Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

501–510 of 1001 posts

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

#501

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…

If it were terrible, they wouldn't be doing it. I imagine the billions of dollars make it quite pleasent

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

#502

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…

For clarity, the printing press was for books. Newspapers did not come along until much later.

Interestingly, the Catholic church was very concerned about the ability to mass produce literature and wanted to have control over what could be published. They didn't want just anyone to be able to publish a book. Imagine giving people a platform to speak out against the Church!

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

#503

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.

It's really poor quality thinking to call this censorship but whatever, it's your hill to die on.

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

#504
post #251

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.

I just want to tell you that you're not alone in this. It's seriously unsettling to me to see the way in which this culture has changed.

Most of the tech companies have decided that China will soon dominate the world. They appear to be getting ready for China's attitude towards free speech to be imposed on the rest of the world.

I hope I'm wrong.

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

#505

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…

Speech is considered violence by some people.

Some people consider a lot of speech violence but nearly everyone considers a small amount of speech violence or some equivalent. Telling someone to grab a electrified wire is violence by nearly everyone's standard. A mafioso directing a hit man to kill is nearly everyone's standard. The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is mostly violence etc.

So you can't say the situation is "free speech or not". The situation is always where the boundary is. Of course, the question of where quickly spreading slander on the eve of an elections is on the spectrum of protected speech is a complicated question. But it's a bit different than the question of whether a given dogma can be challenged.

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

#506

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.

Misinformation and hate speech are clearly important issues. But loosing free speech would be a colossal mistake. I used to live in a country with no free speech, trust me the USA in its current state is hundred million times better and more just. Free speech is just super fundamental. So, in my opinion, nothing restricting free speech is acceptable - the downsides of that are just too enormous. We need to learn to l…

No one in america is restricting your free speech. Go buy server space and write what ever you want.

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

#507

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…

You're defining "dominant ideas" as the ones that make people the angriest and get the most clicks! That's not the same as quality. That's entirely how those amplification algorithms exist!

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

#508
post #105

so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked yet ofc they aren’t censored

ffggvv says >"so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked"

By now you should understand the Democratic Party's news cycle:

a) Make up a message (something, anything bad) and present it to the press as a Presidential abomination,

b) Get Democratically-favored media to repeat/embellish the rumour,

c) Get Democratic - favoring prosecutors, government spokesmen, bureaucrats, college professors, or outside "experts" to repeat the rumor and to fabricate supporting "evidence",

d) Call for investigations in the House of representatives [which the Democrats currently control],

e) Ask representatives to go on record to news media concerning the fabricated messages,

f) Invoke every right under the sun in support of the false message: e.g., "free speech is being violated", "trial w/o jury", "conspiracy", etc.

g)When a new fabrication is concocted, drop the current claims or say they were a Russian or Republican conspiracy, and go to the new fabrication. Never follow-up or complete investigations into past false messages.

Rinse, repeat;

IOW lie, lie, lie and lie again.

Recently Democrats have added to this recipe the following:

Bring out the mob, shout and scream, burn down the police station!

Every Democrat, from the lowliest Antifa street slug to Nancy Pelosi follows the same formula. They're political thugs who give the Thuggees:

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

a bad name. Why? b/c their behavior will kill entire societies of people and their governments, not merely individuals as did the Thuggees.

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

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The data is theirs to do with as they please. No hacking necessary. I'd love to see the jurisprudence on this. If there are any photos, do they also get the copyrights? Can they share any nudes they find? How about that Adobe license? As a non-lawyer, it is clear that owning the medium doesn't mean you own the information on it (or the cloud wouldn't be a thing). If we agree on that, then logically, it is possible…

Ownership of data is not the same as ownership of publication rights. However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed. If transferring ownership of a physical data storage device does not constitute transferring ownership of the data stored therein, then I don't know what does. When it comes to the cloud, that sounds more to me like leasing storage rights, but I'm no lawyer.

US news publishers are not prohibited from publishing copyrighted information for the purpose of making the news. That’s part of the First Amendment.

Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it.

Almost every single major story every told in modern history will contain essentially the same type of information transfer, and it is not illegal for the journalist to use this information or publish it if it’s newsworthy.

Sometimes a source can go to jail for sharing the information. But almost certainly that won’t happen in this case, because there is no evidence that the repair shop owner did anything wrong. In fact, he was the one who called the FBI!

Post reply on HN