Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by dspillett » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

sparkie wrote: post #252

bt1a wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 los…

> Disinformation campaigns will be costly.

Then the rich most likely win, whether they are right or wrong.

And given How wrong Trump is on many things (including what he himself has said in the past) that is not going to be a good thing. Yes there will be popular gatherings where many people put in a bit to counteract disinformation from small groups of well funded individuals (or just one well funded individual) but those things take with organised orchestration or luck (often both) to be successful, more so than the actions of smaller groups or individuals.

While this would reduce individual knuckle-draggers shouting from the rooftops because they feel slighted, and would reduce knee-jerk reactions somewhat, it wouldn't shift the balance of power significantly at all at the top end, it would just change how score is kept.

> If the information is useful and worth reading ... if the information is garbage or incorrect

This has exactly the same problem as the current situation: how do the people who currently believe (and propagate) misinformation behave any differently under this scheme? They might not forward the misinformation as much due to the cost, but that same will happen with provable facts because the cost is universal so the current balance probably wouldn't be upset.

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

#502

Post by ojnabieoot » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

devtul wrote: post #486

ojnabieoot wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally hundreds of people, including children, have died drinking bootleg alcohol being hawked as a COVID-19 cure. It is simply not the case that “any reasonable adult” knows your joke is a joke - that may be the case in developed countries where people have reliable access to actual doctors. But in developing countries this has been a serious problem. Misinformation kills innocent people. A harsh no-tolerance pol…

We could fine/punish people if they post misinformation, even implement a kind of points system where the person has some societal rights given or taken, like being banned from sharing, commenting, doing any type of publishing on the internet. Would that be too harsh? For sure it would prevent needless deaths.

Let’s address the reality of the situation first. I am not interested in playing this stupid game where the private acts of private corporations suddenly become the acts of government.

A private content publisher is allowed to moderate the stuff they publish. Simon and Schuster rejecting my novel is not censorship. This principle includes highly permissive content publishers like Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think anyone here is seriously arguing that the Klan deserves a Facebook group. Obviously it’s well within Facebook’s rights as both an online business and a publicly-accessible service to kick the Klan out. So I am really not seeing what is so authoritarian about removing misinformation about public health - the only way your argument is even remotely defensible is if you wrap it up in a ridiculous thought experiment. And being banned from Facebook for posting conspiracy theories is no more Stalinist than being banned from Chuck-E-Cheese for booing Munich’s Make Believe Band.

To get to your actual point:

Shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire will land you in jail. Lying about the efficacy of your pharmaceutical company’s medications will (or should) land you in jail. And a successful libel/slander lawsuit can ruin you. Some of these legal issues are thorny and I have mixed feelings on them (until recently Canada has highly repressive libel laws). But certainly lying pharma executives who get people killed should go to jail. Certainly the guy who pranked the crowded theater should be held criminally liable for the resulting stampede. Free speech is not and had never been the same thing as freedom from consequences of speech.

If it’s just some guy ranting on the street then yes, congratulations, the state should leave him alone.

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

#503

Post by noworriesnate » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

adwww wrote: post #117

djohnston wrote: post #79

The head of integrity has unabashedly showcased his strong political bias on Twitter, and I suspect things will begin going poorly for either him or Twitter shortly.

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?

It is not misinformation to be concerned about mail-in ballots. There have been screw ups with mail in ballots in the past. For example: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=964371...

For more stories just google "Military main-in ballots lost"

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

#504

Post by craftinator » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

I really appreciate your approach to this argument. You really cut through any strawman fallacies by pointing out that there's a debate along a spectrum about what protecting free speech entails, but that the President needs to have limitations in his power over private companies. I think this final point is not debatable in a legal context; he does not legally have that power.

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

#505

Post by cwhiz » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

metrokoi wrote: post #472

cwhiz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So the question remains - do you, or how do you lessen the spread of misinformation? The easiest is to get rid of bots and control who can tweet. Anyone can create an account but to tweet you need to prove your identity. Bots are the real issue. Trump lying on social media is a problem but it's not fundamentally dissimilar to him lying on TV or at a campaign rally. He is a liar and whatever platform he is on he will…

What would be required to prove your identity? Would you be able to tweet anonymously, or must you tweet under that identity? There are some issues with that, for example people without government identification would not be allowed to tweet. Perhaps you could use unique fingerprints, but that turns into a huge privacy concern and I can never see that being accepted. Maybe there are some unique bio-markers that could…

Drivers license, utility bill, phone number, credit card, etc. The same types of things that other services ask you to provide to prove that you are a real person.

Tweeting anonymously is a non-starter unless they can curtail the bot problem in some other way. If they could curtail the bot problem then they would be doing it already and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Half the content on Twitter and Facebook is from bots. I would say this is the most fundamentally urgent problem to solve to protect Democracy in this country.

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

#506

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

heurist wrote: post #481

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Written above “utterly unsustainable”. I can see no long term win here, esp when the arbiter they chose clearly has his own issues.

I could see partnering with independent journalist corps to investigate flagged tweets. Guessing They'd only do it for verified accounts. They'd have control over the corp quality and bias, so could offer a reasonably neutral fact checking service if they choose to. Interesting to see public information warefare playing out in real time.

I absolutely want to agree with you, but we’ve already seen controversial fact checkers ranging from, politifact, Snopes, mediamatters, Hillary Clinton‘s campaign, and in this instance Twitter’s own employee with his own colorful statements.

The issue becomes with what fact checkers omit, who’s statements are scrutinized and whose are the ignored as “jokes”, what part of a statement they choose to focus on, or any sort of perspective at all. If you’re an adult you know that life is shades of gray.

Was Biden being racist when he said “you ain’t black” if Blacks don’t vote for him? How would a fact checker properly handle this?

“Fact checking“ even with the best intentions, is it game I don’t think we want to play.

> Interesting to see public information warefare playing out in real time.

Agreed

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

#507

Post by exabrial » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

ojnabieoot wrote: post #419

exabrial wrote: post #205

I once got a strike on social media for posting an article about a German doctor that recommended whiskey to cure covid19. It was a joke, and any reasonable adult would know this is false. It's hard for me to feel sorry for companies that go down the fact checking route with algorithms; It always ends up causing more damage than value. 12 years ago we didn't have this problem, and I think that's mostly related to the…

Literally hundreds of people, including children, have died drinking bootleg alcohol being hawked as a COVID-19 cure. It is simply not the case that “any reasonable adult” knows your joke is a joke - that may be the case in developed countries where people have reliable access to actual doctors. But in developing countries this has been a serious problem. Misinformation kills innocent people. A harsh no-tolerance pol…

Completely disagree.

My audience, my friends and family, are all educated reasonable adults.

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

#508

Post by soco » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #259

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.

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 tha…

There are countries using mail ballots since like forever. I don't think even Trump can claim Switzerland was undemocratic or forged.

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

#509

Post by smt88 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #462

smt88 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters in 2016 No, it started long before that. Trump's political profile came about from being the most famous advocate of Birtherism[1] -- promoting the idea that Barack Obama is not American and demanding his birth certificate. He later reached a plurality of Republican primary polls by saying that undocumented Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers[2]. Tru…

> He later reached a plurality of Republican primary polls by saying that undocumented Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers[2]. He later reached a plurality of Republican primary polls while saying... If you use "by" it implies causation , something no one is able to know, whereas "while" accurately points out that the two events only occurred simultaneously. Now I'm not sure if you were just writing casually…

> If you use "by" it implies causation

I intended to imply causation. I deeply enjoyed your not-at-all condescending lecture about how gullible, biased, and imprecise I am, though. In return, I will advise you not to be presumptuous about internet strangers' intelligence.

> something no one is able to know

Untrue. What if you just asked voters, "Why did you vote for Trump?" Or what if you asked them, "What issues are important to you?"

Some of the best predictors of Trump support were:

- support for building a wall to prevent undocumented immigration from Mexico[1][2]

- anxiety about immigration in general[1]

- a belief that the US is, was, and must remain a white, Christian nation[3]

In fact, a majority of Republicans see immigrants (legal or not) in general as being a net-negative on society[4].

There is a reason Trump's rallying cry was "build the wall". There is a reason he is the candidate of choicee for white nationalists (which is not to say that I'm claiming that all of his supporters are white nationalists). Most Americans agree with me, though[5].

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/25/5-facts-abo...

2. https://news.virginia.edu/content/center-politics-poll-takes...

3. https://www.prri.org/research/white-working-class-attitudes-...

4. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2015/09/28/chapter-4-u-...

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/05/most-amer...