301–310 of 367 posts
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Twitter doesn't even remotely have a monopoly on political communications. What counts as a "private" blog? That seems like an arbitrary distinction.
I dont think you know what a monopoly actually is.
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> when you have a monopoly over a communication medium Twitter does not have a monopoly over internet communication.
It’s like saying that Time Warner doesn’t have a monopoly over the electromagnetic spectrum, while technically true in practice in some areas they do. Twitter is a crucial social communications platform for large enough portion of some societies to treat them as a monopoly.
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Stop being so dramatic. No one is shoving information down your throat. You can log off Twitter.
“You can log off Twitter” is not an argument that is compatible with the idea that Twitter is so important that moderation is tantamount to censorship.
Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai). If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need…
If we look at some differences between Twitter (or insert your favorite social media platform here) and email: * Email providers have zero responsibility for filtering information * Email users form their own networks dynamically through actual relationships rather than some artificial structure of "followers"/"friends" * Email users never get banned from sending email (although maybe in some cases an individual serv…
>* Email providers have zero responsibility for filtering information
Not necessarily true. Spam filtering is an expected feature nowadays, I would say, bit you're right that e-mail providers aren't required to do that sort of thing. Still, known spam IPs are regularly blacklisted from major e-mail providers.
>* Email users form their own networks dynamically through actual relationships rather than some artificial structure of "followers"/"friends"
Mailing lists and newsletters are more like a social network than typical e-mail. But the fundamental difference isn't how users form their networks, it's how the networks are structured: on Twitter, I take a message and broadcast it to everyone and Twitter puts ads around it, and other people see it even if they don't "know" me. The equivalency is e-mail:Twitter DMs :: massive mailing list:Twitter.
>* Email users never get banned from sending email (although maybe in some cases an individual service may ban extreme abusers)
You can get booted from a mailing list, and other users can block you, but more or less it's true that Microsoft won't ban me from Exchange servers. And that's kind of the thing, e-mail isn't centrally hosted. Mastodon has attempted this with a Twitterlike social media platform.
>* Email's operation is totally independent of irrational mobs/corporate interests/whatever
E-mails killer feature, for sure.
>In short, I think the core problem with this situation is in your first line: social media has become a "main communication provider" and it's fundamentally unfit for purpose. Email and other protocol-based communication independent of platforms (IRC is another good example) is still the best solution for a primary communication provider.
Agree, and I think this is why lots of online communities treat traditional social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat) like little broadcast hubs where you basically show the world your best in little snippits. On Twitter: post a joke or a funny thread; on Instagram: post your outfit, or your view, or your dinner; on Facebook: post your graduation and family photos; on Snapchat(/Instagram Stories): post about the little things you encounter throughout your day. Once you deviate from this framework – e.g. posting "politically incorrect" or intentionally controversial content – then you are subverting and ultimately trying to dismantle the cultural expectations for those platforms. The culturally accepted place for controversial content is in private conversations: Discord, WhatsApp, iMessage, e-mail, phone calls. Because then your victims have a way to defend themselves.
The argument over "free speech" on Twitter is undertaken, almost 100% of the time, in bad faith. Twitter is a bullhorn, P2P messaging is where free speech is truly (and should always be) protected. If you take a megaphone into Union Square, and start hurling slurs and threats at people, you will be removed or arrested the same way you'd be removed from Twitter for the same actions.
On Twitter you're not talking to "somebody", you're talking to "everybody". If you want to be controversial, take it to private conversation. Causing people pain in public isn't related at all to free speech – it's just another form of harassment.
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Vacuum has nothing to do with it. Twitter is a platform, you are not compelled to use it. Don’t like it that is fine but popularity doesn’t imply it requires to operate any way other than the way it decides as a company. Why do we expect companies to act like a government we have control over?
If POTUS communicates via Twitter primarily, there’s no option to ‘not use it’. Twitter crossed the line between just a company and a utility a while ago, together with Google and Facebook.
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It is not a company operating in a vacuum but a public company in a democracy and is subject to the laws (and in general, political will) of the society. If companies were free to "censor, modify, change anything they want at any point in time", then we would not have anti-trust laws or close scrutiny of dominant companies. Ultimately, companies don't exist in a vacuum. If they don't adhere to the political will of t…
>It is not a company operating in a vacuum but a public company in a democracy The US is not a democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. The Constitution limits the Governmental Powers to make laws restricting speech, the Constitution does not give individuals the right to use corporate places of business or platforms to disseminate their speech.
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You know, when I read that paragraph I was actually on board with the author. We’ve probably all said stupid things on the internet at one point. Then I read the actual tweet and lost all sympathy. It’s just so horrible, and, I think the author actually shows a lack of growth by dismissing it as this 9 year old “immature” mistake.
Is calling some one stupid or telling them to fuck themselves all that horrible to you? There wasn't even a threat of violence or attacking based upon "protected characteristics."
I do find someone old enough to attend a university, calling an elected official stupid cunt and a whore, horrible.
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I don't want a Ministry of Truth filtering what I'm allowed to hear. In a functional democracy, education and robust debate are supposed to be the defenses against misinformation. Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument.
Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma[1]. Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. [1]See Huxley, Brave new world.
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>there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table Is it possible to enumerate the set of all ideas that cannot be expressed, and if so, how do you enumerate this set, and who has the power to determine the members of this set? Advocating that someone should have their child drink bleach to cure their autism is a despicable act, and is likely criminal after the fact, but that's the difference here - it's cr…
They should still be allowed to be seen but should be heavily caveatted as NOT TRUE if we know they aren't. Another good one is the reporting on vaccines causing autism, but we all know vaccines save millions of lives.
I can’t imagine the flack that would come when some robot labels trans people’s gender identity as NOT TRUE based on biological grounds.
I think that any group labeling things TRUE and NOT TRUE will only make things worse.
Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai). If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need…
Expression is not public communication. Are you not conflating freedom of speech with freedom to be heard/reach an audience? Even 2 centuries ago, the US government wouldn't intervene to force newspapers to publish the op-eds of hateful people looking to grow their followers. Why would Youtube or Twitter have to?