Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 156 posts

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#101

Post by dragonwriter »

lhnz wrote: post #70
jmull wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain.

Why would a free-speech "purist" be okay with authorities having special abilities to append emphasized messages below other messages? People that care deeply about free-speech tend to want a level playing ground for every person in a discussion, and to not have platforms that have a centralised bias for or against different messages or identities. It's disingenuous to tell a bunch of people with principles towards d…

> Why would a free-speech "purist" be okay with authorities having special abilities to append emphasized messages below other messages?

A free-speech purist would recognize that these aren't “aurhorities”, they are actors exercising their free speech, and which people are free to not associate with by not choosing Twitter as a platform for their own (distribution or consumption of) speech.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#102

Post by kanox »

OneGuy123 wrote: post #12
giuliomagnifico wrote: post #9

Sounds good to me. Twitter is not really slowing down the like action, but it will say to you only “hey, this may be a fake news, are you sure you want like it?”. People are stupid, in a perfect world this is useless but we live here...

Ironicaly you missed the most important point: who decides what is fake news? You still don't get it that _NO ONE_ can claim they know what is/is not fake news because everyone has their own incentives.

> Ironicaly you missed the most important point: who decides what is fake news?

In this case, twitter. And it's fine to disagree with the fact checkers.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#103

Post by betwixthewires »

Traster wrote: post #77
betwixthewires wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter defines misinformation -it's their platform, they get to make that call. Sure. But if they choose to do that, it is not a place where you can expect to share ideas and have real discussions with people. It becomes a place where perception is crafted, something those of us who actually want to use the internet as opposed to a TV channel are trying to avoid.

Sure it is. HN has a whole plethora of rules that are purely to the taste of the website owner, I can still have plenty of real discussions and share ideas. I understand there's limits to the discussion and if I want to discuss more extreme stuff I can go to other sites.

The two sites are not equatable. One site has simple rules, don't fight, put effort into your posts, make sure your posts are interesting to engineers. And they're known beforehand. The other just decides halfway through any controversy how they are going to handle it and usually errs on the side of being heavy handed. There's no telling beforehand just by reading ToS what Twitter will do.

I could probably say anything right now, and as long as I backed it up with data, or just thoughtfulness, I probably wouldn't be banned or censored here. I've never seen anything like that happen on this site. You can have free discussions here. You could, theoretically, have a free discussion on Twitter if you genuinely were not interested in discussing anything controversial. For most topics of disagreement though, on twitter you have to police your own speech.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#104

Post by kanox »

jmull wrote: post #30

I’ll just point out: if you’re a free speech purist, you are perfectly OK with this. Twitter isn’t removing these tweets, just adding their own messages. That is, they are responding to free speech with their own free speech. If they use this feature on high-profile figures it’s even better: free speech to authority.

> They are responding to free speech with their own free speech.

Yes, this is unironically a good thing.

It means that Twitter is acting as a publisher rather than a neutral channel but nobody is willing to pretend that corporations are neutral anyway.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#105

Post by kanox »

lhnz wrote: post #99
drone wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of any free speech "purist" that conflates the government with private parties. Regardless of how much "power" or "authority" the private party has. In fact, by every measure I've ever seen, a free speech "purist" would specifically say that Twitter has the right to amend, change, alter, or provide any opinion they so choose, no matter how much "authority" they may or may not have. Every free speech "pur…

> Every free speech "purist" I've ever met limits > their opinion of control to the government. I'm not American so don't have First Amendment rights. There are people that have argued for free speech outside of this narrow lense. John Stuart Mill, one of the original advocates of free speech, argued against censorship by private parties. He discussed the "the moral coercion of public opinion" and wrote that "the chi…

People are often perfectly willing to live with stigma. 70 million people did go and vote for Trump.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#106

Post by kanox »

aww_dang wrote: post #2

Objective truth as revealed to us by the anointed technocrats and fact checkers has been accepted by partisans where it suits their biases. Questioning these official truths amounts to blasphemy in the social media space. The premise of democracy rests upon the concept of free and open debate. If we cannot trust the public to consume information without hand holding, why should we trust them to vote on issues which i…

It's not censorship if the post is still accessible. It's Twitter inc. expressing their opinion.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#107

Post by betwixthewires »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #83
betwixthewires wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gab is not a better alternative. For a thing to be a better alternative it would need to have structural differences that ensure it will not devolve as Twitter has. Gab is essentially a carbon copy of Twitter, but for a different set of ideas. Pleroma and Mastodon (as well as other ActivityPub enabled microblogging software) are the only real, better alternatives that exist right now.

Don't those have the same problem as Gab? How does federation prevent echo chambers and misinformation epicenters?

It prevents censorship network wide, which means you can publish no matter what and people can see it. So it prevents echo chambers by making sure nobody controls the narrative on the network.

Another way it does this is that there's no financial incentive to share "engaging" content and there's no algorithm to rank content. So it is not conducive to the viral spread of inflammatory content.

Keep in mind, most things we call "networks" are just single web sites. Most of the problem I believe stems from this confusion. AP is an actual network. It is what we have wanted to have on the internet for a very long time.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#108

Post by entropea »

lhnz wrote: post #18

There will be tweets with tens of thousands of likes/retweets saying "Are others able to like this?" and so the information will be streissand effected to many more people. Additionally, if the media makes the wrong call due to insufficient evidence at the time or bias, then they could take a hit to their reputation. It will almost become tactical for the original posters to hold back evidence and wait for their "mis…

>Additionally, if the media makes the wrong call due to insufficient evidence at the time or bias, then they could take a hit to their reputation.

Does that ever happen? It seems they're exempt from repercussions.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#109

Post by betwixthewires »

dragonwriter wrote: post #101
lhnz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a free-speech "purist" be okay with authorities having special abilities to append emphasized messages below other messages? People that care deeply about free-speech tend to want a level playing ground for every person in a discussion, and to not have platforms that have a centralised bias for or against different messages or identities. It's disingenuous to tell a bunch of people with principles towards d…

> Why would a free-speech "purist" be okay with authorities having special abilities to append emphasized messages below other messages? A free-speech purist would recognize that these aren't “aurhorities”, they are actors exercising their free speech, and which people are free to not associate with by not choosing Twitter as a platform for their own (distribution or consumption of) speech.

You forcing your own caveat on what I said before other people get to read it is a good bit different that simply freely speaking, regardless of the fact that you own the medium.

Either Twitter is a place for us to speak or it is the blog of the moderation team. It cannot be both. If they want to caveat everything everyone says then you're right, the solution is to not use the site, but it isn't because we don't like what they're saying, it is because Twitter is no longer a website designed for people to have discussions with one another, it is a website designed for the owner to control the flow of ideas.

Re: Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation

#110

Post by jmull »

lhnz wrote: post #94
jmull wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Twitter is an “authority”, what is the President of the United States? Twitter has a platform whose design inherently amplifies the voices of high-profile people, and consequently dampens the voices of the non-high-profile. Why be OK with that, and yet somehow not be OK with minor design adjustments that provide a small, partial, counterweight? You cast this as a “special ability” but isn’t this simply the design…

> Anyway, just to clear your thinking, Don't you think that this comes across as quite arrogant? I wrote quite clearly that most people interested in free-speech aren't purists and might expect "limits to free speech" in certain circumstances, but that we'd like to discuss what this means with respect to the actual goal of a relatively level playing field for discussion. You tell me that you've not strawmanned anybod…

> This suggests that free speech is merely about being able to speak and that advocates would be happy for their speech to be stymied in other ways

I do not suggest that. I am not trying narrowly define speech. My point is: It is free speech for someone to make claims about election fraud. It is also free speech for someone to refute those claims.

Why deny Twitter the right to their own editorial position, whatever its bias, while certain twitter users — with strong biases of their own — have free reign?

You seem to want to cast Twitter expressing their own position as inhibiting someone else’s free speech, but it’s just their own free speech. Free speech means you get to express yourself, not be free from contradiction.

Post reply on HN