Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by jorblumesea » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

sailingparrot wrote: post #343

hartator wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe free amplification is terrible It's exactly what they were saying at the invention of the printing press. Amplification becoming too cheap. Maybe being on the side of censorship is always being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

How exactly is press free amplification? How do I get my random opinion broadcasted to a newspaper audience? I would probably have to write an opinion column and send it to the journal, then they would read it, and decide whether or not they want to publish it. If it's the NYT for example, you can be sure that no matter how well written your piece is, they will never publish something that pushes the theory that COVI…

I don't agree with the comparison either, but, in the 16th century just about everyone could make a broad side and disseminate whatever they wanted.

Literally, wars were started because of this. Similar to today's information age propaganda wars and disinformation, physical media was used in a similar way. There are some valid comparisons here.

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

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

#442

Post by riffic » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #299

snowwrestler wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Even if it is a very popular website. If they make bad decisions, then people can go to competitors; it's as easy as typing in a different URL. That's how the Internet--and open societies in general--are supposed to work. What it looks like to me--someone who has been on the Internet since before the turn of the century--is tha…

Scale makes a difference. These social networks are no longer just a small private website serving a local community but a critical communications medium. When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power. This is how we treat ISPs and phone providers today, and social networks of a certain size should be considered in the same class.

> critical communications medium

Undersea cables, phone lines, and the radio spectrum are critical communications media. Private web sites with selective publication criteria by way of their content moderation policies are not.

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

#443

Post by alacombe » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

convery wrote: post #17

European here, but I can definitively see how someone would come to that conclusion. Both platforms bans anyone mentioning the supposed "whistleblower" (whom actually only had newspaper articles as 'evidence'), bans anyone mentioning Bidens kid, bans anyone mentioning the death of Clintons ex-staffers, Wikileaks content related to Dems is blacklisted, and they remove videos of Bidens gaffes for being "manipulative" w…

> Even on HN, a site that usually is for free speech and discussing alternative theories,

Big Tech employees are the largely the same demographic as HN readers, which are a large proportion of would-be white knights, most making $150k or above, thinking they're gonna save the world from itself "because they know better".

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

#444

Post by vmception » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

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.

Private companies censoring things arbitrarily is pro-free speech.

I'm not making any particular argument, only showing the weakness in your cognitive dissonance.

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

#445

Post by alacombe » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

nitrobeast wrote: post #41

convery wrote: post #17

European here, but I can definitively see how someone would come to that conclusion. Both platforms bans anyone mentioning the supposed "whistleblower" (whom actually only had newspaper articles as 'evidence'), bans anyone mentioning Bidens kid, bans anyone mentioning the death of Clintons ex-staffers, Wikileaks content related to Dems is blacklisted, and they remove videos of Bidens gaffes for being "manipulative" w…

A few things I realized in the past few years: 1. Elite class does exist in the society, and they exert tight control on the flow of information in traditional media, e.g. TV, newspapaer etc. Their control is loosened in the Internet age initially, which led to the rise of Trump. Trying to correct this, a narrative of blaming "fake news" was used to pressure leading companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to toe…

> which led to the rise of Trump

Trump is just a middle finger to the Democrats woke policies coming from social science university labs and generally more artistic people, which indeed tends to be over representated in the entertainment industry.

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

#446

Post by krapp » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #427

krapp wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter's "rules" would have stopped huge stories like The Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, Watergate, etc. Only in a universe in which Twitter is the sole means of broadcasting, publishing and communication - but we don't live in that universe, so no, they really wouldn't have.

I don't mean they would have literally stopped the entire story from being a story, but that their own rules would have banned the posting of that news on their own platform, even from viable sources.

Sure, but it still wouldn't matter. It's not a good argument that Twitter "censoring" content actually has any relevant effect beyond its platform.

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

#447

Post by AlexandrB » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #295

adventured wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not good intentions. The tech giants are attempting to throw an election and they don't care who knows at this point. For the 2012 election Facebook execs bragged about illegally assisting the Obama campaign by giving them practically the entire FB social graph, for free. That violates federal campaign finance laws. Nothing was done about it and you'll never get anyone on HN to go near talking about that fraud,…

If there were illegalities, you would think the Trump justice department would have gone after them. Do you have theories as to why that didn’t happen?

It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to pretend that one side of the political spectrum is being oppressed even as they control 2/3 branches of government.

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

#448

Post by nullc » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #254

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.

> 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…

I don't follow your argument. Free Speech doesn't mean that anyone has an obligation to listen.

You can solve being saturated by noise on the listening side much better than on the sending side... much better because the listeners needs are diverse, because listeners must be robust against adversarial inputs (or otherwise the first madman with a random number generator floods you out), because the listeners time/sanity is what is at stake so that's where the incentives are, and so on.

The fight against entropy should be all of our missions but it can be accomplished without forcefully silencing people.

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

#449

Post by donohoe » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

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.

Its is not censorship. No censorship has taken place. The article still exists on the NY Post web site and their newspaper. Their audience is still sizable.

Their article included personal information and was consistent with policies that have been in place for almost a year.

Twitter is not a public utility in the way that phone services are. They were (rightly) criticized along with others for letting mis-information run amok in the last election and beyond. They have (slowly) taken steps to listen to these concerns and this is what happens.

I full support Twitter in this. This is not censorship, this is limitation of deliberate mis-information and personal information.

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

#450

Post by canjobear » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #429

sailingparrot wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re mischaracterizing how free speech was viewed in the recent past. “Free speech” (as a cultural value, I’m not talking about the first amendment) was about the marketplace of ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace_of_ideas . It meant a free market in ideas, where the dominant ideas arise from competition. What you call “amplification” is just something that makes the marketplace more efficient—it allow…

I understand the theoretical argument, but empirically do you think the quality of ideas that people believe has increased from (say) 2000 to 2020?

It seems like there's a lot more going on than just faster dissemination, and the way information travels these days might have introduced new asymmetries and inefficiencies.