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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

#831

Post by amadeuspagel »

specialist wrote: post #512
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #455

To be honest it sounds like a regular end of the election craziness. To all those people, who think this is somehow special and deserves special new set of rules, I can only point to 2016 ( Comey saga that also included Guliani ). It is not special. It is not new. It is still speech. It may be lies ( and I am sure we will find out soon enough ) and I get that a lot of people can be influenced. I get it. And it still…

"What I do not get is why some people honestly do believe that an average person needs to be protected from lies by a censor?" I was a Chomsky style free speech ultimatist. Unfortunately, humans aren't rational. Lying is super effective, its effects pernicious. They activate identity and trigger negative partisanship. Simply trying to refute lies only embeds them further. Profiting from the outrage machine (dopamine…

Freedom of speech doesn't rely on the belief that humans are rational, it relies on the belief that there's no fundamental difference between some enlightened, rational circle of censors and the irrational masses.

WTF does this question have to do with the paradox of intolerance? There's nothing intolerant about the claim that the Bidens are corrupt.

> It's quite a stretch to call any of that "news". So I don't see how allegations of censorship even apply.

Freedom of speech isn't restricted to news and the idea that you can censor anything which doesn't fall into a narrowly defined category such as "news", with the censor deciding what counts as news and not, would completely kill the point of freedom of speech.

> The founders had the notion that democracy requires an informed populace.

I often see this claim but I'm not aware of any evidence that either the founders believed this, nor for the belief itself. It's also often used to argue for voting restrictions. It's kind of parallel to the idea that freedom of speech requires that people are rational, where again my question is: What's the alternative? What is the rational informed group that we should entrust restrictions to?

In your view some elite group should decide that NY Post, Fox News and OAnn are anti-informing people, not serving democracy. Well if we trust that elite group, why bother with democracy in the first place?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#832

Post by learnstats2 »

Karunamon wrote: post #291

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

>There's no way you don't block a newspaper

This explains why individual billionaires bought all the newspapers.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#833

Post by dahfizz »

untog wrote: post #620
dahfizz wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you seem so confident in a widespread democratic victory when the republicans did so well in 2016? EDIT: for those unaware, not only did the republican party take control of the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2016. They also made big gains in state elections. In fact, the republican party had a 'trifecta' (house, senate, and executive) in 25/50 states. It was a very significant shift in power: https…

You could just as easily counter and ask why anyone would expect a Republican victory when Democrats did so well in the 2018 midterms. Previous result are only predictive to a point.

The party that is "behind" always does well in the mid terms, this is a very well documentes phenomenon. In fact, I think the Dems did much worse in 2018 than expected

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#834

Post by ravenstine »

adventured wrote: post #817
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the NY Post article actually filled with disinformation? If the roles were reversed and a similar story came out about Trump and his son, would Twitter and Facebook have taken it down as part of a misinformation campaign?

If the roles were reversed, the story would be on the lead story of every major left-leaning media outlet (which is all of them except Fox) in the nation for days: CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, USA Today, Reuters, AP; all of them would carry it non-stop and beat it to death, covering every possible aspect and angle. Which is what they do any time there has been a hint of a story against Tru…

People are amazingly biased, perhaps dishonest, when it comes to this. Of course the same media that propagated the Russia hoax(among others) would behave totally different if the roles were reversed. The fact that they all have acted in unison, and along with social media's draconian measures, only suggests that there's actual merit to the story.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#835

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #712
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what the analogy is between DMs and soapboxes on street corners. In any case, I have to say censoring DMs is just too far for me to accept. I've put in a decent amount of effort to curate my Twitter feed so that it's useful to me, but I can't keep using a service that will arbitrarily decide what private communications I'm allowed to have on their service. I guess I'm out, as much as I hate to do it.

If you don't like the rules, you are free to make your own platform. Like it or not, twitter can do whatever the hell they like with their website that they pay to host. That being said, if you posted something heinous here on HN and a moderator removed it, as they do every day, would you leave? Why haven't you left hacker news since that is what they do, just like twitter? Why haven't you left the internet entirely…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#836

Post by amadeuspagel »

donmcronald wrote: post #238
moron4hire wrote: post #193

I don't know what's going on with the article in question, but I read this: > Facebook announced it would limit the sharing of the story while fact-checkers reviewed the piece. And immediately realize, this is it. Facebook is a publisher, not a platform.

Paraphrasing for a HN comment I saw a while back. A reverse chronological feed of your friends’ posts is a platform. A recommendation engine is a publisher. That makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't agree. A recommendation engine can (and should) be completely neutral.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#837

Post by iamsb »

Karunamon wrote: post #291

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

I dont understand the shock.Just 4 years a staffer suspended Donald Trumps account and was considered a hero. So it is not at all surprising that twitter does this sort of policing.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#838

Post by heisenbit »

Karunamon wrote: post #291

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

I would not characterize this story as speech but as carefully designed viral marketing content. If one is in the business of attracting people speaking with each other and selling that access to companies and political parties then dealing with viral content intended to undermine your sales is a continuous struggle. This one was deemed over the line and a case of potentially Russian disinformation laundering.

When looking at the legalities keep in mind that these companies have been explicitly warned by the F.B.I. of such possibilities and have spent time combing through their own databases and have identified such events.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#839

Post by rufusroflpunch »

labster wrote: post #702
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safest bet is it changes nobody's opinion. If you're left leaning, you've drowned out Trump's repeatedly false statements --or become numb to them-- no October surprise will have an effect on you. If you're right leaning, this furthers your perspective that Clinton and Deep State are up to no good. Nobody comes across content like this without an existing world view to inspect it, and the lines have been drawn a…

Right, but this is what makes the situation so dangerous in the U.S. If no one’s mind is changed over events like these, then we’re at a point where there are essentially two citizenries which both see the other side as toxic. We’re slouching towards civil war. Most people don’t want war, but do see the other side as harmful, so we have to try hard to avoid it. Maybe we’re all looking at it wrong, maybe a civil war i…

I think people need to come to terms with the fact that the USA isn’t immutable and no government lasts forever. A divorce is coming and it’s better for everyone if it’s peaceful when it happens.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#840

Post by amadeuspagel »

mullingitover wrote: post #248
collective-intl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I don't know why you are being downvoted, I think HN's flagging system is another way we are being censored. Just this summer, I remember multiple articles with important, true contributions to our understanding of covid that got flagged. We are losing the ability to consider multiple sides of an issue.

When one side says it's raining and the other says it's sunny, it's not 'losing the ability to consider multiple sides of an issue' when you look outside and report to the public that one side is lying.

When one side says it's raining and the other says it's sunny, there's no point in censorship, since one side is obviously wrong.
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