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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> is it also OK for AT&T on its phone network? For Google on Gmail Twitter is a closed-system and not a utility, and I guess that makes all the difference.

That is also a matter for interpretation, I believe. This cuts to the heart of the raging platform vs publisher debate (section 230). From my understanding, the current status quo is: 1. A platform can not moderate its content beyond removing illegal content that is brought to their attention; 2. A publisher can moderate and selectively cull what ever user content they like, but is held liable for any infringing cont…

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#422
post #389

Facebook, Twitter, Reddit et. al. are now in Orwell's land of "Ministry of Truth" .. they are telling the people what is reliable "news" and what is not. It's getting pretty insane out there.

I can't imagine Twitter censoring a sensational pro-democrat news article. That's what makes me feel the strangest about this.

Is that because there just isn't the level of verifiably untrue statements from the Democrats?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> is it also OK for AT&T on its phone network? For Google on Gmail Twitter is a closed-system and not a utility, and I guess that makes all the difference.

That is also a matter for interpretation, I believe. This cuts to the heart of the raging platform vs publisher debate (section 230). From my understanding, the current status quo is: 1. A platform can not moderate its content beyond removing illegal content that is brought to their attention; 2. A publisher can moderate and selectively cull what ever user content they like, but is held liable for any infringing cont…

Your understanding is the new interpretation of Section 230 being pushed by the ruling party in the US as justification for rewriting it and expanding the scope of what is actually a pretty targeted regulation. There's nothing in the actual text of Section 230 (which you can read in about a minute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 sections C and F are the relevant bits) about fairness or equality of enforcement.

It is technically a "matter of interpretation" in that one major political party is reading things into the law that don't exist and so it's a very common interpretation, but ... they don't exist.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#424
post #361

Crux of the issue is that everyone knows there’s a double standard. Why do they co-ordinate to block this story and not the countless other “unverified” scoops? Because it threatens a protected politician.

This should be the main story instead of whether censorship on twitter is okay or not.

Call out the blatant bias. (So surprising for a company based in a liberal haven)

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#425
post #361

Crux of the issue is that everyone knows there’s a double standard. Why do they co-ordinate to block this story and not the countless other “unverified” scoops? Because it threatens a protected politician.

Spot-on. When NPR got caught posting fake news recently, absolutely nothing happened to them. When CNN does it, nothing happens to them.

The game is rigged.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is also a matter for interpretation, I believe. This cuts to the heart of the raging platform vs publisher debate (section 230). From my understanding, the current status quo is: 1. A platform can not moderate its content beyond removing illegal content that is brought to their attention; 2. A publisher can moderate and selectively cull what ever user content they like, but is held liable for any infringing cont…

This is not what Section 230 says and it is never what Section 230 has said. https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...

You're going to need to be a bit more specific as your article offers a very similar interpretaiton of platform vs publisher (without using those terms), to what I presented. The only thing of note I see in your article is a "deep dive" into figuring out the "original intention" behind the law.

I believe modern application of a law should matter more than what the writers of the law were potentially thinking at the time.

>Then we get to these early internet services like CompuServe and Prodigy in the early ‘90s. CompuServe is like the Wild West. It basically says, “We’re not going to moderate anything.” Prodigy says, “We’re going to have moderators, and we’re going to prohibit bad stuff from being online.” They’re both, not surprisingly, sued for defamation based on third-party content.

>CompuServe’s lawsuit is dismissed because what the judge says is, yeah, CompuServe is the electronic equivalent of a newsstand or bookstore. The court rules that Prodigy doesn’t get the same immunity because Prodigy actually did moderate content, so Prodigy is more like a newspaper’s letter to the editor page. So you get this really weird rule where these online platforms can reduce their liability by not moderating content.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#427

I think it is crazy that twitter has gone down this path. Being the arbiter of truth makes their job much harder and doesn’t seem to have a big upside. If they have an agenda they want to push the upside might be there but otherwise it’s just a perpetual shitshow.

"If" they have an agenda? Really? Jack Dorsey admitted his bias. In the Joe Rogan interview he couldn't address any of the examples of biased censorship.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#428
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your theory is that the emails are fake...what about the video of Hunter smoking crack?

It is well know that Hunter had a drug problem. It came up in the last debate.

But the video comes from the same laptop...

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#429
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Twitter enforce a Tiananmen Square-ish policy? Do they want to lose all credibility as a platform?

Did Twitter kill hundreds of people with tanks?

"First the neo-Nazis had to text their friends about a new Stormfront post instead of sending it in a Twitter DM, and I said nothing..."

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#430
post #104
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between the telephone company and Twitter is that the phone company was (historically) a monopoly - the only game in town . Use their wires or get lost. It required common carrier neutrality by regulation. Twitter (and every single commercial social media space) is not the above, and can do what it wants on its service. It's not a public utility.

It's not just Twitter, it's also Facebook. (I believe Facebook was actually the first to take action.) What if Google does it too? In the past few years, we've seen these big tech companies operate in a manner that seems collusive. They follow each other's cues. One company is the first to censor, and then the other companies follow very quickly with the exact same censorship. (The quick collective action tends to di…

If they're really being collusive, then you investigate them for violations of antitrust law or otherwise figure out what they're doing that's breaking the free market, and you fix it.

Alternatively, if every company in a free market seems to believe that X is objectionable, then X is considered objectionable by all of society, and it's not the place of the government to override that. If Facebook bans 419 scams, and Twitter bans 419 scams, and Reddit bans 419 scams, and Craigslist bans 419 scams, a fake Nigerian prince shouldn't be able to lobby Congress for a Constitutional right to force these private companies to host his content. They're allowed to be "collusive" in establishing shared, society-wide norms - that's how society works.

(Or we could conclude that we cannot make the free market so fair as to fairly represent all of society, but as far as the Overton window in the US is concerned, that's an absurdum, and so one of our propositions must be wrong.)

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