before.

Johnson is the only other one I can think of who ever reached near this level of unstable behavior.

> the truth about how presidents usually are

No, Trump is unique in the history of the office. Bush doesn't hold a candle to Trump's personality disorder. Saying so fails to acknowledge just how critically self-absorbed and malignant his behavior is.

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