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

911–920 of 1001 posts

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

#911

Post by ashtonkem »

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?

There are certainly prudential concerns with platforms fact checking; is Twitter implying that other Trump tweets are factually correct?

But whether or not you like the feature, the idea that the president of the United States would threaten “shutting down” Twitter because he doesn’t like a feature is beyond the pale, full stop.

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

#912

Post by tstrimple »

smt88 wrote: post #386
Ididntdothis wrote: post #235

I feel like we are slowly reaching the state the movie “Idiocracy” describes. I feel very torn about this. On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. On the other hand I find it hard to believe that the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up. It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters in 2016 and the commission they st…

> It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters in 2016 No, it started long before that. Trump's political profile came about from being the most famous advocate of Birtherism[1] -- promoting the idea that Barack Obama is not American and demanding his birth certificate. He later reached a plurality of Republican primary polls by saying that undocumented Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers[2]. Tru…

> No, it started long before that. Trump's political profile came about from being the most famous advocate of Birtherism[1] -- promoting the idea that Barack Obama is not American and demanding his birth certificate.

Go back farther and read about his actions regarding The Central Park Five. His history is full of complete bs like this.

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

#913

Post by ashtonkem »

sizzle wrote: post #865
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…

Open source a transparent, government sponsored free-speech communication platform that clones Facebook functionality for organizing information in an intuitive way for the most tech unsaavy person. Outright ban all user tracking and profiling transparently with annual code audits and watchdog groups that can punish those in charge for not adhering to this, no advertisements, no selling data, and put 18f on the job o…

It's actually pretty hard to run an online platform that sets the bar at "free speech" and not have it kind of suck.

Trolling is free speech, being a jerk is free speech, hate speech is free speech, pornography is free speech. Any forum that sets the bar at "free speech" is going to be filled with the dregs with depressing speed. There's a reason why Gab never really gained serious traction.

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

#914

Post by bfdm »

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?

Is any of that necessary? Applying extra scrutiny to the president is not unusual.

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

#915

Post by randyrand »

triceratops wrote: post #874
randyrand wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental question is, do people have a right to free speech on the web? The web is nearly entirely privately owned, which makes answering this question difficult. On one hand, the web is where we do 90% of our communication these days and losing that right seems like losing most of the first amendment. I’m convinceable either way. Did telephone companies have a right to censor land line speech? Should they? Sh…

ISPs and telco networks are on a different layer (physical, and transport layers) of the stack than social media (application layer). ISPs and telco networks can and do perform traffic routing shaping, and throttle or cut off abusive users who consume too much bandwidth, or run a high-traffic web server from their home network. Because these actions affect other users of their networks. But if someone uses Comcast to…

What about Cloudflare/AWS? Cloudflare notably denied to service some unruly websites, and those websites got DDOSed off the web.

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

#917

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

#918

Post by taylus »

wmeredith wrote: post #881
clairity wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This. He's selling to his base, not Twitter.

Exactly. This fits right into his playbook of (1) cry loudly about something and say you’re going to take action (2) do nothing while his base gets pumped on how Trump is “hard on Twitter” and not putting up with their obvious bias (3) the next scandal drops in a week, everybody moves on and forgets.

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

#919

Post by _hmpc »

This ‘fact check’ makes unfair biases way too easy. It is not a soulless algorithm or natural law that chooses the target and contents of these ‘fact checks’, but unaccountable individuals. Like communism, good in theory, but hard to implement. I hold my vote to be extremely precious, and would like to protect its value, and we should be vigilant about ways to do that. Mail-in voting seems too easily hackable, especially considering almost half of Americans don’t even vote (e.g. lots of opportunity for illegitimate mail-in voting).

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

#920

Post by ALittleLight »

I think a better solution for Trump, since he obviously doesn't have the power to 'close' social media, would be to create a competitor. There should be a public social media company, tied to real identity, that would support something like Twitter. You could post your thoughts or essays there, follow people, comment, etc. Put out a request for design proposals, the emphasis should be on sharing thoughts attributed to your real identity, keeping your account safe, recovering passwords, and things like that.

Having a national social media would have the side benefit of allowing a better identity system than social security numbers which are a travesty. I have to share my social security number with many people, but also somehow keep it safe? Instead, I should have a public and private key pair, and this could be associated with my National Social Media account for a single identity, and sign messages with my private key if I need to apply for a loan, or a lease, or whatever.

The National Social Media account could enshrine the same protections afforded by the US constitution - free speech, you cannot be censored top down, only by people blocking you. The government cannot spy on your usage patterns or edit your messages, and so on.

If Trump were to get such a thing created, and it worked reasonably well, and he started using it exclusively instead of Twitter, I think it would gain a lot of traction. I know I would try it out.

Post reply on HN