221–230 of 259 posts
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Mastodon is a very very small surface for twitter...
And not long ago Facebook was a very small surface for MySpace. And Reddit was a very small surface for Digg, and so on. Network effects can cause competition to rapidly snowball.
Twitter may die, but i don't think mastodon would grow as much as you make it sound.
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antitrust? Is twitter a monopoly now?
At least traditionally, you don’t really have to clear a particularly impressive bar to be found in violation of antitrust law, mostly just behaving in an anti-competitive manor.
When I go to X department store, they'll happily look up how items are priced on their website for price matching, but they won't look at the website for Y department store to whom they would also price match. Is that anti-competitive?
That's a long way around to what level do businesses have to help you in sending you to a competitor?
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It feels redundant. How many government companies are there in the US?
It seems like you're working overtime in these comments to deny that the context in which we use the phrase "private company" matters. This is a pretty common usage, analogous to "private good" vs. "public good"; surely this discussion on HN is not genuinely the first time you've ever been exposed to it?
Of course it's not the first time. That's precisely why I'm making a big deal out of it, because I've seen it over and over. I'm suggesting that there's a kind of unwarranted ideology behind the usage that doesn't accurately reflect the legal reality, and gives the impression that companies have unlimited rights when in fact they're strictly regulated in countless ways. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31609113
We could talk about Section 230, for example, which is obviously important with regard to Twitter and whether it can operate.
It feels to me like people are "working overtime" to handwave about "government owned companies", of which nobody has given any examples. Nor have they explained why a government owned company wouldn't have the right to block any links that the government wanted to block. If anything, a government owned company would probably be treated as exempt from some rules that apply to "private" companies.
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Repealing 230 would literally kill large swaths of the internet. If platforms like Twitter or Reddit were legally responsible for what their users post, they would need to institute white lists to avoid being bankrupted. Can you imagine the amount of low-level casual defamation across the entirety of Facebook? Or Reddit? The amount of copyrighted material stolen and posted? There would be an overnight industry of peo…
> It's literally the dumbest idea possible. Unless the aim was literally to destroy these large left-leaning, people-empowering, highly profitable, internationally reaching businesses. Now imagine which political party and which geopolitical adversary would like to make the internet less liberal, silence the powerless, make American tax revenue lower, and make more space for authoritarian voices on the world stage.
But people-empowering? These large platforms are very much anti-democratic and anti-empowering people. Even more, subverting peoples wills about what they buy by managing what they see and algorithmically trying to guide what they should think is very much anti people.
Any people empowering is merely a side effect and not at all the purpose
Surely this won't be the case anymore under Elon, right? ... right? On a serious note, do we know if there are other links that are blocked; like facebook or instagram or even onlyfans?
It is generally known in the artist circles I hang out in that Twitter’s algorithm loves to hide links to Patreon. They may also hide tweets that merely mention it, as well as other words crucial to the business of being an artist online like “commission”, which leads to creative misspellings like “Half off on c!miss!ons for my Petreon supporters this week!”. (Twitter loves to hide off-site links in general. Leaving…
Do you have a source/proof for me?
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> OP is implying that a theoretical public sector social network I dispute that the OP was implying or even thinking anything about a theoretical public sector social network.
OK.
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When people talk about "private companies" they're referring to entities that are not government-owned/controlled. Being listed on the stock market does not change that.
What do you call companies that are not publicly traded?
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It seems like you're working overtime in these comments to deny that the context in which we use the phrase "private company" matters. This is a pretty common usage, analogous to "private good" vs. "public good"; surely this discussion on HN is not genuinely the first time you've ever been exposed to it?
> surely this discussion on HN is not genuinely the first time you've ever been exposed to it? Of course it's not the first time. That's precisely why I'm making a big deal out of it, because I've seen it over and over. I'm suggesting that there's a kind of unwarranted ideology behind the usage that doesn't accurately reflect the legal reality, and gives the impression that companies have unlimited rights when in fac…
> Nor have they explained why a government owned company wouldn't have the right to block any links that the government wanted to block.
It's the First Amendment. The USPS can't refuse to deliver a postcard because they don't like what it says, for example. If the government ran a user-generated content platform (which they shouldn't, and probably never will) they would be bound by the same requirements.
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> The government controls some things. Companies control some other things. The government actually controls companies. In fact they wouldn't exist as legal entities without the government. I feel there is a common misconception that "private companies can do whatever they want", belied by the existence of government regulation, but nonetheless a misconception regularly employed to dismiss antitrust concerns, for exa…
I don't think anyone is unaware of the concept of law. There are significant 'firewalls' between the public and private sectors, otherwise we would just have facism/communism or anarcho-capitalism.
They're aware of the concept of law but frequently unaware of specific laws. ;-)
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> surely this discussion on HN is not genuinely the first time you've ever been exposed to it? Of course it's not the first time. That's precisely why I'm making a big deal out of it, because I've seen it over and over. I'm suggesting that there's a kind of unwarranted ideology behind the usage that doesn't accurately reflect the legal reality, and gives the impression that companies have unlimited rights when in fac…
Aside from all of the additional accounting/reporting/etc. burdens placed on publicly-traded companies, there are no differences in legal requirements between publicly-traded and privately-held companies. > Nor have they explained why a government owned company wouldn't have the right to block any links that the government wanted to block. It's the First Amendment. The USPS can't refuse to deliver a postcard because…
Not sure why you mention this when everyone in the comments here insists that publicly-traded and privately-held companies are both included under "private company" in this discussion.
> The USPS can't refuse to deliver a postcard because they don't like what it says, for example.
Well, it actually must refuse if the receiver doesn't like it what it says. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_v._United_States_Post_Of... "the sender does not have a constitutional right to send unwanted material into someone's home"