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Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

sciencemag.org

271–280 of 335 posts

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#271
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter? Although some people agree that is the question, it is not the fundamental one here. Most of the respectable arguments are that Twitter's bans are senselessly harming Twitter. They're building a gaping hole in their offering that a competitor can cover.

The thing is, few other companies will do business with anyone trying to compete with Twitter. Parler was nuked. Gab was almost nuked, but they've managed to survive. There's a huge demand for alternatives to Twitter, but other major tech companies, the corporate press, and many politicians are doing everything in their power to crush those alternatives and prevent them from springing up.

There's a demand for service for narcissists, but it isn't huge. Twitter was becoming irrelevant and the only thing that brought Twitter back from irrelevancy was that POTUS was big user of it.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all boils down to this: a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter? If yes: b) Who decides which accounts harm twitter? If the answer is "twitter", then they have effectively the right to terminate any account at their will. I don't know what other answer is possible for b) except maybe "the courts", and I'm not sure I like that one. If the answer to a) is no, for which companies does this ap…

If Twitter were just a few million users or something, I'd subscribe to the "they're a private entity, let them do what they want", but they monopolize a huge portion of our national (indeed, international) dialogue to the effect that they can unilaterally influence election outcomes for the world's most powerful democracies (at least that's the implication if you subscribe to the 'Russia manipulated Twitter algos in…

Alternatively, we all could pay a bit less attention to Twitter and avoid the issue

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#273
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in a town with no fresh water, and the only drinks available are sold by the local store. This store does not sell bottled water, wine, orange juice, milk, or tea. The only drinks it sells are Coca-Cola and Pepsi. But if you don't like Coca-Cola, just buy Pepsi - how silly it would be to complain of monopoly when you still have a choice!

To extend the analogy so it's more accurate: or you could go to the local stream and drink some water (host your own speech).

To add some spice from the real world, you may find that the local stream has run dry:

Farmers rely on access to groundwater for the cultivation of their crops. but since Coca-Cola's arrival, they have been confronted with a serious decline in water levels. [...] documents from the government's water ministry show that water levels remained stable from 1995 until 2000, when the Coca-Cola plant became operational. Water levels then dropped by almost 10 metres over the following five years.

https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/coca-cola-drinking-world...

The company was blamed for depleting the local supply of water even in communities where it did not have operations

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/31/h...

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#274
post #270
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ISPs were not common carriers until they were. It was only meant for the layer underneath them: telcos. The world changes and we should not be stuck with the technology of the 80s until the end of time.

actually they were from the start, or more accurately telcos were required to provide their lines for ISPs.

Actually isps weren't common carriers until 2015 and aren't again today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/14...

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#276
post #274
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually they were from the start, or more accurately telcos were required to provide their lines for ISPs.

Actually isps weren't common carriers until 2015 and aren't again today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/14...

And since 2015 social media platforms have had no real competition.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would make sense to combine these ideas with a circuit breaker that only kicks in once you have a certain MAU count. Having it apply to every forum everywhere would suck and be unworkable, but once you're at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. levels of exposure, there are a different set of interests and responsibilities to society in play.

You seem to be describing a scheme where Twitter is legally required to be very careful about moderation, but Parler isn't, which seems crazy to me. Also, it doesn't address other vehicles for suppressing toxic speech; for instance, no 230 change you come up with is going to obligate cloud providers to do business with Parler and StormFront. I should add a point I should have made earlier, which is that 230 is in no…

Not at all. In my ideal world, Parler would have the same restrictions applied, and would have fallen afoul of point 4 at the very least, given their massive popularity spike. They also weren't completely hands off, so the last option is off the table for them.

That ambiguity is precisely what I try to address. That distinction might not exist now, but it arguably should.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#278

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.

You missed the worldwide vote for the company that should hold the only truths in all matters? Twitter won. Google second and FB third.

This whole argument is such bullshit. People are trying to frame it as POTUS suddenly has no way to speak as if presidents before him had no platform to talk to the nation. POTUS and other officials should be banned for using private platform for official messages.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#279
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These massive websites/broadcast SMS cannot have it both ways. They cannot seek the protections of being "critical infrastructure" of any sort, common carrier, public forum, etc. and then, at the same time, disable user accounts for any reason just like any other private website. They have to pick one or the other. The arguments I am seeing online are folks who have chosen one or the other and are arguing from their…

you are mixing up net neutrality and a platform. Net Neutrality ensures that ISP do what the name says, providing Internet service without interfering with it, like restricting which sites you can visit. A platform like twitter, facebook, parler. Is something that was created from scratch and is owned by these companies. As of now it's not their duty to allow everyone in. And enforcing it is stepping on their freedom…

> perhaps the government supposed to provide such public platform.

Nah, inviting the government to moderate these platforms is the last thing we want. It's bad enough there are only a handful of them, we definitely don't want all that power under one person's control.

Re: Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

#280
post #274
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually they were from the start, or more accurately telcos were required to provide their lines for ISPs.

Actually isps weren't common carriers until 2015 and aren't again today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/14...

They were until 2003 when they were classified as information services. The FCC then enforced net neutrality rules by penalizing ISPs whenever they broke them until 2014 when court ruled that if ISPs are under Title I, the FCC has no control over them. In 2015 FCC reclassified them back as Title II, in 2017/2018 Pai reclassified back to Title I, but multiple states (I know that at least California and Washington) implemented their own net neutrality laws.
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