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Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

sciencemag.org

81–90 of 335 posts

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#81
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His speech has not been restricted in any real way. He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes.

I am not from US, but would like to point you are wrong about that. He can call a conference, but the press is not obliged to show up. https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-white-house-press-confe... And since that in 2017, when they figured they could skip his press conferences, it has becoming more and more normal, if I remember correctly he announced a press conference only some days ago and it was ignored by almos…

Rightfully so. A free press is at the core of America’s values. Free thinking, free to ask questions, free to investigate. If an administration wants to deny the press, blast them as fakes, ignore their questions, personally attack journalists, then I’m all for those journalists to skip whatever he has to say.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

>It's Twitter's own servers That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.

> That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.

Twitter as best as we can tell is not offering services below cost to customers.

The free users are not the customers. The paying users purchasing ads are using the services to derive value from the population of free users on the platform.

If you want to reform this, target how companies convince people to give up their data in exchange for functionality rather than for money.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#83
post #44

Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between Elbakyan and Elsevier et al. Few people would have issues if Twitter shut down the Sci-Hub account after they received a valid court order, but a private monopolist cannot be trusted to be the arbiter of what is permitted speech.

It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

I don't think many are saying Twitter's decision was illegal. They're just saying they don't think they should have made it.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your opinion on their takedown of @realDonaldTrump?

The same. If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly, and if he isn't a private entity has no issue determining what a politician can say. As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace. Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with po…

I absolutely agree with this line of reasoning. Thank you.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#85
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well our laws and legal traditions are a bit different than Germany’s Basic Law and Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. In our case Twitter’s private property rights trump the President’s rights. The President is the President and the President can always get a message out if he wants ; Twitter on the other hand is not obligated to serve as a medium of Government communications and if they had IP banned the White House and Capi…

Yes, but I think the problem is more that we have a massively connected society but are relying on the good will of corporations to provide that connectivity.

Repubs always hated public broadcasting, championing the free market to take care of journalism. Companies think Trump is toxic for their brand- surprised pikachu.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same. If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly, and if he isn't a private entity has no issue determining what a politician can say. As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace. Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with po…

Twitter is not a monopoly by any stretch. Regulating how sites handle speech just adds an additional hurdle for new, better platforms to enter. I should not have to have an expensive lawyer on retainer to read injunction requests just for running a This has already been tested in court in the Prager University vs Google, LLC [1] trial and was resolved very quickly. Freedom of speech does not mean another individual h…

> Twitter is not a monopoly by any stretch.

Considering that Parler was curbstomped by Google/Apple/AWS last week, it's safe to say that Twitter doesn't operate in a naturally competitive market.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same. If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly, and if he isn't a private entity has no issue determining what a politician can say. As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace. Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with po…

To be clear, there is no serious interpretation of the US Constitution required here: Twitter absolutely has the right to determine what shows up on their website. For the government to require Twitter to publish the opinions of the president would be a very clear violation of Twitter’s own first amendment rights. There could be more nuance involved if, for example, there were a credible claim of racial discriminatio…

The problem with this argument is that it completely sidesteps the issue of how much platforms like Twitter and FB possess quasi-monopolies in their respective niches. In fact, perhaps Twitter's biggest competitor just got shut down by Amazon.

This effectively means that we are back to the old days of newspapers first, then radio, and finally TV, where a small number of media companies control what people read, hear, and see. Except, this time the power is concentrated in even fewer hands.

This raises the question of whether something should be done to turn a service like Twitter into content-agnostic platforms that can no longer decide at their own discretion what even the world's highest elected officials can and cannot say.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I think the problem is more that we have a massively connected society but are relying on the good will of corporations to provide that connectivity.

Repubs always hated public broadcasting, championing the free market to take care of journalism. Companies think Trump is toxic for their brand- surprised pikachu.

I'm not really championing public broadcasting here either.

But in an internet-enabled world, in a country that values the right to free speech, there should be wholly unbiased platform that allows anyone to promote their speech to anyone else who wants to listen, as long as it is not speech that is already considered illegal (as decided by the courts, not unnamed corporate arbiters of truth).

People keep making the argument that "free speech isn't the same as right to have a platform / be signal boosted" or whatever, and I think that was true in the past. When the most you could do to broadcast was stand on the street corner and yell out your speech, that idea applied. But in this day and age, information flow is so strong that someone who has their broadcasting ability cut off effectively has their speech cut off.

Imagine trying to exercise your free speech in a world where, whenever you tried to say something, there was someone there to just yell 1000x louder than you so that you were totally drowned out. In a world where so much of our communication is happening over internet channels, this is essentially what we're talking about when we "deplatform" someone.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#89
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His speech has not been restricted in any real way. He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes.

I am not from US, but would like to point you are wrong about that. He can call a conference, but the press is not obliged to show up. https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-white-house-press-confe... And since that in 2017, when they figured they could skip his press conferences, it has becoming more and more normal, if I remember correctly he announced a press conference only some days ago and it was ignored by almos…

All Trump has to do in order to gain a press audience is pause while walking to his helicopter.

Your link says that one agency (CNN) declined to broadcast one press conference. What about all the other statements and speeches? What about all the other media outlets?

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