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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

#821

Post by croon »

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".

Can you point to any false fact-checks?

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

#822

Post by thephyber »

meragrin_ wrote: post #789
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 targ…

> Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten companies?

The Articles of the US Constitution aren't an enumerated list of illegal actions. It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential power.

I love that our expectations of the current president are so low that we will use excuse them because "the previous presidents did it too!" You aren't actually saying what he's doing is legal; you are simply increasing the importance of precedent over the statutory restraints of power -- it's a very dangerous argument to make.

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

#824

Post by m0zg »

croon wrote: post #821
m0zg wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Can you point to any false fact-checks?

I can easily point out the lack of fact checks on statements made by people from the "correct" side of the political spectrum. Charlottesville hoax is spoken of as a fact by the likes of Joe Biden, for example.

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

#825

Post by giancarlostoro »

carapace wrote: post #696
giancarlostoro wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> editing content Twitter are not editing they are editorializing.

Sorry for the poor grammar, English is my second language.

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

#826

Post by busymom0 »

It seems like any remotely political post on HN gets flooded and upvoted with provable incorrect comments. Twitter team which is doing "fact checks" is severely biased and factually wrong.

Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth boasts on his LinkedIn that he is in charge of "developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules".

> “He leads the teams responsible for developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules”

Here's a few of his tweets:

> Massive anti-Trump protest headed up Valencia St. San Francisco.

> I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.

> The “you are not the right kind of feminist” backlash to yesterday’s marches has begun. Did we learn nothing from this election?

> Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

> How does a personality-free bag of farts like Mitch McConnell actually win elections?

> “Today on Meet The Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days…” —What I hear whenever Kellyanne is on a news show

This same person doesn't stand up to his own purity tests:

> It wouldn't be a trip to New York without at least one big scary tranny.

> "Trans is a category worth being linguistically destabilized in the same way we did gay with 'fag,'" he wrote. "Sorry, but I don’t subscribe to PC passing the buck. Identity politics is for everyone."

Twitter's "fact check" is literally wrong. Until few years ago, every one agreed that mail-in ballot has massive fraud:

> “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

Just 1 week ago: Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over 3K Ballots Seemingly Set Aside - A county spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the county's official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted — with uncounted ballots representing 19%

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-pater...

> California Secretary of State confirmed double-voting in one case and suspected double-voting by a number of other registered voters on Super Tuesday:

https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-V...

Yesterday, WEST VIRGINIA – Thomas Cooper, a USPS mail carrier in Pendleton County, was charged today in a criminal complaint with attempted election fraud, U.S. Attorney Bill Powell announced.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndwv/pr/pendleton-county-mail-c...

In 2004, Jerry Nadler (Democrat) asserts that paper ballots, particularly in the absence of machines, are extremely susceptible to fraud:

https://streamable.com/tbzu47

Future head of the Democrat Party Debbie Wasserman Schultz opposing mail-in ballots due to the risk of election fraud in 2008:

https://streamable.com/2tyqp1

West Virginia Mail Carrier Charged With Altering Absentee Ballot Requests:

https://time.com/5843088/west-virginia-mail-carrier-fraud-ab...

Also Twitter’s Trump ‘Fact Check’ Does Not Disclose Company Partnered with Groups Pushing Mail-In Ballots.

-----------

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/822654925217873921

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823312544425132033

https://twitter.com/catfashionshow/status/298477704666300416

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/890812999874691073

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823260235796094978

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

#828

Post by busymom0 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #607
jjuel wrote: post #27

It is crazy to see how well he knows his base and how to get them to rally close to an election. Making them think everything is a liberal bias against them, and if they don't vote for his big government agenda they will receive a big government agenda. This is just one more way for him to get his base to believe everything he says versus people who actually prove what he says is a lie. He wants state run media and s…

It isn't that he has a special insight into his base, he is just willing to abandon any sense of truth or decency to flame it. That is what is remarkable about him.

> any sense of truth

The very "fact check" twitter claims to have done is wrong. I have provided sources in my previous comments.

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

#829

Post by rhizome »

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…

Why do the opinions of hypothetical groups of people carry any weight? Make your arguments in concrete terms, like: Trump is full of shit whether people agree with him or not, and if Trump does try anything it is going to have so much splash damage against other websites that he would run the risk of being sent with a SpaceX capsule into the sun...by everybody.

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

#830

Post by rhizome »

username90 wrote: post #259
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.

The message isn't clearly false. See this article for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-... > Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting. You could say tha…

>Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.

"Statistics show." Yeah, no, that's not how it works. Evidence shows, and there isn't any, or the New York freaking Times would describe it.

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