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Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

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Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is not a utility. It is not common infrastructure. The Internet is, and I would not be okay with Internet access being terminated over political disagreements. But individual services? Sure, why not? For those who argue that Twitter is a de facto common platform, well these decisions are moving them away from that role. The more they exercise their own prerogatives in removing content, the more they're no lon…

We live in a world where Twitter is the place to get information about official government policy (US) or emergency alerts regarding life-or-death situations (NS). If Twitter were not a common infrastructure, it should have been downright illegal to use it like one, at least for government agencies and officials. That ship has sailed long ago. We might as well try to make sure everyone has unfettered access to Twitte…

No it isn't. Personally, I'm very up to date on what is going on in the world and I've never had a Twitter account and maybe go to the site once a month. Pretty much the only time I even see Twitter is when it's linked in news articles.

It's completely possible to get almost the exact same information you get from Twitter elsewhere. Even in the link you provided, it says that they used Twitter as well as Facebook to broadcast their message.

Twitter is not a utility. It's one of many news aggregators and it's completely possible to live without it.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#292
post #283
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the NY Times pushing false information that led to the second Iraq War? Should they get penalized on Twitter after pushing a narrative that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths? From the NY Times itself ( https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th... ) "But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some…

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Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#293
post #19

To the people constantly saying that twitter is a private company and should be allowed to do whatever they want: Would you support the same idea around electrical power? If the power company providing the power to the office at the NyPost decided that they had a political disagreement with them, would it be okay to just cut off their power? NyPost could just make their own power, of course, by purchasing a generator…

I kinda expect my power company to not connect my house to some dodgy power plant that's putting out 155VAC at 47.2 HZ.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're suggesting that the message you just typed out has the same weight as printing a few thousand copies of a manifesto for someone and shipping that book across the country to be put in bookstores and eat the cost if it doesn't sell. In no reasonable way does the "book publisher model" resemble the "social media model". The "social media model" is far closer to discussions you would have in a coffee shop or at a…

Sure, but Twitter conversations DO disturb other people. Starbucks absolutely has the right (and would exercise it) to kick a group of people out if they were, say, conducting a KKK meeting and talking so everyone in the Starbucks could hear them.

First of all, we're not even talking about the censoring of terrorists, dictators, and extremist groups, which Twitter actually has allowed to persist on the platform in the past (e.g. Nicolas Maduro and ISIL). The current censorship at hand is a mainstream news outlet being blocked from releasing a damaging political story less than 2 weeks before the election. This is banana republic-type corruption.

Secondly, Twitter primarily serves content to those people who want it. It's what their algorithms are trained to do. The argument that the New York Post's article is disturbing and thus should be removed is easily used to justify any amount of authoritarian social manipulation. After all, everyone's actions eventually affect me, so I should be able to control all aspects of how they think, right?

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#295
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None can be counted on. I happen to think the NYTimes is better than most, which is why I read them more often than the rest. But you cannot count on them to not tell lies, even in the most important sort of matters, and anybody who reads any newspaper should always keep that uncertainty in mind.

> But you cannot count on them to not tell lies, I think that's the wrong framing, at least for an organization like the NY Times. For one, there's a difference between "a lie" and "an inaccuracy" even though most of the time (but not always!) lies are a subtype of inaccuracy. If you make a similar conflation in software development, you'd say that a team member who pushes buggy code to your repo sabotaged your proje…

I encourage you to dig deeper into the background of the Walter Duranty and Judith Miller cases, in both cases the individuals were lying and their colleagues and coworkers knew they were lying or had good reason to suspect it. In the case of Walter Duranty, it took the organization several decades to admit Duranty was full of shit, long after the facts were widely know.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is not a utility. It is not common infrastructure. The Internet is, and I would not be okay with Internet access being terminated over political disagreements. But individual services? Sure, why not? For those who argue that Twitter is a de facto common platform, well these decisions are moving them away from that role. The more they exercise their own prerogatives in removing content, the more they're no lon…

We live in a world where Twitter is the place to get information about official government policy (US) or emergency alerts regarding life-or-death situations (NS). If Twitter were not a common infrastructure, it should have been downright illegal to use it like one, at least for government agencies and officials. That ship has sailed long ago. We might as well try to make sure everyone has unfettered access to Twitte…

What?

I have never used Twitter in any serious capacity.

There are plenty of ways to get all this information and thinking that Twitter is the de-facto place to get emergency life or death situation notifications is downright laughable.

As far as I can tell, I haven't gotten swept up by a tornado yet because I don't have Twitter to see severe storm alerts.

If your only source of news or alerts is a single service run by a corporation that isn't beholden to anyone but themselves, that's your problem.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#297
post #6

The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of information (especially videos) much earlier than other news outlets will, if the other news outlets do so at all. There have been multiple times when I've seen an insane video of something happening spreading around Twitter or WorldStar or some other "raw video" agg…

A lot of people are missing your point, which is a good one - that big name news outlets rarely ever post raw, unedited videos. This is a shame in my opinion.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#298

Twitter's lack of transparency is depressing. If they're going to lock the NY Post account, they should put a notification on the page (and perhaps a reason why). Right now if you go to the NY Post Twitter it just looks like they voluntarily decided to stop tweeting, which is misinformation.

"The false conclusion I jumped to is someone else's fault for giving me too little information"

That's a terrible excuse. Lack of information isn't the same as misinformation.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#299
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of information (especially videos) much earlier than other news outlets will, if the other news outlets do so at all. Interesting... after reading this, I immediately thought: same as Zero Hedge (also often criticised). But then again, that shouldn't be a surprise - b…

There's a basic economic characteristic I think fringe media gets right: the cost for them being wrong is almost zero, and the benefit of being right first puts them on par with news orgs with hundreds of millions in budget. If you are a reader playing the fast-story slot machine game, it's just noise until you jackpot. The big question is what is the effect of all that noise over time, and what does it make you deaf…

>If the social platforms were just imposing costs on being wrong that would almost be a service, but I get the impression from all the ban stories that they're staffed mostly by people who aren't equipped to be that judicious

The latter sounds like an "intent" argument, that imposing the costs has a quality factor that I'd say just doesn't (or doesn't have to) exist.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net Neutrality is not really that different. These corporations just want to be the ones doing the blocking instead of allowing ISPs to do it.

You honestly don't see a difference between net neutrality and platform content moderation? This is like not seeing the difference between allowing anyone to drive on a public road verse forcing everyone to pick up all hitchhikers.

Sure I see a difference, but I don't think it's nearly as significant as you seem to. These corporations wield an immense amount of power, and although they don't (individually) have the ability to completely silence anyone, neither do ISPs.
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