Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
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Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#2Absent everything else, I have to admit I find it hilarious that in four years the White House never figured out a way for the President to address the public via electronic means beyond the consumer app in his pocket.
I mean, it's a banal and boring law, but his use of Twitter was always a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act. They couldn't have set up a dumb finger server or something and written him a junky app, then mirrored it to FB/Twitter/Parler whatever?
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#3My thinking right now is that the status quo is the symptom and not the cause. Were we as the human race simply not ready for this?
Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning?
If it wasn't Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. it would simply be something else in their place who had to perform the job of the gatekeeper. We were on course to enabling global communication at an unprecedented scale regardless of these companies establishing themselves, it wasn't news that we'd get here. Did we just discount the discourse on this that it's 'suddenly' a concern?
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#4The logic is that by banning and moderating they are taking editorial decisions which mark them out as being a "publisher" as opposed to an impartial "platform". It's a bit of a stretch.
For these big companies I think governments gave them the choice to censor or be broken up, so they chose censorship. Now the governments are wanting more regulation.
I don't know how they all are responding but could Facebook be handling this dilemma better than Twitter, or would Facebook also be under their sights? How could Amazon etc be targeted?
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#5Absent everything else, I have to admit I find it hilarious that in four years the White House never figured out a way for the President to address the public via electronic means beyond the consumer app in his pocket. I mean, it's a banal and boring law, but his use of Twitter was always a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act. They couldn't have set up a dumb finger server or something and written him a j…
They could have, but I presume getting a president to use something like that is tricky if he doesn't want to, and I get the impression that using Twitter (and not using it through something some backstabbing staffer could access) was very much the point for Trump.
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#6Just a random idea: perhaps we should extend democracy to the spreading of information. I.e. you can spread information but only if the majority of people agree with it. (A post is evaluated/moderated by a small group, then a bigger group, etc., until perhaps it reaches the entire population). Moderation is not limited to groups, so echo chambers would not have a chance.
EDIT: minorities still have a chance in two ways: (1) they can have discussion groups which can be large but still limited (2) the majority will have some tolerance and thus will only suppress the ideas of minorities if they find them objectionable.
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#7Absent everything else, I have to admit I find it hilarious that in four years the White House never figured out a way for the President to address the public via electronic means beyond the consumer app in his pocket. I mean, it's a banal and boring law, but his use of Twitter was always a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act. They couldn't have set up a dumb finger server or something and written him a j…
They could have, but I presume getting a president to use something like that is tricky if he doesn't want to, and I get the impression that using Twitter (and not using it through something some backstabbing staffer could access) was very much the point for Trump.
It's far less nuanced than that. It's the "old man shouts at cloud" meme, grumpy, lazy, old man wants to communicate to the word using methods he already knows.
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#8Just a random idea: perhaps we should extend democracy to the spreading of information. I.e. you can spread information but only if the majority of people agree with it. (A post is evaluated/moderated by a small group, then a bigger group, etc., until perhaps it reaches the entire population). Moderation is not limited to groups, so echo chambers would not have a chance. EDIT: minorities still have a chance in two wa…
That seems like it would just silence minority voices.
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#9What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? [edit: I would think the UK Health Secretary should be pretty specifically focused on the growing health crisis at home rather than interviewing on topics outside his current role.]
In any case, regardless of who you are, if you violate the terms of service of platform, you can be terminated on that platform.
The platform makes the rules, within the context of the legal systems with which it is governed by. When it comes to "free speech", that is a very tricky subject. More significantly, if even the local population cannot agree on whether certain speech should be allowed or not, then the government has no hope of regulating it either.
Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
#10My thinking right now is that the status quo is the symptom and not the cause. Were we as the human race simply not ready for this? Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning? If it wasn't Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. it would simply be something else in their place who had to perform the…
The people got too much of a voice and the powers that be are now reigning that back.
Decentralization, encryption and anonymity is the only way to deal with this.
Aether is a good first draft: multi part app with a back end that can live on a single board computer in your closet and costs $4 to run for a year and a front end that you can use on your phone.