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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

#581

Post by biophysboy »

sailingparrot wrote: post #264
prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s. Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean th…

Yes, this exactly: social media platforms blur the boundary between communication and broadcasting, and are causing new debates over free speech.

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

#582

Post by cs702 »

nkurz wrote: post #570
cs702 wrote: post #285

The Washington Post tried to verify the authenticity of the claims made by the blocked article... and so far they have found ZERO evidence supporting the story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bi... This bit, in particular, suggests that the blocked article actually deserves to be blocked: > The New York Post published PDF printouts of several emails allegedly taken from the laptop, but for…

Thanks for the explanation. I can half-agree, but think the meta-discussion about the role of Twitter and Facebook in shaping the US politics is worthy of discussion even if the NY Post article turns out to be a wholesale fabrication. You might be interested that I also posted this article [ https://blog.erratasec.com/2020/10/yes-we-can-validate-leake... ] which talks about the relative ease of validating the emails…

Thank you for taking the time to respond :-)

Hmmm... I cannot disagree with your reasoning... so I must change my mind. I unflagged and upvoted the OP. I also upvoted your other post. Hopefully this thread won't get too uncivilized!

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

#583

Post by ManBlanket »

prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

What could go wrong from empowering biased corporations with the ability to control a national narrative of what constitutes misinformation and hyperbole? I'm noticing a wide spread lack of the ability to weigh the pros and cons of policy in order to arrive at a rational decision based on due consideration of legitimate data analysis. I guess we should've been concerned when today's young adults couldn't discern real from fake news sources. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK284782/ Makes me wonder how well equipped the next generation of underprivileged and minority children will be, among whom illiteracy will be a serious issue because they and their parents were never able to catch-up socially after being thrown to the wolves of self preservation and unchecked puritanical shaming. Sure a website like hacker news is well-moderated and I am appreciative, but it's a matter of scale. A for-profit corporation granted with the ability to control the political narrative of an entire country is neither, "moderated content", nor, "news". If time has anything to tell it works fine, until the narrative is wrong.

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

#584

Post by saluk »

codelord wrote: post #555
saurik wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly: the "right to free speech" is not the same as a "right to be heard", but we have managed to conflate the two with all of this "free amplification", as you describe; there is a big difference between someone getting to say something to their followers and that content being broadcast and even recommended by Twitter to random people. I personally believe that if a website has a recommendation al…

I believe the vast majority of the content you see on Twitter and pretty much everything you see on Facebook is from people you follow (ads excluded). Twitter/FB though use an algorithmic feed mechanism to reorder the posts which makes sense. I think they should be transparent about how they generate the feed, but I don't think you can hold them accountable for the content of a post someone made just because it got r…

There are multiple levels. While I like the idea of separating seeing only what my followers post and seeing other posts, it gets really blurry when the people I follow are clicking the "like" and "retweet" buttons. I would guestimate around 30% or more of my twitter feed are posts people I follow have liked or retweeted rather than posted on their own.

And the network can make that happen on its own, without an algorithm reordering content - if someone I follow is retweeting something that someone they follow retweeted.

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

#585

Post by RIMR »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #561
prudhvis wrote: post #223

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 fully agree with you regarding free speech. Where we probably differ is that I also uphold the rights of private companies, however large, to set their own standards of what can be posted to their platform. Now, if we want to have the debate about whether the platforms are too large, have too much power to shape the conversations we have, etc, we can have that debate. But it isn't censorship for a private company t…

If anything, the first amendment explicitly protects a private organization's right to curate their own platforms the way they see fit.

Twitter could declare support of Donald Trump a bannable offense today, and those people can promptly sign up for a site like Parler.

And Parler has even more censorship. Adult work is completely legal in the US, and pornography is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, yet Parler strictly prohibits it on "Decency" grounds.

I see no problem with social netoworks drawing a line in the sand. The big ones can draw a line at violence, hatred, and fascism. The little ones can draw the same line and stand shamefully on the other side.

And nobody loses their right to speak.

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

#586

Post by tossAfterUsing »

snowwrestler wrote: post #275
prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Even if it is a very popular website. If they make bad decisions, then people can go to competitors; it's as easy as typing in a different URL. That's how the Internet--and open societies in general--are supposed to work. What it looks like to me--someone who has been on the Internet since before the turn of the century--is tha…

> .... and they came to believe that these very popular websites are somehow inherent to the Internet and to society in general. They're not.

Amen. And my feeling is that we would be better off without them. This is why i'm in favor of slow computing, slower network speeds, and slower lifestyles. (I should state that this is not sarcasm)

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

#587

Post by username90 »

gshulegaard wrote: post #577
sailingparrot wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technologies brought new challenges. There was no social network in the 2000s and before. No retweet button, no "curated" timeline that showed you what you "like". YouTube did not try to push more videos like the ones you watched previously until the mid 2010s. Free speech does not have the same meaning as before. Before it just meant that you could say whatever you wanted. Now people use it implicitly to mean th…

I would second this and take it a step further and point out that the right to free speech is not the right to freely say whatever you want. This is particularly sticky when it comes to misinformation. Currently we have systems which make misinformation more dangerous (primarily via amplification) and a bunch of people conflating free speech with the freedom to say whatever you want. I think what we still need to exp…

Giving big tech companies even more power than they already have isn't the right move though.

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

#588

Post by ethanwillis »

codelord wrote: post #555
saurik wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly: the "right to free speech" is not the same as a "right to be heard", but we have managed to conflate the two with all of this "free amplification", as you describe; there is a big difference between someone getting to say something to their followers and that content being broadcast and even recommended by Twitter to random people. I personally believe that if a website has a recommendation al…

I believe the vast majority of the content you see on Twitter and pretty much everything you see on Facebook is from people you follow (ads excluded). Twitter/FB though use an algorithmic feed mechanism to reorder the posts which makes sense. I think they should be transparent about how they generate the feed, but I don't think you can hold them accountable for the content of a post someone made just because it got r…

Well that's not the full story is it? They actively blocked, with human knowledge a post. They definitely editorialized that. No algorithm involved.

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

#589

Post by RIMR »

andrew_ wrote: post #250
senthil_rajasek wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't happen overnight. 2016 U.S elections changed things a lot. Spreading misinformation is not free speech.

What? It absolutely is. A lie is covered under free speech. One can say anything under that doctrine.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence.

If I sell you a bar of lead painted gold, and tell you that it's solid gold, I can still be held responsible for fraud. My words would constitute a crime.

Now, if I told you explicitly that it was lead, but you decided to pay the gold price of your own free will, then I would be okay.

It would literally be the words I used to that constituted the crime. Lying isn't free speech in plenty on contexts. Go file a false police report and find out what happens.

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

#590

Post by dnautics »

swalsh wrote: post #312
prudhvis wrote: post #223

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.

When guns were flint locks, the amount of damage one person could do was pretty limited. When machine guns became generally available (and i'm aware $200 is not "generally available" in 1920). That changed. These weapons were introduced to "force multiply" an individual. Before the internet, the amount of damange a single guy with free speech could do was pretty limited. But with the internet, we're all force-multipl…

What about the transition from parchment writing to the printing press?
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