271–280 of 1001 posts
From day one it seemed to me like Trump's main goal was desecrating the federal state institutions. Seriously, the guy seems as if he cares only about stepping on the constitution and laws. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't POTUS executive orders only serve to direct the federal government, his employees? Twitter is definitely not a federal agency. Why are a lot of people treating this situation like Trump is able t…
The biggest takeaway, looking past the headline: “This week a federal appeals court, ruling in a case brought by conservative activists against social media companies, affirmed that private websites are not public spaces and social media companies don't have First Amendment obligations. Any truly strong limits to Section 230 would almost certainly require action by Congress.”
Its an interesting thought experiment to assess in what ways Twitter is a "private website". It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company, but I can't help but feel that the nuances and similarities of what Twitter really is and what responsibility they truly hold in society is above the courts comprehension.
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Twitter is not a monopoly therefore every web site would be considered a public web space. And so if I run a knitting forum I am not allowed to restrict people who want to turn it into a pornography one. And how would it work for spam. This could end up in a situation where a large spammer could force websites to not remove spam. It sounds unworkable and over the top just to protect some people who aren't even having…
Twitter is not equivalent to some obscure knitting forum. It is huge. So huge that it gets quoted in nearly every mainstream media article. Twitter matters to political discourse, knitting doesn't.
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Some of them disagree with this thankfully. But to be fair, I've seen a lot of supposed progressives on Twitter suddenly finding themselves very concerned with the rights of private businesses.
I’m not personally concerned with the rights of private businesses as much as I’m concerned about the unintended consequences of expanding government power. And yes, that is a new position for me. These past few years have been quite the education about the downsides of federal power as a liberal.
The only thing both sides agree on is that they don't have anywhere near enough input in your life.
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> why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone? They fact check everyone who represents more than 10% of their total traffic. It just so happens that only one of those people tweets information that needs fact checking.
Brazilian president has been "fact checked" multiple times. Same for Venezuelan dito.
I will reemphasize an opinion I expressed on an earlier thread: this is an overtly totalitarian move designed to intimidate and suppress private entities' protected expression, disguised as a reaction to perceived bias (which would still be an invalid pretense for any such order). It's a disgusting attack on an American industry by our own executive.
Twitter is _the_ place where political discourse happens. It's an unfortunate state of affairs for some that it happens to be a private company with a bias. And for better of for worse it does have a bias.
This has happened a few times (Voat, Gab) and the utopia of a hands-off content platform has never played out to anything other than a cesspool. Popular platforms remain popular and useful because they have the power to make editorial decisions.
I also assert that the world is not locked in to Twitter today, just like we were not locked in to Digg a decade ago. Users will flock elsewhere if they sense a need.
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Do you have the right to stand in your community's biggest mall screaming racist things or does the property owner/operator have the right to remove you from the premise?
If you were a president visiting that mall, you would be allowed to do a lot of things that ordinary people would be kicked for.
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I think that’s a simplistic view. No one is arguing Twitter is comparable to a store with a display window. The reality is that Tweets are broadcasted to billions of people. It’s a new reality. It’s a newspaper where anyone and everyone is authoring anything, including presidents, and with the roll of a die, the message is amplified to a multiple of the expected audience. Twitter may technically be a private platform…
Newspapers have restricted what they publish for centuries. They don't allow libellous, defamatory, salacious or inappropriate comments for example. So it sounds 'new tech' hasn't really changed anything.
Absolutely. And they don't say "we're just a platform transporting information", they restrict what they publish.
> They don't allow libellous, defamatory, salacious or inappropriate comments for example.
They do. And they get sued for it, and they can lose, see Gawker. Precisely because they are not like Twitter.
I will reemphasize an opinion I expressed on an earlier thread: this is an overtly totalitarian move designed to intimidate and suppress private entities' protected expression, disguised as a reaction to perceived bias (which would still be an invalid pretense for any such order). It's a disgusting attack on an American industry by our own executive.
Twitter is _the_ place where political discourse happens. It's an unfortunate state of affairs for some that it happens to be a private company with a bias. And for better of for worse it does have a bias.