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Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

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Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically the social media company argument is... we think people are too dumb to figure out what is "real" or not so we are going to censor Why can't "we don't want this trash on our site" be the reason? It's "funny" how those who want to propagate banned material always cast themselves as some repressed group subject to the tyranny of government power. It can still be posted on Gab or Parler, right?

> Why can't "we don't want this trash on our site" be the reason? That's a perfectly fine stance, and it has worked well for traditional publishers like the NY Times and Washington Post for decades. They control all their content, and publish exactly the narrative they want. OTOH, if NY Times publishes an OP Ed that slanders and doxes me, causes me to lose my job, etc. then I have the legal right to sue them. See for…

Well no, the entire point of 230 was to allow content aggregators to actively moderate content.

As I see it, there are three options:

1. "platforms" are not allowed to moderate content (pre-section 230) without getting liable.

2. What we have now (sites can moderate as they see fit)

3. Some external board adjudicates on what it is acceptable to moderate

Of these, 3 seems by far the worst, and 2 seems better than 1 on empirical grounds.

> OTOH, if NY Times publishes an OP Ed that slanders and doxes me, causes me to lose my job, etc. then I have the legal right to sue them.

You also have the legal right to sue Google if they publish content that slanders you. You can even sue them for doxxing you. You wouldn't win either one. Nor would you win if you sued the NYT for doxxing you, or if an NYT article caused you to lose your job. Keep in mind that "the covington kid" didn't actually win any lawsuits, he sued a bunch of people for ridiculous amounts and settled out of court for, likely, a relatively trivial sum. It might have paid for his college, and that was mostly "make it go away" money. He's the free speech equivalent of a patent troll.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain said that they could go for a "herd immunity strategy", several European governments said that masks were not useful for ordinary people, claims that the virus was under control, even people saying "don't stop going to bars", entire governments deciding to stop releasing information about cases, etc., etc. There was a whole lot that people didn't know, especially early. There were quite a few failures of comm…

They were wrong, potentially and have adjusted their stance since. They’re still poorly managing it because they lack decent information. I’d argue it’s the fault of the civil service that they’ve been crippling and obvious cronyism (e.g. Dido Harding) not equipped to provide decent information that they need for decision making.

> They were wrong, potentially and have adjusted their stance since.

Yes, and there is a period between where they realize they are wrong, where they reformulate their message and then communicate that publicly. What we're discussing here is a similar gap of 2-4 days between evidence of person-to-person spread and communication.

Meanwhile, we have no idea when the US president even first tested positive for covid.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#503
post #59

But, citizens of Detroit, OCP is a private company, they can do what they want!

Twitter has not been granted a law enforcement monopoly (nor any sort of monopoly) by the US government. If you want me to buy that for a dollar, your going to have to come up with a better analogy.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Just go to the NYPost directly if you want. We shouldn't be forcing and infringing on the freedoms of corporations to decide what they can sell/show.

Sure, but if they're going to be an editorialized platform they should be held liable for the content of each and every tweet.

Not sure what this actually means - liable for what?

They already ban tweets required by law. What other liability is there?

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#506
post #6

The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of information (especially videos) much earlier than other news outlets will, if the other news outlets do so at all. There have been multiple times when I've seen an insane video of something happening spreading around Twitter or WorldStar or some other "raw video" agg…

I'm not expert, but I did work in the same office as journalists from a more respectable news organisation.

News rooms are not trying to be Twitter. The goal is not to gather and disseminate information as fast as possible. They're more interested in telling a coherent story around a news event. So they might hold off while they verify or find supporting information. Who was the child? What was the outcome? Was anyone hurt?

There were multiple occasions when the organisation had information about a breaking news event but held off rushing to publish while, I assume, they verified information. One story that stuck in my mind was the murder of a woman and her children by her estranged husband. First reported as a car fire, and then later confirmed as a murder suicide. Ultimately no information was withheld, but care was taken to make sure the event was not turned into salacious clickbait by publishing rumours or rushing to be first.

This seemed counterintuitive to me, but at the same time, what do we gain by having that kind of news arrive more quickly? It's not actionable information.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP's Google example concerns thermostats, not search. Google doesn't have a thermostat monopoly. Is it therefore okay for Google to remotely deactivate the thermostats of people they've decided to dislike?

I wouldn't be surprised if they already block access to nest.com or related APIs for users either residing in, or with an IP locating them in a US-sanctioned country.

I'd not hold it against them if the government were forcing their hand.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power companies are regulated monopolies. There are no competitors. Twitter is in no way even close to the only way to publish something. It is no where near as difficult to publish on a different platform than it is to generate your own power. If an ISP was cutting off the NyPost, I would have issues with that. If they had their domain name seized, I would have an issue with that. If other ISPs blocked network route…

>Power companies are regulated monopolies. There are no competitors. The funny (sad) thing is that these utilities are almost easier to work around Twitter in this case. Power company cuts you off? Buy a generator, no big deal. Town turns off your water. IBC totes are cheap. Comcast terminates your account? Verizon is happy to pay you money and if they aren't where you are then you can suck it up and by satellite. If…

Buying a generator is as poor replacement for grid power as starting a WordPress blog. If you want to live an off grid life in the woods you might as well blog like it’s 2004.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish' Section 230 was overtly adopted so that platforms would make efforts to censor content that they found to be objectionable; there are no "free speech regulatory agreements" associated with it. It is the only surviving part of a law whose sole and entire purpose was internet censorship, the rest o…

When people say "violating section 230," rather than correcting them it's more instructive to understand what they're trying to communicate. Usually it seems to be they're really saying "this shows section 230 is a bad idea." If we could move past the reflexive "well actually" there's a real issue people feel needs to be addressed.

>When people say "violating section 230," rather than correcting them it's more instructive to understand what they're trying to communicate.

I think the first priority is to ensure that the poster's misinformation (i.e., telling people that 230 says/does something it is explicitly designed not to do) does not propagate through this medium. It's a public forum, not a conversation with just the poster.

Then, if possible, you can engage with their disfunction. But given the weaponized role of misinformation today that's the first item in the checklist to be addressed.

Re: Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account

#510
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has been having recessions almost like clockwork once every 10 years since 1950 Your standards for "clockwork" regularity seem to be quite low. Your own source offered to support that claim shows almost double that frequency from 1950-1990, and a maximum interval of 10 years, 8 months over the whole period. So it is neither "like clockwork" over that period (the frequency has on average dropped over the peri…

Gee, well that leaves me debunked. I guess recessions are quite common and ZeroHedge is ... much more reliable than I thought? A scary discovery. If you are planning your investments around not having a recession about once a decade, I'm unconvinced it will end well for you. Anyway, the point stands - regularly predicting recessions is a sensible approach, and saying ZeroHedge overpredicts is wrong. The normal financ…

> regularly predicting recessions is a sensible approach,

No, its not, because recessions do not occur on a regular pattern. And even if they did, its still possible to predict them much more frequently than they do occur.

> and saying ZeroHedge overpredicts is wrong.

Just doing a quick search, ZeroHedge seems to have predicted a recession, counting only predictions with a one year or shorter forward window, literally every year since the end of the of the Great Recession. In many of those years, they made at least one prediction where the window was effectively negative, as they claimed that the US was already in a recession that just wasn't yet recognized.

So, yes, ZeroHedge significantly overpredicts recessions, as they have predicted not less than 11 of the last 1 recessions.

> The normal financial press are reckless in assuming that recessions are not imminent.

That's a non-sequitur, in any case.

> Looking 5+ years into the future to assess the present state is prudent.

Sure, but if ZeroHedge was consistently predicting a recession within 5 years, they'd still be overpredicting by quite a lot (not if this was 1950-1990, but it isn't), but they are much, much worse than that.

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