Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#561

Post by closeparen » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #3

Without any attempt to weigh in on political sides, this debate made me think of an interesting "hack" to act as a publisher while enjoying the protections of a platform: 1. Start a website where users are able to write arbitrary articles. 2. Have a bot systematically spam your site with all possible articles (suitably limited so as to make this technically doable). 3. Systematically weed out all the articles which a…

It's not clear why this is a binary category at all. If we want to treat first-party content differently from third-party content, just do that?

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#562

Post by adjkant » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

smeeth wrote: post #543

adjkant wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't see how a Twitter/FB feed is substantively different from a curated "letters to the editor" section in a newspaper and I cannot for the life of me understand why it is treated different legally. Both companies offer non-algorithmic feeds where users are 100% in control of what they see. Even with an algorithmic feed, users are still doing far more curation than any "curation" that an algorithm does, which i…

Feed structure and content aside, is writing and applying a custom TOS that covers content not editorializing/publishing? This is the crux of the argument from the political right at the moment: Twitter is deciding what sort of content is and is not allowed on their platform according to some sort extrajudicial rationale. I don't understand how that isn't publishing. I'd bet any definition of publishing includes exer…

> is writing and applying a custom TOS that covers content not editorializing/publishing?

For the specific TOS in question I see no way this counts as that. It is simply banning things like pornography, hate speech, and cyberbullying among other things. How that becomes "editorializing" is crazy to me and doesn't seem like a good faith argument.

> I'd bet any definition of publishing includes exerting control over which content to display, when to display that content, and where. These companies do all of those things.

The exerting here is incredibly minimal at best though. There is also no literal editing of material, affiliated writers, or strong voice selection done by Twitter. At the end of the day, the users decide what they want to see so long as it applies to the TOS. This is wildly different from any publisher such as a news outlet.

If we stretch the definition of publisher to its ends, comically so, we can absolutely get Twitter and Facebook under it. We'd also eliminate any prior meaning of the word.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#563

Post by Pils » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

amoorthy wrote: post #306

slfnflctd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jack Dorsey has responded to this question multiple times in several places-- I heard him address it in the Making Sense podcast by Sam Harris some time in the past year. He seemed to show a firm grasp of the nuances involved. Here is a quote from him: "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” [...] “It would…

Dorsey is right to want to encourage broader discussion across the political spectrum on topics. But the current fact-checking approach is flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise. A better approach may be to offer a resource page that shows every news article on the topic, with guidelines on political leaning, how credible each article is etc s…

>But the current fact-checking approach is flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise.

This is a true statement.

>A better approach may be to offer a resource page that shows every news article on the topic, with guidelines on political leaning

...seems to just introduce another level of bias. Every "media bias" website touts "objective analysis" while in the FAQ they admit to relying on a panel that they assure you is 100% objective. How do you guarantee that these ratings are not "flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise"? See: allsides.com[1] and Media Bias Fact Check [2].

Looking at your employee page, you seem to have exactly zero employees with any significant background in journalism. What "topical expertise" does Factual provide that a layperson doesn't have? How do you minimize human judgement?

This reads to me as "You shouldn't use Facebook because you're the product, not the customer, which leads to bad incentive alignment. Use Twitter instead."

[1] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-method... [2] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#564

Post by majormajor » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

partyboat1586 wrote: post #551

majormajor wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should realize those restrictions you suggest are regulated and enforced by the government and are applied inconsistently all the fucking time . Just look at how various different demonstrations in the last 5 years have been treated, and how some of them have ended in violence. I really don't think you, or Trump, understand the ramifications of what you're asking for. You have this ideal, naive view of what's all…

If Twitter were a physical space there would be regular violence that would have to be shut down. The role of the government is to break up the violence if it occurs.

Again, that's a very idealistic "role of the government" that assumes there will never be anyone who interprets what should and shouldn't be allowed differently from you, or in a way that harms you.

And then, once that happens, now you have no recourse - even if you build another platform, it ends up controlled by the same regulators.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#565

Post by torben-friis » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #92

What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector. It's like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave. And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being moderated on a web site after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s. I'm n…

Talking as an outsider, what's really weird to me is how the things Trump clearly says or does on a whim result in serious, deep debate in all the media and public forums.

He goes "I will build a wall spanning a continent to stop mexicans" and you see deep debate about how effective it would be, the price, the logistics of it... it's clearly a dumb idea, why does everyone pretend it's not and engage in deep consideration of it?

Now I'm seeing the same thing. Extensive debates about public opinion, the first amendment and the difficulties of moderating a service with millions of subscribers, when it is painfully obvious that the only reasoning by the president is "they messed with me so I'm going to get revenge".

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#566

Post by pas » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #517

pas wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be bad idea? It's pretty easy to just throw WikiPedia links at lies. Of course with AI/ML/deep-learning. Will it be perfect? No, of course not. Would it help? I think it would. At least it is worth a few tries.

> Why would it be bad idea? Because whether you want it to or not, it empowers trolls. The following is counter-intuitive, it goes against our best nature, it's even tragic: you can't high-road a troll. Trolls are in a race to the bottom, so being on the high-road is setting yourself behind. You want to fuck with Trump? You're going to have to either force a race-to-the-top narrative on him and his followers (not eve…

Why would it be counter-intuitive? What exactly do you mean by our best nature? (What kind of behavior, bias, habit, etc goes against it?)

Oh, you mean "fact checking" empowers trolls. Yeah, sure, strictly speaking any interaction, any expenditure of energy/attention/resources on the troll is a "win" for the troll.

I don't want to "fuck with Trump", I want Twitter et al. to provide some sanity, the proverbial common sense, a grounding for reality. Even if that's just the tyranny of them damn techno-elitist valleywags.

I want twitter to empower me. The users. To help the users to spend less time on trolls. Basically Twitter, by investing in fact checking, helps others. And that's a big win in my book.

Trump and the usual populist will fizzle out. But it'd be nice to prevent the next one, and the next-next one to gain a foothold by spreading lies uncontested. (Yes, of course they'll just find the Twitter of that decade, or do some other media hack, parasites always find the weak spots, but none of this means Twitter and the various online community providers have to capitulate and just give up because trolls.)

Twitter is obviously less moderated than, let's say a subreddit, or HN, because it has a very direct financial dependence on a basic level of drama. And they're trying to rope-walk between irrelevance and first-past-the-post idiocracy.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#567

Post by sixstringtheory » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

theduder99 wrote: post #461

bosswipe wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

What are you talking about? Trump is the one going after Twitter's right to free speech with this executive order. Liberals (and probably, hopefully, and if so, rightly, some conservatives) are the ones arguing for free speech right now.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#568

Post by jessaustin » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #521

CamperBob2 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't disagree with their actions in this case -- if anything, they didn't phrase it strongly enough. ("Get the facts about voting by mail," as opposed to "Caution: this Tweet is unadulterated horseshit.") But I also think that the more Twitter is used to disintermediate political communication, the more it starts to look like a vital public utility. It's tough to say where the line will or should be drawn. I…

> "Caution: this Tweet is unadulterated horseshit." Except it's not. Trump is right here; most of the confirmed voter fraud is on mail-in and absentee ballots, despite being less used than in-person in the past decades. Switching everyone to mail-in will cause a sharp uptick in voter fraud.

I hear this from friends who are Limbaugh fans, but I'd like to see some other source. Many people on the Left seem to think this whole "voter fraud" concern is a fig leaf for denying minorities their voting rights. When I've listened and asked follow-up questions, the Left's narrative seems more plausible.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#569

Post by sixstringtheory » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

2019-nCoV wrote: post #540

javagram wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FoxNews.com has comments on their website. By the logic of the order, Fox News should also lose their immunity and be liable for suit for anything posted by commenters to their online articles.

Where have Fox News editorialised users content?

> FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com do use moderation in an effort to maintain a safe and respectful environment in our online community. If your comment or username includes vulgar, racist, threatening, or otherwise offensive language, it will be removed.

https://help.foxnews.com/hc/en-us/articles/233194608-Do-you-...

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#570

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #523

epicureanideal wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pruneyard decision [1] though did conclude that the sidewalks (even privately owned walkways) outside a business were quasi-public spaces analogous to public squares. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/447/74 About your specific question, I would say "standing INSIDE the mall screaming" (screaming anything) would be more similar to posting large amounts of text on someone else's personal Twitter fe…

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/q... edit: deleted - the link did not support my claim.

Note that under Pruneyard and Lloyd the limited purpose invitation standard and focus does not apply to private spaces. Thus it matters whether the land is private or public, not the purpose for which the public is invited to enter. The "limited purpose" test examines public or quasi public facilities (i.e., joint public-private parnerships), like airports, to determine whether they would be considered public forums for free speech purposes. (See Hari Krishna vs Lee)

Additionally, public sidewalks in front of stores are considered public areas because of the public easement to use the sidewalk. A private sidewalk is not a public area for free speech purposes (see Lloyd).

[edit: fixed Logan to Lloyd]