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

891–900 of 1001 posts

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

#891

Post by judge2020 »

Andrew_Quentin wrote: post #886
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…

Twitter is not a private company, it's a publicly tradable company that can technically even fully be owned by the Chinese government itself through perfectly legally buying their shares on the open market. You don't see a problem here?

Shares of a company being traded on different company's stock exchange (which is only regulated by the government, not operated by them) has nothing to do with whether free speech is enforced on their platform.

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

#892

Post by RealityVoid »

clairity wrote: post #768
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…

it's clearly impossible for trump to shut down twitter. he doesn't know how his own government works and doesn't care to know, because his goal is entirely self-promotion and personal profit. he's not a hard person to figure out. it's more concerning that people are taking it seriously enough to create so much chatter. it's not even a free speech issue, insofar as twitter is not a government entity. there's literally…

I think it's not as impossible as you make it out to be. He might not understand how to do it, but if he were to leverage the tools at his disposal, he definitely could do it.

I initially thought that he could not gut the American administration _too_ much because of institutional inertia and the systems put in place that still had you country functioning pretty well once he took power. But now here we are, him having placed stoodges at the head most most institutions and gutted them of power.

If he could do that, he most obviously could lead to Twitter falling apart. Another poster outlined here how that could work:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23330463

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

#893

Post by Andrew_Quentin »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #888
Andrew_Quentin wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is not a private company, it's a publicly tradable company that can technically even fully be owned by the Chinese government itself through perfectly legally buying their shares on the open market. You don't see a problem here?

Are you saying public company is worse? At least they are reporting their ownership.

I'm saying there are laws against foreign interference in domestic politics for obvious reasons, so if some foreign government for example - which can openly buy Twitter stocks as there is no legal restriction and can do so either directly or like with Reddit indirectly by getting Tencent to buy it off - is moderating the speech of the president, then there's a big problem.

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

#894

Post by dntbnmpls »

RonaldRaygun wrote: post #883
dntbnmpls wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Firstly, stop qualifying it with "hate", "factually incorrect", etc. It's a cheap tactic by authoritarian types to justify censorship. The religious z…

> Thirdly, if a social media platform is a vehicle for communication by elected officials, should that platform be allowed to limit citizen's access to said politician. I believe the courts already ruled twitter cannot deny people access to trump's twitter. But I'm not sure. How does this square with the fact that Donald Trump regularly blocks people from viewing his Twitter account for disagreeing with him or refusi…

> How does this square with the fact that Donald Trump regularly blocks people from viewing his Twitter account for disagreeing with him

He can't block them. That's my point.

"Trump can't block users from his Twitter feed, federal judge rules Blocking users from viewing his Twitter account is unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment, according to the judge."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-can-t-block-users-his...

I don't think he should be allowed to block americans from posting legal content on his feed.

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

#895

Post by hedora »

isoskeles wrote: post #801
yibg wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in this case no one is being censored. It's not like the president isn't allowed to post and is having his "freedom of speech" taken away. This is more like his speech is being responded to, and he doesn't like that others can challenge what he's saying. The very antithesis of free speech.

Applied unequally. Reminds me of these old fact checks during the election: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trump-pence-acid-wash-fact... > Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump falsely claimed Clinton “acid washed” 33,000 personal emails to delete them, calling it “an expensive process.” The FBI said Clinton’s tech team used BleachBit, which is a free software program. It does not use chemicals. These sorts…

Your argument seems to be that substandard fact checkers exist, so all fact checkers are substandard. I don’t see how it follows. In this case, it’s extremely well documented (and there is bipartisan agreement) that mail in ballots are not a substantial source of fraud.

States that allow no excuse mail in ballots are evenly split between red and blue.

Do you have a specific critique of statements Twitter made in this case?

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

#896

Post by casefields »

tzs wrote: post #239
swebs wrote: post #6

Good, I hope this forces them to decide whether to be neutral platforms or publishers. They've been having their cake and eating it too for far too long.

If that's a reference to the protections under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it doesn't work that way. The whole point of section 230 was to say that being non-neutral does not subject a platform to liability for content supplied to that platform by users. I'm not sure why, but a lot of people seem to think it is the opposite: you have to be neutral to be protected. There was a court case that ruled…

"The Trump administration’s proposal seeks to significantly narrow the protections afforded to companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Under the current law, internet companies are not liable for most of the content that their users or other third parties post on their platforms. Tech platforms also qualify for broad legal immunity when they take down objectionable content, at least when they are acting “in good faith.”

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

#897

Post by intended »

dynamite-ready wrote: post #692
threatofrain wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that because web tech advanced more quickly than much of society, a vacuum of power developed and Google was forced to step in. If Google had its way, it wouldn't police any content and it would illegally host HBO shows like Game of Thrones -- when you try to hold them responsible, Google would pass off all burden to the offending individual. That's how YouTube used to run. Other industries have things like th…

Do you think digital media needs a state run mediator? I think it's probably time. We've become quite protective of the data that's collected by digital products for fear of a concentration of power. But then we all see the internet as a great 'leveller', and we don't want to disturb that balance. The likes of the FDA (or your local equivalent) work at a certain scale... Perhaps civilly agreed constraints can be appl…

This is an argument that is being made - an FDA for information.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/a-toxic-w...

One of the people making the argument is Nate Matias, the guy behind Civil servant, which is essentially the first open testing system to see the impact of content moderation rules on users -

https://www.fastcompany.com/3068556/reminder-you-can-manipul...

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

#899

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#900

Post by tehwebguy »

busymom0 wrote: post #826

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…

Sorry, do these data points prove that votes cast by mail are not "less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth"?
Post reply on HN