111–120 of 261 posts
Well.... Twitter can delete or ban anything they want. They are a private company. We did it before with Trump, and we used this exact reason. Case closed.
The headline is rather misleading when read on its own. Twitter didn't choose to block these tweets of its own accord; it did so in response to an order from the government of India.
The expectation that a corporation operating in India will not obey Indian laws but American ones is appalling. EU, Canada, China, Turkey or North Korea - if you want to do business there you have to respect their laws. “For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” is a deeply flawed idea. If Indians believe that they need wider free speech rights or other protections, they need to change their p…
My expectation isn't that a US tech company would break local law. It's that it would get out of market where it would otherwise be forced to do things that doesn't agree with some fundamental values of the company.
The expectation that a corporation operating in India will not obey Indian laws but American ones is appalling. EU, Canada, China, Turkey or North Korea - if you want to do business there you have to respect their laws. “For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” is a deeply flawed idea. If Indians believe that they need wider free speech rights or other protections, they need to change their p…
I think that's a bit of an unfair phrasing. How about "Good people upholding their morals instead of dropping them at the door when they go to work"
I really am not a fan of how far we've taken the general image that 'business is business' and a bunch of regular morals are OK to toss out. We should preserve the social stigma we hold against people equally against companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what stops a "centralized" network from implementing the same thing?
The centralized network stops itself from implementing it. That's what it used to be like on for example Twitter, where people used blacklists. But Twitter didn't want that and they wanted to be the arbiter of what you should or should not see instead. And if you want to do that as a centralized network, you'll be cancelled by one of services you have to rely on anyways.
I can understand the tendency if there's a business behind it, maybe they don't want the homepage to be filled with polarizing, divisive, or nsfw content etc.
But I do like the idea of letting users decide what they'd like to see other than on the homepage, where I would be Ok with some default filters. Maybe they can be disabled for the inclined.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My expectation isn't that a US tech company would break local law. It's that it would get out of market where it would otherwise be forced to do things that doesn't agree with some fundamental values of the company.
> some fundamental values of the company they do you just misinterpreted what the fundamental values were
Situation in India is far grim than Official no. portray. Many district report only <5 Covid deaths adding to the normal death rate of 50-100. But, when you go to cremation grounds they are overflowing, platforms to burn the dead a full and bodies are being burned at sides, footpath.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the point of being a free western country if the people that need the support most are the most ignored? Unfortunately enlightenment / classically liberal values (different from leftist liberal values) have been on the decline in the US, particularly with younger generations. Free speech is one of those values under attack. Even the ACLU, under different leadership than in the past, is wavering on free speec…
> Although the US government is bound by the first amendment, we have effectively outsourced that right to private monopolies that aggressively censor views that don’t fit progressive perspectives. Private companies being able to do this is a form of speech. I think it's problematic, but ultimately they should be able to moderate their users/choose who they allow on their platform (outside of a few protected characte…
I’m also conflicted on this point, but my present feeling is that these tech companies constitute a different situation from a “regular” private company exercising their own free speech rights. Several of them are too big and monopolistic (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) and the ones that aren’t on that scale, like Twitter, are still very shielded from competition because their product (social media) relies on network effects (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). My take is that when a company has so many users that its scope of influence is larger than most governments, or when it has unprecedented financial size, or when there are barriers to competition like network effects, we have to take action. That action could be breaking up companies, or regulating them like a public utility, or just taking them into public ownership. Otherwise I feel the erosion of rights from ubiquitous all-powerful private entities is a loophole that runs around our intended fundamental rights.
Leaving all that aside - what platforms do you believe hold promise for a decentralized future? I remember looking at Mastodon but they seem to have gravitated towards their own form of censorship. And then there’s the chicken and egg problem of getting users, content creators, and advertisers to move. Has anyone thought of a plan to make that happen?
Its a bit like China. When the concept "face" is being compromised, its vital to cover up the issue then to actually deal with the problem.
The expectation that a corporation operating in India will not obey Indian laws but American ones is appalling. EU, Canada, China, Turkey or North Korea - if you want to do business there you have to respect their laws. “For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” is a deeply flawed idea. If Indians believe that they need wider free speech rights or other protections, they need to change their p…
“For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” I think that's a bit of an unfair phrasing. How about "Good people upholding their morals instead of dropping them at the door when they go to work" I really am not a fan of how far we've taken the general image that 'business is business' and a bunch of regular morals are OK to toss out. We should preserve the social stigma we hold against people equ…
So far, as we see with Apple, Twitter, FB, Palantir, Oracle, Cisco and many others, the Americans are fine with their businesses working with those governments.