Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#41

Post by croon » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #15

staticassertion wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say and think whatever you like. Companies giving platforms to hate is not something that democracy requires. It's less "that idea is popular" and more "these people are inciting hatred against other people". I'm baffled that people still repeat this "free speech is important" thing when we're talking about a private service giving an audience to white supremacists.

hate cannot be precisely defined though. Thats the crux of the argument.

Sure it can.

It means "intense dislike". If that is directed at an intrinsic property of a group of people, that's hate speech.

Example: black people as opposed to smokers.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#42

Post by anonemouse145 » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #34

chmod775 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They are not legally required to provide service to anyone. But indiscriminately providing services to everyone (within the laws of your country), without booting people based on a personal agenda, is the ABC of gaining the trust of your users.

Wrong. A respected editorial standard allows for even more trust. Example: Do you trust Washington Post or Twitter more?

Independent journalists who are getting banned from Twitter en masse.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#43

Post by jkestner » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

nathanaldensr wrote: post #28

mysterydip wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your point, say twitter existed when segregation was accepted as “normal society”, Or pre-lgbt general acceptance.

That's exactly my point. I myself am not racist, nor do I believe in segregation, but does that mean I or others should actively work to prevent the discussion of those ideas? Wouldn't we become just as bad as the people we decry if we tried to suppress their viewpoints?

No, because we'd still be, you know, not racist.

But I think suppressing a viewpoint is counterproductive. Instead, the holders of those viewpoints should be held to the light, and it's a Twitter problem in that such people can be completely anonymous or even fake. Hard to have a public debate when some of the participating citizens are fictional.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#44

Post by dvdhnt » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

Maybe, I'm missing some larger point, but it seems like the real dilemma here is that people lack the discipline to give up things that do not benefit them. As per constant discussion here on HN, many of us continue to untangle social networks from our lives.

If Twitter has become a place where users spend more time complaining about the platform rather than actually using the platform, they should quit. Not because I have some utopian capitalist view where each user can just go off and build their own Twitter clone or because of some "don't like it, leave" mentality. I'm saying this because I believe it's conducive to their mental health.

Otherwise, people become quite cynical and make choices they wouldn't normally make - as in limiting free speech for the sake of corporate gains.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#45

Post by SomeStupidPoint » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #6

nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Can this be summarized as "Twitter, implement censorship because people are saying things we don't like?" I fully understand that Twitter is a company offering a service and they are intrinsically allowed to police content being posted on their platform. The whole point of democratic society in the United States is to allow people freedom of speech and thought. If we limit the discussion of ideas to only popular/acce…

You can say and think whatever you like. Companies giving platforms to hate is not something that democracy requires. It's less "that idea is popular" and more "these people are inciting hatred against other people". I'm baffled that people still repeat this "free speech is important" thing when we're talking about a private service giving an audience to white supremacists.

I'm terrified of people who use phrases like "inciting hatred" as an excuse for why we should start ostracizing entire swatches of people from social discourse. Hilariously, I'd say that if anyone is "inciting hatred", it's probably you at your strawmen.

In my experience, they're much more dangerous to the well-being of society than the people they're trying to silence, as they're generally authoritarians of the worst sort without a shred of remorse because they're doing it for The Right Reasons(TM) and are sure of it.

But if I tolerate you speaking, someone I view as an immediate and visceral threat to my society, I suppose I can tolerate just about anyone using words.

It's a shame we'll likely come to violence because you can't show the same tolerance, and use words not force on people you disagree with.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#46

Post by SomeStupidPoint » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #34

chmod775 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They are not legally required to provide service to anyone. But indiscriminately providing services to everyone (within the laws of your country), without booting people based on a personal agenda, is the ABC of gaining the trust of your users.

Wrong. A respected editorial standard allows for even more trust. Example: Do you trust Washington Post or Twitter more?

Comparing a centralized, unified group like a newspaper writing team with a diffuse, decentralized mob like Twitter makes me question your sincerity.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#47

Post by throw2016 » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

tdees40 wrote: post #10

nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Can this be summarized as "Twitter, implement censorship because people are saying things we don't like?" I fully understand that Twitter is a company offering a service and they are intrinsically allowed to police content being posted on their platform. The whole point of democratic society in the United States is to allow people freedom of speech and thought. If we limit the discussion of ideas to only popular/acce…

No, how about users (me, at least) are leaving Twitter because it's a rotten cesspool of misogyny, racism and stupidity. Maybe users should get a choice to avoid some of this?

Any public platform is going to have this. You have to first decide what you don't want in clear language and legislate it very specifically and clearly. Or you will destroy diversity and free speech.

Newspapers and TV are controlled so you don't see too much of it. But any public internet site cannot avoid this without heavy moderation which at Twitter, Youtube, Facebook scale are not easy problems to solve.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#48

Post by anonemouse145 » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #23

mc32 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on both sides pull this card out till it affects their PoV. Imagine the calls we'd witness from one side of the spectrum if Twitter went 4chan.

If Twitter went full 4chan it would implode. There's no way Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or even Reddit would have gotten to the size they have if they were curated in favor of trolls. When subgroups of trolls have gotten booted from larger communities and tried to start their own social media enclaves, they've never gotten to a truly large scale because most people don't want to be part of that kind of community.

"curated in favor of trolls".

If you're not with us you're actively against us.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#49

Post by tomp » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

I don't understand why Twitter doesn't generate some general "white/blacklist" feature that people could opt in/out of? Things like, a "porn" filter, a "n-word" filter, a "faminist"/"mysogynist" filter, etc. Some of these could be automatic (e.g. porn and spam and virus links), some manual (e.g. "all people who this particular user disagrees with"), they could be curated by Twitter itself or by any other entity/user, and some general would be default/opt-out (e.g. porn, hate speech, gore), others would be opt-in (e.g. "no politics" filter).

IMO that solves most of the problems - allowing unbiased freedom of speech/communication, while still preserving basic decency for the majority of people. In addition, you'd have a capitalist market/competition for ideas - if a curator of a filter becomes untrustworthy (starts abusing their "power" by "censoring" too many voices) the filter could simply by forked, improved, and users would migrate to something better!

Edit: In addition, this would also solve all kinds of legal issues - you could simply make a per-country level filters that users connecting from that country would automatically be exposed to, but all such government-imposed censorship would be implemented in a very transparent manner!

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#50

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #37

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I scrolled down until I found this comment just so that I could give you my canned response: The government supports free speech because it's important and a Good Thing. Just because private companies aren't required to do the same doesn't make it any less important and a Good Thing.

No it is not a universally Good Thing, that is an extremely facile reading of free speech. Is it a good thing if someone at your job shouts racial epithets at you all day? Should woman have to tolerate being jeered and catcalled at every private business they patronize? Should a restaurant turn a blind eye to a belligerent customer that curses at the wait staff and everyone in ear shot? Of course not. A private busin…

>Is it a good thing if someone at your job shouts racial epithets at you all day? Should woman have to tolerate being jeered and catcalled at every private business they patronize? Should a restaurant turn a blind eye to a belligerent customer that curses at the wait staff and everyone in ear shot?

No. It's reasonable to fire someone who berates other employees. It's reasonable to kick patrons out of your store if they harass women. It's reasonable to kick out a belligerent customer.

But Twitter is none of these things. Twitter is a platform for discourse.