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Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

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Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#411

Post by xwdv »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #37
can16358p wrote: post #19

Turkish here. This is unbelievable, but totally expected from the current "democractic" government. Social media usage is very high in Türkiye and people are coordinating using social media (mainly Twitter) for rescue operations in near realtime. I'm pretty much sure some people will literally die under wreckage because of communication interruptions as the result of this block. (For anyone telling to use VPN, yeah,…

> For anyone telling to use VPN, yeah, many people are used to using VPN because of these blocks not to mention, imagine learning to setup a VPN (Beacuse your life depends on it) while you're buried under rubble..

[flagged]

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#412

Post by status200 »

AeroNotix wrote: post #336
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Censorship should be a nuanced topic if anyone gives it any serious thought. Not all censorship is at the same level, and there is obviously a difference between shutting down Twitter and not letting folks criticize the government and, say, not telling folks misinformation that can lead to another's harm or death (fake cures, for example).

The problem with allowing the interpretation of whether something should be censored be based on the obvious nuances that it entails is that the exact nuance is not universal among all people. This is why ZERO censorship is the only reasonable form of censorship.

It would be interesting to get your opinion on censorship again if a specific lie was gaining exponential traction and threatened the livelihood of your family. Or even if there were something less direct, like if you couldn't go see a movie in a theater because a huge tiktok trend of yelling "Fire!" and filming people trample each other gains the spotlight of millions of users.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#413

Post by arp242 »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #66
remind_me_again wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very subjective judgement and everyone is entitled his or her own opinion. But that one is very biased. As far as elections concerned Turkish election system is very solid as a process and implementation is solid. In the end Erdogan lost Istanbul in the last elections even after that election repeated for only Istanbul, and worse for Erdogan, the second round was much more decisive. People didn't like the elec…

To give everyone an idea of how solid the process is: consider that the opposition candidate widely considered most capable of beating the incumbent president was recently sentenced to two years in jail and removed from politics on the weakest of pretenses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Ekrem_%C4%B0mamo%C4... Here are a few other biased sources offering their subjective judgements: - https://freedomhouse.o…

> This is not to say that Turkey is full autocracy: the incubent president has a genuinely large amount of support and it's quite possible they would win a free and fair election.

This is kind of skewed though, if people can't go on TV or Twitter and say "Erdogan doesn't know what he's doing and his policies are foolish".

This is really the modern autocrat's secret weapon: have reasonably(-ish) fair(-ish) elections, but also rig things in such a way that people only hear one side of the story. It's not a surprise people support Erdogan if they only hear how brilliant he is with tepid criticism at best. Control the narrative → control the vote. Ergodan, Putin, Xi all play by this book.

Having a free press and free investigative journalism is critical; without it you don't really have fair elections, even if the actual business of casting and counting ballots is sound and free of fraud.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#414

Post by alphanullmeric »

epgui wrote: post #393
alphanullmeric wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiously, all the people that support such censorship in western countries are actually against it in this instance. Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to.

It's almost like the goal is not censorship for censorship's sake, but rather the goal is actually protecting the more vulnerable (which in this case is clearly the Turkish people and not Erdogan). It's almost like there are principles at play!

My principle is that force is only justified in response to force, and speech is not force (unless it makes a threat), false or not. If you don’t agree with that principle then I’d like to hear it explicitly.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#415

Post by [deleted] »

dalbasal wrote: post #373
rayiner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you use quotes around “Democratic” do you mean the elections are rigged? I’m not familiar with the legitimacy or lack thereof of Turkish elections.

Not (AFAIK) the elections, but everything else. Highly restricted media (many journalists in jail) and now social media. Many opposition leaders, judges jailed, exiled or otherwise "purged." Over 100k of them. Constant fiddling with the constitution and election system to increase his own power. "Democracy," in the sense that refers to the democratic systems of government in existence, is a bundle. Elections without…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#416

Post by kibwen »

dvt wrote: post #381
WaxProlix wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concept of the marketplace of ideas and that, by and large, ideas are sifted via free speech and the good ones last while the bad ones die This might be the core of it then, because while I generally agree with the idea of Free Speech in the abstract, I don't think that it's been having good outcomes for society in the era of the cultic milieu, and I think that has to do with this 'marketplace' idea not really hold…

The problem with alternatives to the "free marketplace of ideas" is that they are all (by definition) authoritative. And who's the best "authority" here? The government? Me? You? Who decides what ideas get to be censored? Imo, there's more problems with the authoritative model than the marketplace model. Kind of like Churchill's famous quote about democracy: "it's the worst form of government, except from all the oth…

This was true in practice before technology made communication and synthesized speech trivial. Unfortunately for us all, we no longer live in a world where "more speech is unambiguously better" is true. Technology has ruined the meme of free speech. I'm not saying there are any unambiguously good alternatives; we are all diminished by its loss. But clinging to its corpse isn't doing anyone any good.

As for the Churchill quote, the reason that democracy has those qualities is because it inherently involves compromise. An uncompromising philosophy like "more speech is always better" is quite a different thing. We need a new rallying cry to replace the meme of free speech, probably something to do with the notion of signal:noise ratios, but it's beyond me to invent such a meme.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#417

Post by slg »

smcn wrote: post #397
slg wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These algorithms are a multiplier to the problem, but they aren't the root cause. You can find plenty of misinformation on cable news and you can't blame that exclusively on algorithms.

Not the root cause, no. I'd say the root cause is reliance on advertising for income because that means that you now need to draw as many viewers/users as possible, and that's why they start to create content which maximizes reactions or engagement.

But advertising still isn't the root cause. Why does this type of content draw more viewers?

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#418

Post by jliptzin »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #360
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've missed the point. It's not desirable to have listings which contain false advertising; the remedy for that is to restrict false advertising, not make every buyer chase the seller in a contract dispute after the fact. That would be insanity.

Nope, your comparison is just not equivalent. A sale is a transfer of property. We enforce the implicit contract that goes along with that. The buyer will pay, the seller will deliver, the product is accurate, etc. This discussion is about speech, for which no such contract exists. If you disagree, then you should have no problem arresting people for showing off a 3 watt bulb they claim to be 5 watts.

Not a lawyer but I could imagine a situation where you're in a store and you see an advertisement for a blue light bulb that says that blue light bulbs are proven to disinfect surfaces. You remember you have some blue light bulbs at home, so you go home and screw them in. Or maybe you go on amazon and order some blue light bulbs because they're cheaper, even though different brands are not making that claim, the first one tricked you into thinking it was true. You haven't entered into any contract with the manufacturer making that false claim, yet you are still harmed by it.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#419

Post by algorias »

netfortius wrote: post #157

Not to defend Erdogan by any means (passionately despise him as much as I despise Putin), but truth be told - handing to and relying on unbiased/factual information dissemination, via Twitter, in the Musk era, is something highly questionable.

>in the Musk era

random tweets have never been a trustworthy information source, Musk taking over has nothing to do with it.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#420

Post by JTbane »

beefield wrote: post #87
golergka wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of many, many reasons why western countries and social media companies should not normalise censorship re-branded like "fighting disinformation".

How do you propose western countries and social media companies fight disinformation?

Should they? One political party's disinfo is another's creed.
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