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Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

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Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion. And it's dangerous because when you equate speech with violence then how far are w…

Speech is considered violence by some people. Some people consider a lot of speech violence but nearly everyone considers a small amount of speech violence or some equivalent. Telling someone to grab a electrified wire is violence by nearly everyone's standard. A mafioso directing a hit man to kill is nearly everyone's standard. The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is mostly violence etc. So you can't say…

Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech. I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable.

To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence.

Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause? After all my silence on the matter was a hostile act. Maybe I’ll just get a struggle session and be re-educated. Lifelong ban from participating in society but alive at least. If I’m lucky.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#542
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation and hate speech are clearly important issues. But loosing free speech would be a colossal mistake. I used to live in a country with no free speech, trust me the USA in its current state is hundred million times better and more just. Free speech is just super fundamental. So, in my opinion, nothing restricting free speech is acceptable - the downsides of that are just too enormous. We need to learn to l…

No one in america is restricting your free speech. Go buy server space and write what ever you want.

your argument is also similar to saying: "don't like your water company? - Drill your own water well!", "Don't like your power company? - Install your own power sources", etc.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#543
As an insider I see the distinct apathy of big tech towards this single issue which I see as their Achilles heel. Big tech has failed to lay out the foundational principles they will use to perform moderation and have deliberately kept everything pretty shaky. I suspect this is because the tech companies themselves face following problems.

1. Workplaces are increasingly progressive and does not respect the diversity of thought. Reasonable conservative and libertarian groups are on fringe in most large companies.

2. Leadership is increasingly immigrant driven who often do not understand full implication of their policies and decisions.

3. Company is trying to feed the same propaganda they feed to their employees to the rest of the world without realizing rest of the world is very very different.

4. Rest of the media, political parties etc. constantly crapping on big tech does not help either. (If you hate success in your country, that success eventually will move out or will be born outside your boundaries e.g. TikTok).

5. Big tech has failed miserably to highlight all the good they have been doing through their moderation policies. Toolbar malware is a thing of past, you don't have to install Adobe Flash anymore anywhere and email spam in my gmail is zero. Big tech and their walled gardens have saved millions of hours and resources wasted on other rent seekers and instead diverted it to themselves while improving use experience for my grandmother and her brother.

Big tech needs to play the same games that Big pharma and Big oil have been playing. They need to align themselves with various political groups, provide explicit platforms and assistance to everyone from far left to far right and make everyone feel included. This is not going to be simple but they have to do it.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#544
post #71

Maybe getting rid of professional journalism, and crowd sourcing the news via secret algorithms, isn't such a great idea after all...

We as consumers should be valuing real journalism and actually paying money for it. Otherwise this carries on going downhill. Journalism, at least some of it, should not be about clicks and sound bites.

I tried paying money for it. I fought with one newspaper's website for an hour to figure out how to buy one year of access without recurring charges to my credit card. When I finally figured out that I needed to buy a gift subscription for myself it turns out their credit card form only has the next four years as expiration date options (my credit card expires six years from now).

The media isn't interested in financial support from their readership. Too many of us to deal with. They prefer a few powerful interests and a small number of big checks written.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#545
post #394

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

I was born in 1974. Netscape's browser (what became Mozilla) was released my junior year of college. It was a cute alternative to gopher and ftp. Then, newspapers were published once or twice a day. Magazines weekly or monthly. Publishers worked as editors, fact-checkers, and curators (with their various agendas, of course). The original miracle of internet free speech was the promise that anyone could become a publi…

> Now we are trying to figure out how to manage real time publishing platforms that can't (or won't?) validate identity, won't take responsibility for fact-checking, are open to targeted manipulation by adversaries, and are capable of distributing damaging lies and propaganda with little oversight or financial consequences.

The identity validation part is worth repeating. I'm not a fan of real names, but I'd consider opting in to an identity that follows me between platforms so I could build a reputation.

I'd also like to see more transparency from social media platforms. I'd love to be able to get metrics on a post. X% of likes came from these countries. X% of retweets came from known VPN IPs. X% of shares came from IPs in known botnets.

I'd also LOVE to filter out people that participate over a certain volume. If someone is spending 8h+ per day on Twitter, I want them hidden because IMO they have nothing to add if all of their experience is from social media and not the real world.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#546
post #13

In the first post about this, people were like, how come they didn't do this to the Democrats in 2016.. Uhhh because they were not taking ANY aggressive actions in 2016 against anyone, that's why we are here. They are trying to correct a wrong. I applaud them for trying. Also it's unfair to say they are doing this for political favoritism. Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Ber…

> Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Bernie, AOC, Warren.

Censoring Bernie's/AOC's political rivals (carrot) could be a better move to avoid being broken up than punching back directly (stick) which may only motive them further.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#547

I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.

The problem is not free speech, people should focus on the monetary aspects which is the root cause of this. Social media and ad revenue are the driving forces. Free speech would still be not an issue weren't it for those conflicting interests of the social media companies.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#548

I just don’t get it, what is Twitter so afraid of? It’s already a cesspool of flame wars and misinformation, I’m growing deeply concerned about their need to interject themselves into news stories like this.

I wonder if FB and Twitter are in contact with some of the national intelligence agencies. US intelligence officials talking to NYT suggest that this "leak" is a forgery by the GRU. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

This must be it. Facebook has been hand wringing about censorship for the past few years and all of a sudden, Facebook and Twitter immediately act in lockstep? It might explain why the Biden campaign can’t deny it as well.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on At this rate it will be the hill that the civilization dies on. The whole "absolute free speech is a sacrosanct human rights for everyone" is an ideal that simply would not scale with the 21st century civilization. Most users around here grew up firmly believing that value, and it is further reinforced by American/Western exceptionalism, so I can see how thi…

And yet,here you are, freely spouting non-sense, misinterpreting the second law of "thermal dynamics" and arguing for a very strict and highly-self-convenient notion of freedom of speech. I still wish you can express your views all over the internet without the risk of being cancelled.

>I still wish you can express your views all over the internet without the risk of being cancelled.

I don't, especially if me spreading nonsense directly causes harm to a large number of people and the society. I do not believe my unlimited free speech rights is of higher priority the health and wellbeing of the overall society.

The whole "individual rights always triumphs over the interest of the society" is exactly the type of American exceptionalism I mentioned. It's a very strange notion in many cultures (and no doubt you'd say those cultures are inferior) and it's more or less another symptom of a culture that worships narcissistic behavior.

Re: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if FB and Twitter are in contact with some of the national intelligence agencies. US intelligence officials talking to NYT suggest that this "leak" is a forgery by the GRU. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

This is a fair concern, and it is a tricky issue because if true Twitter might not be able to disclose this fact. But if it were true, wouldn't Joe Biden have come out already and said "These emails are fake and I never met with that person"? Instead, all we get is the campaign saying that those meetings do not appear on his calendar.

It might be the same problem. Candidates get national security briefings so they might have been advised not to deny it.
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