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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

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Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#251

Post by noelwelsh »

jcroll wrote: post #232
gjulianm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there no way to consider social media as unreliable overall and not bother fact checking anything there? The issue is that this is not just a random social media post, it's coming from the President of the US, and most people expect that someone in that position will not post clearly false messages, specially when those messages affect something as fundamental as the election process.

Democratic elections are supposed to be the failsafe for that no?

No, it's not.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#252

Post by sparkie »

bt1a wrote: post #100
rlyshw wrote: post #72

Honestly just more proof that we need decentralization of the Internet. Handing over control of our digital platforms and identities to 3rd party for-profit companies is not the way the internet should work.

Aye but with no one in charge, how can the masses protect themselves against ever-increasing disinformation campaigns?

Idea: put a monetary cost on publishing information. Receiving spam should be profitable. Disinformation campaigns will be costly.

If the information is useful and worth reading, the viewer will pay back the publisher, an amount which covers the initial publishing cost and additional revenue for the publisher.

Conversely, if the information is garbage or incorrect, the viewer will not pay the fee and it will be a loss for the publisher.

The payments can be small, cheap and fast via Bitcoin's Lightning Network.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#254

Post by adwww »

plehoux wrote: post #141
adwww wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol what, he is biased for pointing out misinformation from a prominent public figure, after years of Twitter being criticised for allowing false information to proliferate?

I think he is referencing those tweets: https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/126545757821512499...

ha oh, in that case that's a bit of an own goal from Twitter.

Although I doubt he put that fact checking warning up all on his own, there must have been a policy in place that senior management agreed to, and legal have presumably okayed.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#255

Post by TechBro8615 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #126

From a free speech/free press standpoint, private company Twitter absolutely has the right to editorialize Trump's tweets, while Trump trying to silence Twitter would be the government infringing on the right to free speech/press.

What about from an FEC regulations standpoint? Does Twitter have the right to insert DNC messaging into Trump tweets without the DNC disclosing the donation?

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#256

Post by pyronik19 »

newacct583 wrote: post #198
palsir wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact checking is far from a solved problem. The can of worms that Trump opened when he started the "fake news" conversation is still very much open.

Trump didn't start that "conversation". "Fake News" was a term originally intended to reflect the false "news-like" advertisements that were being purchased on social media (primarily Facebook, and primarily targetting conservative users). Trump appropriated it as a way to label unflattering news coverage from mainstream sources.

Hardly just unflattering, MSM pushed the "Russia" narrative for 3 years and there was literally nothing there. Hard to call that anything other than fake news. In fact its looking more and more like the actions from the Obama admin were likely highly corrupt and there will likely people going to jail. Just recently the media has been reporting that Trump called the virus a "hoax", which was a complete lie.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#257

Post by shadowgovt »

collegecamp293 wrote: post #23

Twitter has opened a whole can of worms. There are several official state agencies with their propaganda PR arms on Twitter. Will they fact check them too and risk being banned in those countries?

The easiest way for them to answer it is not to answer it.

They're an American company and can choose to justify fact-checking only the US President if they want. It's not like hypocrisy has bothered them in the past; it clearly didn't bother them when the US elected a troll and they fixed the glitch of their own TOS suggesting he be banned from their service by modifying the TOS to have a carve-out for "newsworthiness."

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#258

Post by thatwasunusual »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #235

I feel like we are slowly reaching the state the movie “Idiocracy” describes. I feel very torn about this. On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. On the other hand I find it hard to believe that the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up. It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters in 2016 and the commission they st…

> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things.

Is it really _censorship_ to fact check tweets? I mean, Twitter hasn't _removed_ (i.e. censored) any tweets from Trump, just added an annotation.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#259

Post by username90 »

gjulianm wrote: post #174
itchyjunk wrote: post #151

Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment. Is there no way to consider social media a…

> Is there no way to consider social media as unreliable overall and not bother fact checking anything there? The issue is that this is not just a random social media post, it's coming from the President of the US, and most people expect that someone in that position will not post clearly false messages, specially when those messages affect something as fundamental as the election process.

The message isn't clearly false. See this article for example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

> Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

You could say that 1% increase in problems is small, but in close elections that could easily be considered huge.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#260

Post by llcoolv »

itchyjunk wrote: post #151

Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment. Is there no way to consider social media a…

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