Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

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

#351

Post by dspillett »

nicc wrote: post #301
thatwasunusual wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, of course it is. Most people will all of a sudden ignore someone's message. I have no idea why anyone would argue in favor of Twitter. When has it become required to be an expert in the field to be granted the privilege of leaving a comment on a forum? When has it become unacceptable to lie? People lie all the time. Advertisements lie to you, politicians lie to you, your mom lies to you. It's really annoying tha…

Yes, how sad that incorrect facts will no longer stand unquestioned...

If I'm wrong I like being corrected. It means I learn something. Of course if I think the correction is incorrect then things get a bit more complex and a longer discussion will ensue.

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

#352

Post by Communitivity »

Good luck with that (not). Today we have decentralized social networks specifically designed to combat that kind of censorship, and other problems with centralized control.

For videos, see https://joinpeertube.org or https://libry.tv

For micro-blogging, see https://joinmastodon.org

For photos, see https://pixelfed.org

For others, see https://fediverse.party/

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

#353

Post by ascagnel_ »

dvtrn wrote: post #146
tuna-piano wrote: post #133

There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet. After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome (and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries). So what should the social media companies do? Censor…

Media literacy and criticism classes in middle school?

I'd agree, with one caveat: there have been plenty of cases where groups push political or other controversial causes via the schools systems (see: the "teach the controversy" and "intelligent design" cases of trying to classify a deistic creation story as backed by science). I can easily see a world where media literacy classes are hijacked to teach the opposite of what ideally should be taught, in order to serve the needs of a few politicians rather than society as a whole.

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

#354

Post by [deleted] »

nautilus12 wrote: post #325
dathinab wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. True, but the think is Twitter did not censor his post . They added a "fact-check" hint that just pointed out that he was speaking made up thinks containing a link to an informative article. This is very different to censorship. People can still freely decided to believe him, or read the facts and don't or read the facts…

For people that treat a "Fact Check" as an automatic "filter out this information" (I think there is a huge subset of the population that does, people don't thoughtfully take into account Fact Checks, they just treat them as a rebuke), it has the net effect of censorship. The move by twitter is kind of dumb in that sense because the population has already polarized into groups that think anything trump says is false,…

[deleted]

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

#355

Post by neuland »

Loughla wrote: post #317
neuland wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, social media has had a net negative effect on a LOT of people. There's people that have had a big positive effect to. So, it's not obvious where it ends up on net if that even matters. But, yeah. There's a lot of people that would be better off not on social media. But it's so addictive that they can't help themselves. I, for one, have stopped using social…

>(unless you consider HN social) Yes, yes it is. What else would it be? What's the difference between sites like HN and reddit, and facebook?

Yes, so that's why I somewhat included it. But, it's definitely on the lighter side of social I think.

On HN, it's a lot tougher to follow specific people, though it's cool to see posts and then follow up with what they've recently posted or commented.

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

#356

Post by asabjorn »

> the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up

[reposting here, since someone keeps voting down me providing facts on convicted cases of voter fraud. Isn't this against the philosophy of this site?]

Let's fact check these fact checkers in this case.

Here are some cases convicted in court of election fraud, a lot of them involve fraudulent use of absentee ballots https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...

And there is also a problem with the chain of trust, since 28 million mail-in ballots went missing in the last four elections: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_mil...

Or what about the mail carrier recently charged with meddling with the ballot requests in his chain of trust? https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Pendleton-County-mail-carr...

And if you think politicians would never cheat, a Pennsylvania election official just plead guilty to stuffing the ballot box. He was paid by candidates that I believe won: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/21/doj-democrats-...

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

#357

Post by caseysoftware »

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…

Idiocracy is premised on the idea that dumb people have more kids than smart people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA

Based on the positive reaction to the "birthrates are at all time low!" article last week, it looks like most of the HN crowd is happy about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23246734

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

#358

Post by safog »

aiwowp wrote: post #335
dathinab wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. True, but the think is Twitter did not censor his post . They added a "fact-check" hint that just pointed out that he was speaking made up thinks containing a link to an informative article. This is very different to censorship. People can still freely decided to believe him, or read the facts and don't or read the facts…

Trump's claim was that there _will be_ fraud if we have mail in ballots. Unless Jack Dorsey knows the future, I'm not sure you can fact check something that hasn't happened yet.

Did you read the entire thing first?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mail-in-ballot-voter-fraud...

What's True

While no U.S. government agency officially compiles state-by-state data on voter fraud, and requirements for mail-in voting vary by state, analysis by elections experts shows that fraud is slightly more common with mail-in voting than in-person voting at polling places.

What's False All types of voter fraud in U.S. elections is minuscule in comparison to the number of ballots cast, according to elections experts. Taking that into consideration, it is problematic to make comparisons between types of ballot-casting systems and erroneous to claim mail-in voting "substantially" increases the risk of fraud.

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

#359

Post by luma »

aiwowp wrote: post #335
dathinab wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. True, but the think is Twitter did not censor his post . They added a "fact-check" hint that just pointed out that he was speaking made up thinks containing a link to an informative article. This is very different to censorship. People can still freely decided to believe him, or read the facts and don't or read the facts…

Trump's claim was that there _will be_ fraud if we have mail in ballots. Unless Jack Dorsey knows the future, I'm not sure you can fact check something that hasn't happened yet.

By your reasoning, what he said was not true in the sense that it cannot be verified.
Post reply on HN