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Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

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Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#21

Post by coldtea »

>There can be no doubt that the Russian government is putting tremendous pressure on Twitter as part of its effort to crack down on free expression on the Internet.

The case for free speech is important, but it's dissapointing to see foreign powers with huge resources sponsor whole campaigns and try to influence public opinion, policy and election outcomes in third countries, trying to get friendly lackeys in power.

In tons of countries where there are large external "strategic interests" wanting to rip them off, there are paid (or indirectly sponsored through other means) "activists" and "vocal minority leaders" that are used as propaganda personel for foreign powers.

So it's not enough that speech should be free -- it should also be independent.

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#22

Post by coldtea »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #4
bpodgursky wrote: post #2

> Experts in the country question whether these requests have any legal authority As much as it sucks that Twitter is forced to do this, the government of neither Russia or Pakistan has a legal system which I would trust to fully respect the rule of law in this matter--either is likely to simply block the service if the requests are not acknowledged. As principled as Google's stand was in refusing to pull an offensiv…

No, really, no. Russian users will notice that Twitter is being blocked by the government a lot more than they'll notice that a few tweets have been blocked. Twitter has the position, and responsibility, to play hardball with these governments. A few days of lost revenue from a Russian block is nothing compared to the lost revenue from an entire nation under tyranny. Only in China do you have a population so brainwas…

>Only in China do you have a population so brainwashed that they think these things are being done for their benefit. Russians have an active dissent. Feed it; It will bear fruit.

Well, and only in America they believe such naive things.

For one, Russian people voted predominantly for Putin. The "dissent" you mention is mostly the US promoting some of his political rivals, feeding them (you nailed that one) and over-playing them for western audiences, so as to make a big fuss out of nothing to try to influence Russian policy for its own purposes. That's 90% of the "active dissent".

And China is a world player. They want (and deserve) their own Google or Twitter, not to be tied to externally controlled services. (Of course people whose own country is doing the controlling will disagree). Those kind of actions enable local players to sweep the market (why send control of internet search and ads to Mountain View?).

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#23

Post by bx_ »

cnphil wrote: post #6
GauntletWizard wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, really, no. Russian users will notice that Twitter is being blocked by the government a lot more than they'll notice that a few tweets have been blocked. Twitter has the position, and responsibility, to play hardball with these governments. A few days of lost revenue from a Russian block is nothing compared to the lost revenue from an entire nation under tyranny. Only in China do you have a population so brainwas…

I'm from China and I just don't know how to refute your last line. Google has been blocked for about half a month now, but average people would not feel a thing about it. That's just sad.

But that's not on account of brainwashing, that's could be on account of having no need for it. I've lived in China for 5 years and have survived without Google fine. Could also be that most young/modern Chinese have an apathetic split-mind: don't give a shit about Google and don't give a shit about who is blocking them from it or why. They aren't uninformed, they just don't care.

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#24

Post by ekianjo »

mindcrime wrote: post #18

It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing. But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd like to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps e…

> It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States

Reminds me of the ludicrous scenario for Deus Ex Human Revolution. Nation States (at least in developed countries) are concentrating far more power than most multinational companies anyway, so I'd say anything that puts some balance of power is probably a good thing.

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#25

Post by PavlovsCat »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19
GuiA wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that in the short term, it is trivial for a well funded private company to offer a better product in the eyes of the end user (eg. GMail when it came out over every other open source mail system). The only solution to that problem that I can think of is to better educate the end user, and to make them see that even though company X's shiny product seems better right now, in the long term there is every…

In other words, we need to train end users how to accept poor user experiences for their own good?

Not poor, just less shiny, and even that mostly at first. That is, if everybody used the stuff regardless of it being less shiny, a lot more development would flow into it, and it might even end up just as shiny. It's a bit of a chicken/egg thing.

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#26

Post by jacobgreenleaf »

mindcrime wrote: post #18

It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing. But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd like to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps e…

In South Korea, some argue that Samsung has that position:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-s-korea-the-republic-...

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#27

Post by seanmcdirmid »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #25
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, we need to train end users how to accept poor user experiences for their own good?

Not poor, just less shiny, and even that mostly at first. That is, if everybody used the stuff regardless of it being less shiny, a lot more development would flow into it, and it might even end up just as shiny. It's a bit of a chicken/egg thing.

Many idealist developers brush off well designed and feature rich artifacts as shiny because they simply just don't get it and never will. So having users use a "less shiny" but more "ideal" artifact isn't going to magically make it better; the developer is still oblivious.

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#28

Post by [deleted] »

mindcrime wrote: post #18

It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing. But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd like to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps e…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#29

Post by comex »

GuiA wrote: post #17
dror wrote: post #14

Which is one of the reasons major communication systems should be distributed and standards based like email, rather than proprietary and run by a single company.

The problem is that in the short term, it is trivial for a well funded private company to offer a better product in the eyes of the end user (eg. GMail when it came out over every other open source mail system). The only solution to that problem that I can think of is to better educate the end user, and to make them see that even though company X's shiny product seems better right now, in the long term there is every…

I think a more realistic solution is to educate developers to prioritize making open shiny.

After all, Gmail may have its problems, especially recently with Google+, but it interoperates with every other email service (and until recently, Jabber client) and is relatively easy to move off of; for most of its 10 years of existence, I'd say it had a positive role in keeping people using email. It's far, far better than something like Twitter where the platform owner has absolute control and can censor tweets or arbitrarily crack down on third party clients.

Similarly, while App.net didn't exactly replace Twitter, I think I think its emphasis on encouraging people to write independent clients for it was very healthy for it (and while some of those clients were proprietary, proprietary native clients for open platforms are far less bad than proprietary platforms). Why didn't tent.io try to launch with spiffy clients?

To be honest, I don't think it's as much that open can't be shiny as that creating a social platform without an existing userbase to leverage is nearly impossible - most closed platforms fail too. And I think most developers know that shiny is necessary - it's just that there isn't enough motivation and enthusiasm. But it's unreasonable to expect anyone to use your platform if you're not going to spend enough engineering effort on it...

Re: Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party

#30

Post by PhasmaFelis »

mindcrime wrote: post #18

It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing. But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd like to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps e…

Democratic governments are at least notionally beholden to their people. I realize that's something of a bread-and-circuses fantasy, but at the very least they have to act like they're listening and taking action, or they get voted out next election.

Corporations are under no such compulsion. Their sole motive is profit. Put Wal-Mart in charge, and they'll happily kill half the population and feed them to the other half if the accountants say it will cut costs somehow. Yeah, every now and then you get someone with a conscience in charge of a big company, but if you're going to rely on that you might as well just cut out the middleman and go straight to a "benevolent" dictatorship.

Oh, the other thing you missed is that most corpocracy scenarios (including the one that we're actually living in) aren't about corporations standing up to the government, but about them using money and influence to make sure that the government does what's best for the corps instead of what's best for the people. Giving the corps more power doesn't create a balance, it just makes it easier for them to pull the puppet strings.

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