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Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

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Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#471

Post by Clubber »

zachware wrote: post #138

I'm definitely not one closed off to this story, I think it's important. That said I think "we" tend to forget that platforms like Twitter are private companies, we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them. Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play. If we're not happy about the moderation we don't have to use the moderating platf…

>Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play.

Congress is currently grilling tech CEOs as to why they aren't banning / censoring QAnon and similar information. It seems Congress has moved to attempt to censor free speech by applying pressure on these private platforms to censor free speech.

>That issue about the functioning of democracy is one where Facebook is in the spotlight right now as a hugely powerful platform for misinformation in the run-up to the US election.

>This week the social media giant moved to shut down groups spreading the Qanon conspiracy theory, which promotes the idea that President Trump is leading a battle against satanic child abuse.

>It was the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee who wanted a really tough approach - a minority report from the Republicans agreed there was a problem, but favoured milder solutions.

Congress is grilling tech companies as to why they aren't censoring speech hard enough and are threatening a "really tough approach" if they don't comply. It seems censoring speech is not only government pressured now, but also bipartisan.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54479130

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#472

Post by bitwize »

mrfusion wrote: post #191

> Both the government and private companies can censor stuff. But private companies are a little bit scarier. They have no constitution to answer to. They’re not elected. They have no constituents or voters. All of the protections we’ve built up to protect against government tyranny don’t exist for corporate tyranny. - Aaron Swartz

Except that, you know, private corporations usually can't legally jail you or shoot you in the head for expressing the wrong opinions or propagating the wrong info.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#473

Post by zo1 »

stonogo wrote: post #260
RhysU wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. Those private entities can censor in excess of the government. They are scarier.

Get back to me when Twitter has the power to round up everyone who read a given story and have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like. It's not limited to some partisan nerd toggling a flag in a database somewhere. I think you should probably take this opportunity to re-evaluate the relative powers of these entities.

> "[...] have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like."

We're discussing western first-world governments for the most part, and short of some crazy world-altering event or war, they most certainly do not have the actual power to do this.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#474

Post by nearbuy »

bgentry wrote: post #383
nearbuy wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why it's a legal grey area. We don't know if the content is true or forged. Publishing stolen content is illegal unless you can prove it's in the public interest, and even if some of it is, it's doubtful the personal photos are.

Even if the content of the leaks was fake, which we have no evidence to indicate and none of the key actors have really claimed (as opposed to the story about how they were obtained), it would still be legal to publish it because the public officials involved mean it has a clear public interest. There’s the possibility of civil damages if it amounts to defamation, but that’s quite a standard to reach. Such damages wo…

> the public officials involved mean it has a clear public interest.

It's clear only to you. You cannot normally legally publish hacked or stolen photos of celebrities. The personal, intimate, or family photos of Hunter Biden almost certainly do not meet the bar for public interest.

Twitter is not liable here. But as a private company they're allowed to have a policy against linking to hacked or stolen material on their platform. It's the NY Post that's in a grey area.

> Of course your original comment said nothing about the accuracy of the reporting and instead only made the claim that there was a legal gray area around publishing hacked materials like these, which is simply not true.

My original comment was in response to someone saying Twitter blocked it because it was Russian propaganda, which is simply not true.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#475

Post by lki876 »

hackyhacky wrote: post #211
mrfusion wrote: post #191

> Both the government and private companies can censor stuff. But private companies are a little bit scarier. They have no constitution to answer to. They’re not elected. They have no constituents or voters. All of the protections we’ve built up to protect against government tyranny don’t exist for corporate tyranny. - Aaron Swartz

I respect Swartz a lot, and he makes many good points. But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser. You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, but…

> As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser.

As long as you control what a large segment of the population sees, you can orchestrate peoples actions. Censorship has never been absolute or complete and doesn't need to be in order to be effective.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#476

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #226
hackyhacky wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect Swartz a lot, and he makes many good points. But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser. You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, but…

The lines get blurry when there is a revolving door between Silicon Valley tech companies and DC. Recent example from the banning of Bret Weinstein from Facebook: https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?... This is a Facebook communications person responding with an official reply to this incident. She describes herself as "Facebook comms, formerly @TheDemocrats and @SpeakerPelosi". This is an exa…

> Recent example from the banning of Bret Weinstein from Facebook: https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?...

What's most f-ed up about that one is that Liz posts from her personal account. The appropriate thing to do is to post from facebook comms or something.

Overall though, its a continuation of the grand old tradition that appeals to SV tech companies must come from "important" people or trusted sources (like Twitter or here) or they don't matter. It is super disturbing though.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#477

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

thu2111 wrote: post #457
vkou wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that a private entity can do is toss you off their platform. If every single private website threw you, and your views off the internet tomorrow, you'd return to the age of tyranny and darkness... That ~every human being on earth lived in prior to ~1995. The horror! In contrast, your government can kill or imprison you, if you say something it doesn't like - but for some strange reason, nerd culture spills gallon…

Sure, so Chrome and Safari blacklist your websites. You're only back to 1995, the horror. Then Amazon refuses to sell your books. And VISA refuses to let people buy them, if they find them in an alternative outlet. What's the big deal, you're only rolled back to the 1980s. And then they go a step further and say, if you're assisting in the distribution of these books, we'll cut off your AWS and payment processing ser…

> The problem here is that a small number of large companies are being captured by extreme left-wing political activists who don't recognise disagreement as being legitimate.

While this may be true of the rank and file, the policy people (like Liz upthread or Joel Kaplan) are always political activists/lobbyists because the gig is talking and convincing political organisations of things.

And please note that there's been a bunch of stories about Facebook particularly, intervening on the right-wing side a bunch - how does this support your theory about left-wing activists?

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#478

Post by mschuster91 »

unishark wrote: post #413
beagle3 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting blurry as well, and though you are technically correct, one might have to sue or suffer damages for not following their rules: My children’s schools requires the use of Microsoft Teams From home (and associated TOS) for them to attend class. There is also a parent WhatsApp group for urgent messages to parents. And as of the pandemic, there is also mandatory Zoom classes. This is a public school. If I…

The millions of people locked up in prison would see it as more than a technicality. Personally I'm much more nervous about screwing up some details in following the govt's rules versus a private company. Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.

> Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.

No it's not. A HDD failing or getting lost? That can be guarded against with backups.

With getting banned by Google or Facebook? When all your accounts, your identity is tied to that address/account and you get banned, you cannot be reached anymore by people who don't know that you got screwed over.

The obvious solution would be to self-host an email server, but unfortunately that's impossible as it will be mercilessly assaulted by spammers and hackers on the inbound side and you'll be having issues with deliverability on the outbound side.

The real solution would be for legislative and regulatory action that recognizes the importance of identity and forces all email providers to adhere to due process. But unfortunately, worldwide legislators are too old / too incompetent or in the pockets of other people who don't care...

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#479

Post by pjc50 »

disown wrote: post #22
darkerside wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic. Disclaimer: these are opinions. We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a world where articles could be retracted or condemned, particularly by even more m…

> With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election. Isn't it actually easier to correct the record with social media since you can correct it immediately and reach the people immediately? Whereas with newspapers, you'd have to wait days/weeks and have to search the tiny section they reserve for…

It turns out this doesn't work. The relative prominence of the counter-information doesn't change people's first impressions.

People are still doing "but her emails" despite all the investigations into what happened. It's clear that the Hunter Biden story is an attempt to fabricate a "but his emails" narrative; there may be some facts in there, but none that impinge on Joe Biden.

Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story

#480

Post by pjc50 »

jessaustin wrote: post #112
crocodiletears wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the reality for people on the political fringes for some time now. Unfortunately nobody's been paying attention to it due in large part to the commentariat/journalistic class's willingness to encourage and provide cover for this behavior as a matter of political expedience. Another example: Messenger's been blocking links to joebiden.info (this may have changed, it's been six months since I've checked)

I'm glad HN didn't block that link. I've learned a great deal that will affect my vote in the upcoming election.

So will you vote for the guy with the worse record of sexually harassing women instead? Have you looked at all the corresponding inappropriate gifs of Trump? Remember the "grab her by the pussy" statement? The whole Stormy Daniels fiasco?

Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He's just not as bad as Trump. The fact that America is in that stupid position is its own fault.

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