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ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

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Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#71
Every single one of these actions will have the opposite effect. You cannot ban people into submission. Instead, you’ll only get more extremists and more fracturing of culture.

This seems like psychology 101 to me, but apparently the bright minds in Silicon Valley know what’s best for us more than we do. After all, they have been spying on us and collecting data for years. Maybe they do.

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous zones for me but not for thee. Listen, I’m center left and oppose all this craziness. But the tech giants banning these accounts is counterproductive. Violence will increase not decrease as extremists are pushed out of the public square and into echo chambers and non-public Signal groups. “A riot is the language of the unheard” remember?

So in the interest of balance, conservative leaning apps can get away with doing whatever they want now? If left leaning apps permit the kind of violent talk that Parler does, by all means, ban those too.

So we are banning twitter then as well?

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#74
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start your own Google then?

Funny. I've seen talk of making Cloudflare ban thedonald.win (the reddit clone of trump supporters). What's next? Make your own routers? Lay your own cables?

Sure. That's the market for ya. The invisible hand can still get stuff done.

If you hit a cog that's a government-granted monopoly, then I'd sympathize with that. Otherwise, I have zero sympathy for supposed market proponents who want the government to step in as long as it's in their favor.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#75

“Start your own Twitter then!” ... they do. “Google bans Parler, conservative Twitter. Apple gives them 24 hour notice to moderate more speech or be banned.”

There's always IRC and web forums. You can even use a smartphone based IRC client, if you really have to. If you want to use Google/Apple/AWS services, you play by their rules. Plenty of stories about "XX closed our company account and now we can't do business" on HN.

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#76
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny, it seems they were perfectly happy to try starting their own country a couple days ago.

Autonomous zones for me but not for thee. Listen, I’m center left and oppose all this craziness. But the tech giants banning these accounts is counterproductive. Violence will increase not decrease as extremists are pushed out of the public square and into echo chambers and non-public Signal groups. “A riot is the language of the unheard” remember?

>Violence will increase not decrease as extremists are pushed out of the public square and into echo chambers and non-public Signal groups.

I see this claim a lot, but is it true? On the one hand, some people will move into harder to find echo chambers. On the other, fewer people will be exposed to extremist content in the first place. Both factors are in play. It isn't clear which one "wins".

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#77
post #4

I don’t care what side your politics are. When corporations can so easily control the voice of the elected leader of a country (one who has genuine legitimate support or about half of the country), I become very scared for the future. Corporations should not have more power than the elected officials.

It is extremely bizarre to me to watch the left cozy up to corporations. What happened to Occupy Wall Street, Chomsky, the real counterculture?

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#78
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the elected leader of a country can so easily try to overthrow that very same democracy with a violent insurrection the least of the consequences they should face is not being able to incite more violence on someone else’s private property. No matter how popular a hangout spot that private property.

No one is worried about a mentally deranged guy running around in a costume taking over the legitimately elected government. No one is actually worried about this; The democrats are not actually worried about this; Republicans are not worried about this; perhaps some mentally unstable people are worried about this?

>No one is worried about a mentally deranged guy running around in a costume taking over the legitimately elected government

No, because that's not something that could actually ever have happened. Nothing that crowd could have done, or was planning to do, would have actually resulted in any of them "taking over" the government, that's not how this works. That asshole in the buffalo costume got his two minutes of internet fame and then got arrested.

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#79
post #28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding the ACLU's arguments here. They're fairly consistently pro free-speech, mostly regardless of what that means. There's not much handwringing from them about "bad" speech because they're OK with bad speech being out there. I don't think they're fans of Trump, as their statement makes clear, but they're worried about the precedent that banning him sets.

> they're OK with bad speech being out there Might be time for a bit more nuanced view: Facebook admits it was used to 'incite offline violence' in Myanmar https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 Four dead in Bangladesh riot over offensive Facebook post https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/21/asia/riot-deaths-facebook-pos... A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1…

The USPS has been used to disseminate hate speech and plan criminal activities.

Should we ban the post service? Clearly they have no ability to regulate the hateful content they disseminate.

Re: ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

#80
post #23

The man literally has a press office and a press staff. There are any number of outlets who will cling to his every word in order to praise or criticize it. I don't use twitter and seem to learn what is said. It is difficult to see what the problem is.

Were any laws broken by Twitter? Don’t businesses in the US have nearly every right to arbitrarily deny service to people (with a few exceptions when it’s explicitly denying on the basis of race, etc.)? Twitter literally didn’t exist 15 years ago. How can a lack of access to Twitter be an an infringement on free speech then?

The internet literally didn't exist 50 years ago. How can a lack of access to internet be an infringement on free speech then?

Television literally didn't exist 100 years ago. How can a lack of access to television be an infringement of free speech then?

Written language literally didn't exist ~5000 years ago. How can a lack of access to written language be an infringement of free speech then?

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