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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

#781

Post by rmtech »

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…

A private company that has a monopoly on speech is no longer a private company, it's essentially an unelected and unaccountable part of the permanent government.

You need to think about entities based on their properties, not the labels that are attached to them. That ought to be obvious to people who program for a living; think of a private company with a speech monopoly as the good old .txt.exe scam.

You're attaching the label "not government" to Google, but in terms of properties it is like the government. YouTube has openly admitted to manipulating video results despite it costing them money to do so. Their monopoly position is so strong that the YouTube leadership rules us like a dictatorship.

I would prefer it if these tech monopolies were simply broken up. But failing that, they need to obey the first amendment or be shut down in the US.

Europe is a different beast, but I think the UK at least should adopt the US first amendment.

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

#783

Post by jules-jules »

kitd wrote: post #605
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…

FWIW, the BBC World Service podcast "The Compass" [1] has an excellent series on free speech by the veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig. I highly recommend it. He covers tech companies, universities, blasphemy laws, etc. [1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and t…

If you think the BBC is an arbiter of free speech, I have a bridge to sell.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU

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

#784

Post by arrrg »

m0zg wrote: post #751
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…

This right here gentleman is in charge of what Twitter deems "factually correct" and "safe" for you: https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/796186371408789505 Just wonderful, absolutely unbiased human being, 100% "site integrity" guaranteed: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8361349/Head-Twitte... So no, let's not "lay that aside".

It’s factually irrelevant since no facts are expressed. That’s just opinion.

I guess the racist part could be arguable, but that’s more opinion than fact.

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

#785

Post by jkingsbery »

As a Republican and as an American, it pains me to have that man as the standard barer. Even when he makes a point that I think main-stream circa 2006-2014 Republicans would have agreed with, he does it in such a bad, ham fisted, way that nothing changes. Even though Trump spent almost his entire adult life as not conservative, he's now what people associate with the term. But he's not "conservative" in any sense of the word: he's not conservative in temperament, he's not conservative in his use (or threat to use) of government power, he's not seeking to conserve any precedents. It makes it impossible to make any sort of debate on the actual point, because everything becomes about him.

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

#786

Post by bananabreakfast »

rmtech wrote: post #781
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…

A private company that has a monopoly on speech is no longer a private company, it's essentially an unelected and unaccountable part of the permanent government. You need to think about entities based on their properties, not the labels that are attached to them. That ought to be obvious to people who program for a living; think of a private company with a speech monopoly as the good old .txt.exe scam. You're attachi…

No company has a monopoly on speech. Especially not twitter of all places...

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

#787

Post by SkyBelow »

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…

>I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly)

Well, a few other crowds did move to it but were quickly banned under the argument that their speech did not count as speech and thus wasn't protected. I remember it being quite a humorous (ironic?) twist for a company claiming to champion free speech.

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

#788

Post by Gollapalli »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #565
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 hel…

100%

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

#789

Post by meragrin_ »

standardUser wrote: post #652

There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to communication. The latter is almost cert…

Perhaps they see it as targeting a political figure because of political differences rather than trying to prevent the spread of misinformation. I'm not seeing any annotations on a number prominent members of Congress spreading misinformation.

Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten companies? Obama had his share of threats. I'm sure they could find a suitable legal issue with Twitter targeting Trump while ignoring members of Congress.

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

#790

Post by bananabreakfast »

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…

Yes, fact checking a single vocal and influential individual on everything they say is indeed a solved problem!

We've been doing it for years, on every president and congressman in America.

There are such things as indisputable falsehoods. And when important people relay them as the truth there are dozens of fact checking organizations that exist only to call these individuals out and hold them accountable to their word.

The fact that Twitter has started doing this with one specific individual is neither new nor innovative.

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