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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

#791

Post by NicoJuicy »

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,…

Euh, with T.? A babysitter who can forbid him things that are "not decent", most people learn it when they are a toddler/teenager.

It's named "common decency" for a reason.

Nobody is going to teach their kids to unleash their bulldog when someone does not agree with you ;)

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

#792

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#793

Post by awb »

mc32 wrote: post #743
kgin wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fairness is an impossible outcome but a worthwhile pursuit.

There are tons of edge cases with free speech, but we almost certainly want the free market to experiment with potential solutions. It would be great if there were attempts at a free speech Twitter, a free of hate Twitter, free of disinformation Twitter, etc. and let the chips fall where they may.

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

#794

Post by centimeter »

tootie wrote: post #701
centimeter wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the actual conservative pain point is that they (correctly) observe that freedom of association (i.e. businesses get to choose their customers) only seems to apply when it benefits progressives - contrast Google evicting milquetoast conservatives from Youtube with no legal repercussions versus that baker in Colorado getting sued a bunch of times for not wanting to bake gay, satanist, etc. themed cakes. There…

There's ample for why it's illegal to discriminate against classes of people. Imagine business in the 20s with signs saying "Irish need not apply" or "No dogs or Jews". The recent case with the baker was extending the protection of human rights to gay couples. Any "conservative" content that has been kicked off of platforms like YouTube has been specifically targeted not for political reasons but because they were sp…

> The recent case with the baker was extending the protection of human rights to gay couples.

So is it a "human right" to use a business's services even if they don't want you to, or not? Be consistent. If it is, it's a human right violation to politically deplatform people.

> has been specifically targeted not for political reasons

This is obvious bullshit to anyone who follows youtube/twitter/facebook censorship drama. Tons of people have been deplatformed without having e.g. harassed anyone.

> they were spreading hate speech

Is this supposed to impress us? That something someone said falls under this recently-made-up category that coincidentally includes a bunch of factual rightist talking points?

> There's still plenty of content around mainstream conservatism

I'm sure you feel that way, but conservatives certainly don't agree with you.

> I think any attempt to argue a slippery slope isn't valid

There's not a slippery slope argument here - YouTube, Twitter, and others have deleted content that many conservatives think is obviously fine and within the bounds of civil discourse.

Here are two related things that came up in my feed literally today:

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/5/26/21270290/you...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1201181

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

#795

Post by Gollapalli »

Loughla wrote: post #261
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…

> 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…

>Facts are facts. The truth is the truth.

My immediate reaction to such sentiments is that the ones who hold them would have imprisoned Galileo and poisoned Socrates. We can comfortably say that the truth exists. We cannot so comfortably say that we know what it is.

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

#796

Post by czzr »

jkingsbery wrote: post #785

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…

Will you still vote Republican? Just curious, please ignore this question if you think it too personal or impertinent.

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

#797

Post by SkyBelow »

mgoetzke wrote: post #468
gadders wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not a solved problem when the "Head of Site Integrity" has a history of anti-Trump tweets and called the President a Nazi. And that's just the head of the team. You can see the hard-left and pro-Antifa affiliations of the team outlined here: https://nickmonroe.blog/2019/11/28/dear-jack-twitter-is-poli...

pro-Antifa means Pro Anti-Fascist which means to organise some movement against fascism. Would we really want people to be the inverse ? Meaning would we like them to be more fascist or accepting of fascism ? What exactly happened that AntiFa has become a group that people don't support ? Maybe I missed something there.

This is assuming entities match their names. We only have to consider the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to see that is not the case.

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

#798

Post by centimeter »

kube-system wrote: post #757
centimeter wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the actual conservative pain point is that they (correctly) observe that freedom of association (i.e. businesses get to choose their customers) only seems to apply when it benefits progressives - contrast Google evicting milquetoast conservatives from Youtube with no legal repercussions versus that baker in Colorado getting sued a bunch of times for not wanting to bake gay, satanist, etc. themed cakes. There…

> they (correctly) observe that freedom of association (i.e. businesses get to choose their customers) only seems to apply when it benefits progressives This can be mostly likely summed up as self-selection bias. Discrimination laws are not being applied unequally to people of differing political opinions. It is much more common that people's political identities are self-chosen based on their own personal identity a…

The actual dominating selection bias is that "discrimination laws" were an authoritarian progressive political strategy, so they align most closely with authoritarian progressive beliefs and interests.
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