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Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

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Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#301

Post by hooande »

crazygringo wrote: post #196
tacostakohashi wrote: post #146

I don't really have much of an opinion on how twitter should approach world leaders. I'm more interested in the approach of world leaders to twitter. As far as I'm concerned, people receiving salaries from the taxpayer shouldn't be spending their time writing free copy for twitter. They should be communicating with the public via government operated websites, or press conferences covered by multiple media organizatio…

It's not "free copy for twitter" anymore than a press briefing is "free copy for newspapers". Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and listening. Today, Twitter is just as important of a conduit as newspapers or the evening news. People already read Twitter and find it far more convenient to follow a world leader than to visit individual sites or set up an RSS reader. Also you might be suffering fr…

Twitter is a non-government owned software platform. It makes no sense to use it for exclusive official communications. Because, as we've seen, they can close any account at any time. even the us president

Trump in particular basing his presidency around twitter was super stupid. He could have and still can post anything he wants to trump.com, and it will be widely distributed on social media immediately

I'm always hesitant to base any major endeavor on a software platform that someone else owns. because...they own it. They can do whatever they want with their property

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#302

Post by vxNsr »

krapp wrote: post #136
vxNsr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly, until recently they were. It only became different recently and obv xkcd popularized the idea, but if freedom of speech isn’t associated with freedom from persecution it’s not really free speech. Everyone in the world has the right to free speech because they can literally talk and say whatever they want, but if the society that speech is spoken in doesn’t agree to allow that speech to be spoken freely (as in…

>but if freedom of speech isn’t associated with freedom from persecution it’s not really free speech. Given that every government in history which has recognized the concept of "free speech", including the United States, has regulated and even outlawed some forms of speech, and given that "consequence" is a natural, emergent property of societies and the fact that humans are social, emotional animals who don't proces…

None of that really follows, the idea that because something hasn't existed until now proves it isn't necessary is again a reductive argument that simply doesn't make sense.

There are many things that didn't exist and thus, were unnecessary for "modern" living and yet once they were invented and adopted it would be hard to go without them.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#303

Post by cratermoon »

908B64B197 wrote: post #290
IgorPartola wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to take a look at Voice of America, a Congress-funded network that broadcasts almost exclusively outside the US as US propaganda: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America

I think it's great that, despite censorship, we work hard at providing a reliable source of information throughout the world.

Even the folks who worked for the VOA and its parent the United States Information Agency acknowledge that was created as a Cold War propaganda channel[1]. The broadcasts were heavily influenced by the CIA. The agency was reorganized in 1999 and the USIA abolished, but it's still mostly about presenting the State Department's view of international news.

[1] https://archive.org/details/warriorsofdisinf0000alvi

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#304

Post by vxNsr »

krapp wrote: post #226
T-hawk wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you continue being okay with every loss of speech, then the only endpoint will be to have no speech at all.

When did I claim to be okay with every loss of speech? Every business and website since time immemorial has had the ability to choose with whom they do business, and what goods to stock and what not, and every publisher has had the right to choose which work to publish and which not. Despite common arguments, sites like Twitter are not the public commons, nor do they hold a monopoly on human communication, nor do the…

> Every business and website since time immemorial has had the ability to choose with whom they do business, and what goods to stock and what not, and every publisher has had the right to choose which work to publish and which not.

This is false. As you said in your previous comment the government has always had a very heavy hand in regulating what people could and couldn't do, it's very much regulated who you can do business with and what you can stock and sell and to whom. This doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for a society that protects the rights of both the buyer and seller as much as possible.

Your two comments contradict each other in such a stark way it quite frankly makes my head spin.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#305

Post by refenestrator »

Robotbeat wrote: post #288
refenestrator wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was struck by the Chinese embassy that got banned a couple months ago. They said that their fight against radical islam is good for uighur women.. which is propaganda but also the exact same propaganda that western interventionists use all the time. One is ok, the other is not.

Of course, Twitter DID take action against a Western leader who was leading an attempted coup, and they got absolutely creamed by the “freedom of speech” folks for doing so. So Twitter has been willing to draw the line for Western leaders as well. But that raises a good point: if the media outlets in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion (I won’t even mention the 2001 Afghanistan invasion as there just was not the sa…

That's american-on-american, I was talking about geopolitical interests.

I saw reports of posts from air force bases supporting our attempted coup in Bolivia, for example.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#306

Post by BoorishBears »

dv_dt wrote: post #239
BoorishBears wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea what that first paragraph is trying to say. And people can contact other people and criticize world leaders whether or not those leaders spend countless hours a day tweeting. Twitter is quite possibly one of the worst places for that anyways for multiple reasons (established fake account infrastructure distorting conversations, poor layout for async discussion between many people, etc)

I was trying to say that just because one individual leader did not avail himself of the opportunity, doesn't mean that having that opportunity exist isn't valuable overall. People can contact each other but having the leader somewhere available provides a focal point that otherwise wouldn't exist. Twitter has problems - but it's not clear to me how a lot of the problem unique problems of twitter vs common problems o…

> I was trying to say that just because one individual leader did not avail himself of the opportunity, doesn't mean that having that opportunity exist isn't valuable overall.

Then say that? Because this:

> Not all opportunities are exercised - but especially on HN I would think we should realize that it's significant that they exist.

Sure doesn't mean that.

> People can contact each other but having the leader somewhere available provides a focal point that otherwise wouldn't exist.

What? No. The focal point is the person and their actions.

Donald Trump was also one of the most contentious topics on every other form of social media that doesn't have him posting. Just look at Reddit.

> Twitter has problems - but it's not clear to me how a lot of the problem unique problems of twitter vs common problems of meeting and filtering out any anonymous mass of people at a party or conference.

Then read my comment again.

All platforms have problems, Twitter is just even worse than par, and the format is especially bad.

I can't believe we're actually going to pretend the platform that started by limiting people to discourse based on 140 characters supposed to be some sort of rallying point against bad leaders rather than an echo chamber where everyone talks past everyone except those who agree with their views.

-

Leaders should use their official platforms that aren't subject to the whims of a private company. If news companies or individuals or even the platforms themselves want to drop those official statements into their ecosystem that's on them.

It's one thing if a country just can't put together that infrastructure but the spark for this is literally the only country in the world with a tld for their government (.gov) there is no reason it should have ever come to this.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#307

Post by readflaggedcomm »

curation wrote: post #147
readflaggedcomm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So absent power dynamics, speech shouldn't be free? I rather think of it as a fundamental human faculty which one has the right to exercise. Not everything is about your hierarchies.

What is free speech? I argue it is not even a concept. Concepts divide people. There is no person against free speech. Please don't bring up Russia and China. I've been to these countries and people they cherish free speech;they just have freely spoken to have an explicit authoritarian ruler. Free speech is conversation to have out of laziness.

You might want to aim your comment bot more accurately next time. I offered a definition which your copypasta conspicuously fails to address, and your geopolitical tangent has no relevance.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#308

Post by alexashka »

ookdatnog wrote: post #283
exabrial wrote: post #23

Be a free speech platform, how about that?

These platforms exist and aren't hard to find. They also tend to be cesspools. Part of the value proposition of their competitors is that they do moderate their content, to some extent. I don't see why we should force all platforms to operate essentially without moderation.

This false dichotomy of authoritarian governance or 'cesspool' keeps coming up.

There exist other options.

Just let the people filter and set their own rules for engagement.

Of course that would eliminate these creepy company's ability to insert ads and other trash into your life, so no one does it.

Facebook had a perfectly fine and working news feed, but then they wanted to insert ads, so they made an 'algorithmic' feed that decides you want to see ads instead. Convenient.

These platforms pretending they can't solve the issues of idiot speech and outright law violations without acting like Stalin is laughable.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#309

Post by enkid »

cratermoon wrote: post #303
908B64B197 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's great that, despite censorship, we work hard at providing a reliable source of information throughout the world.

Even the folks who worked for the VOA and its parent the United States Information Agency acknowledge that was created as a Cold War propaganda channel[1]. The broadcasts were heavily influenced by the CIA. The agency was reorganized in 1999 and the USIA abolished, but it's still mostly about presenting the State Department's view of international news. [1] https://archive.org/details/warriorsofdisinf0000alvi

"Propaganda" is a loaded term. VOA is historically a very accurate and unbiased (as far as that is possible) source of news. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/voice-america-bias-and-reliabi... [2] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/voice-of-america/

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#310

Post by wutbrodo »

Analemma_ wrote: post #256
cle wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not. There's a natural scarcity of space for physical cameras and reporters. As far as I understand, the press themselves are largely responsible for figuring out these logistics via the WHCA. (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.) There isn't any practical scarcity for text streams coming from the White House though, so I can't think of a reason why consuming them should be tied to a closed platform like T…

Twitter isn't "a closed platform" in the sense that is relevant here. If I want to read the President's tweets without a Twitter account, I can.

Well, sort of. Not if they remove it. The fact that they (mostly) haven't exercised this control so far over world leaders' tweets is a matter of internal policy at Twitter.
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