Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms • Hacker News Board

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

#931

Post by spankalee » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

missosoup wrote: post #928

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…

> distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment Until everyone can agree on a universal arbiter for what those things mean in a concrete way, there will always be demographics who strongly disagree. The reason free speech exists as a concept is because of a historic understanding that there fundamentally cannot be an unbiased arbiter for 'good' or 'bad' speech. On the other side o…

Moderation of non-state-managed platforms is not censorship. In fact, it would be a violation of free speech to limit private parties ability to moderate.

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

#932

Post by Thorentis » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

javagram wrote: post #927

Thorentis wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post It is an unacceptable form of censorship to hand over our modern day equivalent of the public square to private companies, and then allow them to police what people say in it. Freedom of speech was always intended to be protected in public. The Internet is now our equivalent of the public space. It is time thi…

> Yes, those of us with technical know-how can argue that personal websites are that equivalent. But this is depriving those that see Twitter, Facebook, et. al. as a public platform, of the right to have their voice heard. A tweet is now the equivalent of a placard on the street. Do we really want to censor that because we messed up in how we allowed the Internet to be run? Disagree, because street space is limited,…

This issue goes beyond Trump. People have been de-platformed on various social media sites. Twitter has taken on the role of the virtual public space. Twitter is performing a public service in their publishing of tweets. People that don't see it that way are still living in the dot-com bubble. The Internet has grown beyond what anybody had imagined. People don't go out and protest anymore because they do it online.

We will never see protests of the 60s and 70s scale today in person. People do what they did back then online. And they don't go out and protest because they feel like their voice is being broadcast enough through social media. And yet to have that censored by private companies is unacceptable when that in the modern day use case.

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

#933

Post by Thorentis » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

javagram wrote: post #927

Thorentis wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post It is an unacceptable form of censorship to hand over our modern day equivalent of the public square to private companies, and then allow them to police what people say in it. Freedom of speech was always intended to be protected in public. The Internet is now our equivalent of the public space. It is time thi…

> Yes, those of us with technical know-how can argue that personal websites are that equivalent. But this is depriving those that see Twitter, Facebook, et. al. as a public platform, of the right to have their voice heard. A tweet is now the equivalent of a placard on the street. Do we really want to censor that because we messed up in how we allowed the Internet to be run? Disagree, because street space is limited,…

> this is like saying that the President has the right to publish whatever content he wants in a specific newspaper

Nobody sees a news-paper as a public space. The fact that anybody can make a social media account and instantly publish information that can be read by anybody, and the fact that people conceptually now see public profiles as public spaces, means that we need to treat them that way.

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

#934

Post by missosoup » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #924

Thorentis wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely, 100% disagree. The Internet is now our primary form of communication. It is the information highway. Sticking to the whole "free speech only applies to the government" is adhering to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest. Allowing private companies to shut this down because we made the terrible mi…

> Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest Don’t you think it’s more akin to standing in a privately owned square and yelling your protest?

100% of the popular internet is a 'private square'. That's the problem.

There doesn't exist any platform right now where one can share an idea and have that idea go viral, unless the idea is first gated through private censorship.

Sure one could make their own blog or website to express their idea, but the chance of it spreading is then pretty much 0, because again any means for links or ideas to spread are all 'private squares' with their own censorship.

This is how the internet broke free speech. This is where the law needs to catch up with technology.

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

#935

Post by darepublic » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

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…

Yeah I hate social media platforms but Trump shutting them down would be crossing the Rubicon

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

#936

Post by jedieaston » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #920

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 t…

It seems like this could be achieved with login.gov, if anyone wanted. It requires MFA (password + U2F/TOTP) which should be sufficient to prove who you are and that you are signing something. There’s integration docs for government services.

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

#937

Post by RandomTisk » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #920

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 t…

I'm not opposed to it, but I imagine you would have a lot of people very hesitant to put their opinions on record with a system that is controlled by the government. The big benefit with Twitter is it's co-mingled with citizen and government employees alike and I'm not sure how you'd promote a government run system. Governments needs a subpoena to access records from a private company (theoretically) but if that layer of protection isn't there because the system is owned by a government, then I doubt anyone would want to use it for more than press releases, wedding announcements, births, obituaries and things like that.

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

#938

Post by missosoup » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

spankalee wrote: post #931

missosoup wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment Until everyone can agree on a universal arbiter for what those things mean in a concrete way, there will always be demographics who strongly disagree. The reason free speech exists as a concept is because of a historic understanding that there fundamentally cannot be an unbiased arbiter for 'good' or 'bad' speech. On the other side o…

Moderation of non-state-managed platforms is not censorship. In fact, it would be a violation of free speech to limit private parties ability to moderate.

This is where it gets tricky. Because 99.9% of the popular internet is 'non state-managed platforms'.

There doesn't exist an avenue to meaningfully exercise free speech on the internet. You can make your own blog, but it will never go viral. Because the only means for something to go viral is that 99.9% composed of privately censored platforms. We've gotten into a situation where censorship has changed shape from 'one is prevented from expressing a view' to 'a view is prevented from reaching an audience'. Which is far worse than old school Stalin era censorship.

This is not an easy question, but it is clearly a case of the law needing to be updated in light of how technology has evolved. We can't claim to have free speech if there's de-facto no way to exercise it on the primary communication channel of our time.

Concrete example: it has recently come out that youtube has been silently censoring a wide array of comments that express anti-china views. Like most users, I was completely unaware that this is going on. Youtube distorted my perception of reality by suppressing an entire class of opinions from being visible. They didn't tell anyone that they're doing it, there was no transparency, and when they were caught, they said 'whoops it was a bug sorry lol'. That's crazy. What else are they suppressing? I do want laws to stop that even if it exposes me to comments I don't like.

Or consider the degenerate case: Imagine Facebook takes over the entire internet. They buy Google, they buy Twitter, they buy pretty much everything than an average user will ever see. And Zucc comes along and says, from now on any mention of a certain political view on any of these platforms will be censored. This is ok by the rules you're proposing, but it's clearly not ok in terms of the spirit of free speech laws.

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

#939

Post by vharuck » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

missosoup wrote: post #928

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…

> distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment Until everyone can agree on a universal arbiter for what those things mean in a concrete way, there will always be demographics who strongly disagree. The reason free speech exists as a concept is because of a historic understanding that there fundamentally cannot be an unbiased arbiter for 'good' or 'bad' speech. On the other side o…

>The reason free speech exists as a concept is because of a historic understanding that there fundamentally cannot be an unbiased arbiter for 'good' or 'bad' speech.

I thought it was to protect citizens' rights to hold their governments accountable.

>On the other side of this, the internet is increasingly controlled by a particular demographic with a particular definition of what things like 'hate speech' mean.

Hilariously, I agree with the wording but am willing to bet we disagree on who the controlling demographic is. Everyone remembers the stronger emotional reactions.

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

#940

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, May 28, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

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…

One factor is that Trump says a lot of dumb things, and almost none of them are true.

Instead he seems to say whatever outrageous thing that can get attention so he's the center of the news cycle. Once again, it worked.

When he actually does something to silence twitter, I'll be upset too. But I'm not falling for the "big crazy talk ploy" again.