Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#431

Post by riffic »

sailingparrot wrote: post #264
prudhvis wrote: post #223

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s. Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean th…

> no social network in the 2000s and before

This isn't really true though. Social networks have existed since the earliest days of humanity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#432

Post by 8note »

nemo44x wrote: post #362
prudhvis wrote: post #223

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion. And it's dangerous because when you equate speech with violence then how far are w…

Conspiracy became illegal in the 80s? Threatening people? That seems recent

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#433

Post by interlocutor »

Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal. We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#434

Post by souprock »

Robotbeat wrote: post #371
CivBase wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this constitute hacking? The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary.

That isn’t a credible argument. Why would Hunter Biden, whose dad is running for President, leave his laptop at a Trump-supporting discount computer repair shop without paying with (supposedly) incriminating emails on it? It’s so convoluted... it only makes sense if you wanted to fabricate cover for illegally hacking someone’s data (or more likely, modified and/or falsified data) and releasing it. As it is, the compu…

He's left valuable stuff before. He left his wallet and a crack pipe in a rental car that he returned. Some people are just forgetful.

Aside from the leak, it's also not the loss that it would be for most of us. He's rich. He had some sort of iCloud backup thing (sorry not a Mac user) to restore all the data, so he wasn't missing anything. Picking up an old laptop wouldn't be worthwhile if a replacement arrived before the old one was repaired.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#435

Post by Cookingboy »

closeparen wrote: post #420
Cookingboy wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on At this rate it will be the hill that the civilization dies on. The whole "absolute free speech is a sacrosanct human rights for everyone" is an ideal that simply would not scale with the 21st century civilization. Most users around here grew up firmly believing that value, and it is further reinforced by American/Western exceptionalism, so I can see how thi…

This sounds nice in abstract. Let's walk it two steps towards the concrete: 1) Our elected officials suppressing the voices they believe are most dangerous to our society. 2) Donald Trump shutting down The New York Times. This seems like a move that would jumpstart the entropy snowball, not slow it down.

As far as entropy goes, if we actually have a "supreme leader" then it would actually drastically lower entropy. It would be a shitty society to live in unless we are talking about a benevolent AI or something, but entropy would indeed be low.

Btw my original comment wasn't about the danger of free speech, it's about the danger of absolutely unchecked free speech from all aspects of society.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#436

Post by jorblumesea »

If you run a service like Twitter or Facebook, you just can't win.

Your systems are being gamed by huge nation states with almost unlimited budgets. Your services are being used to spread disinformation and propaganda under "free speech". People also assume that, not only do they have a right to read this disinformation, but also a right for it to be broadcasted and amplified.

If you block these sources, people hate you. If you allow them to exist, people hate you and you might destabilize elections and democracies.

What a terrible position to be in.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#437

Post by krapp »

tootie wrote: post #425
theklub wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" Was the phrase I grew up on. Seems like the opposite today where we allow looting and riots but saying the wrong thing gets you in trouble.

Looters and rioters were arrested by the scores. Meanwhile our sitting president insults, lies, spreads disinformation and incitement to violence and we made him president.

>Meanwhile our sitting president insults, lies, spreads disinformation and incitement to violence and we made him president.

Yeah, but I heard Hillary injects the blood of unbaptized white babies into her eyeballs.

That's crazy. Isn't that crazy?!

Right into her eyeballs.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#438

Post by thescriptkiddie »

sangnoir wrote: post #185

Why is everyone ignoring @jack's official explanation for why Twitter blocked the specific link from being shared? This is the one falsifiable action Twitter clearly took. Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information - and this material was hacked and had unredacted personal email addresses. I haven't seen any reasonable arguments again…

Their policy applies to content published on twitter, but does it also apply to linking to (or simply discussing) content published elsewhere? Because twitter has been removing posts and suspending accounts for that.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#439

Post by read_if_gay_ »

nothingistrue wrote: post #408
joeloya wrote: post #282

The Galileo Principle. If you and everybody else is trying to silence something. You probably are on the wrong side of history.

this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing. it could be what you are selling is just bullshit and everyone knows it is bullshit.

> this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing

It's not, because silencing something is very different from being against something.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#440

Post by kitsune_ »

prudhvis wrote: post #223

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

Oregon Trail Generation checking in. IRC, even the rowdy networks, had no free speech thanks to the 'tyranny' of channel operators. #politics on EFNet was (is?) notoriously right wing for instance. Message boards had no free speech thanks to their moderators. I don't see how this is any different?
Post reply on HN