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Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#61

Post by due7rurhdu »

dgellow wrote: post #47
d0100 wrote: post #38

Companies are now shielded from the government when it comes to user generated content with Section 230. They are not, however, shielded from social justice. And there lies the problem. Social spaces and infrastructure should be regulated so that they can be shielded from social justice and the government regarding user generated content. No one will boycott twitter if they know twitter can't just press a button to b…

Of course people will boycott twitter if the company cannot easily ban content. They will label twitter as a network that promote right wing propaganda and push people to move to other places if they don’t want to be associated with that group.

There's a very obvious fix for this which is to simply acknowledge that social media platforms are operating with too much editorial bias to avoid being considered publishers rather than platforms. This acknowledgement creates an environment where the safest strategy to maintain the legal protections that make social media platforms possible is one of minimal censorship.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#62

Post by RamRodification »

sanp wrote: post #28
bondarchuk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd much rather we all man up and learn to live with the fact that people say things we disagree with on the internet, instead of assuming that we need gatekeeping.

Or, man up and recognize that Twitter can ban whomever they want. They are not bound by the 1st amendment (at least in the American context).

Without weighing in on the actual alternatives... Your comment comes off a bit weird to me because that's what bondarchuck is saying he would rather not have. Yet you present it as a new (to the discussion) option. It makes the conversation kind of go like this:

Him: I would much rather we have A so that we didn't need B

You: Or, we could have this thing B

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#63

Post by nilkn »

sanp wrote: post #28
bondarchuk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd much rather we all man up and learn to live with the fact that people say things we disagree with on the internet, instead of assuming that we need gatekeeping.

Or, man up and recognize that Twitter can ban whomever they want. They are not bound by the 1st amendment (at least in the American context).

I think it’s pretty unlikely social media companies will continue to have total control over public discourse. There’s already some legal precedent that the Supreme Court views Twitter and Facebook as public squares. See Packingham v. North Carolina from 2017, for example. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see an escalation of this viewpoint soon.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#64

Post by dgellow »

thinkingemote wrote: post #4

The logic is that by banning and moderating they are taking editorial decisions which mark them out as being a "publisher" as opposed to an impartial "platform". It's a bit of a stretch. For these big companies I think governments gave them the choice to censor or be broken up, so they chose censorship. Now the governments are wanting more regulation. I don't know how they all are responding but could Facebook be han…

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#65

Post by pjc50 »

Reminder to everyone especially Hancock: the US is not the UK. We don't have "section 230". We don't have US-style free speech. We have, at best, ECHR-style free speech, which comes with slightly more caveats.

Here in recent memory is the UK dealing with elected politicians who were silenced by force of law: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm

(mind you, they were also members of a terrorist organisation, so all the arguments about promoting violence apply ...)

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#66

Post by dgellow »

due7rurhdu wrote: post #61
dgellow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people will boycott twitter if the company cannot easily ban content. They will label twitter as a network that promote right wing propaganda and push people to move to other places if they don’t want to be associated with that group.

There's a very obvious fix for this which is to simply acknowledge that social media platforms are operating with too much editorial bias to avoid being considered publishers rather than platforms. This acknowledgement creates an environment where the safest strategy to maintain the legal protections that make social media platforms possible is one of minimal censorship.

Maybe read this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#67

Post by pjc50 »

due7rurhdu wrote: post #61
dgellow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people will boycott twitter if the company cannot easily ban content. They will label twitter as a network that promote right wing propaganda and push people to move to other places if they don’t want to be associated with that group.

There's a very obvious fix for this which is to simply acknowledge that social media platforms are operating with too much editorial bias to avoid being considered publishers rather than platforms. This acknowledgement creates an environment where the safest strategy to maintain the legal protections that make social media platforms possible is one of minimal censorship.

This distinction is only meaningful in US law and does not apply in the UK.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#68

Post by dustinmoris »

grenoire wrote: post #3

My thinking right now is that the status quo is the symptom and not the cause. Were we as the human race simply not ready for this? Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning? If it wasn't Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. it would simply be something else in their place who had to perform the…

> Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning?

Humans are instinctively divisive. Our species relied heavily on small communities working together and excluding other communities throughout our entire human history. Tribalism is engrained in our nature as a direct effect of our evolution. It would take another thousand years to unlearn that. Social media is a global tool, and therefore social media has just brought out the worst in humans on a global level, but it hasn't created that intrinsic tribal instinct in us to begin with. Humans are just not meant to cooperate on such a large scale. We'd all be much better off (aka leaving more harmonious) if we'd live in smaller communities and would revert a lot of what globalisation has given us.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#69

Post by Silhouette »

dgellow wrote: post #56
jackjeff wrote: post #45

To what extent could the UK regulate a US company? Especially if they don’t have a UK subsidiary. Last I checked I publish a blog site and I did not get the necessary permission from Chinese authorities to do so... and I don’t care, I have no link to China.

The EU has regulations, such as GDPR, that applies to any company serving EU citizens, even US companies. The UK has regulations that companies have to follow to serve UK citizens. It’s not that strange and is quite common.

Extra-territorial enforcement is a different matter, though. A government on the far side of the world can say whatever it likes in its own laws, but if a business has no presence there, why would that business be under the foreign government's jurisdiction?

The EU's strategy with the GDPR, in attempting to make it viral so that businesses it could reach within its own jurisdiction could be penalised if they dealt with businesses it couldn't reach elsewhere, is a dangerous path to be following. Taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of strategy becomes a significant barrier to international trade and can leave businesses in impossible positions.

A better way to address these issues is for governments to make proper international agreements with each other on matters where they agree on the principles, so that businesses in any state that is party to those agreements know what the rules are, and the rules are consistent and enforceable throughout the states making the agreement.

Without such agreements, one would hope that governments of states that have not implemented some rule would protect their own businesses, including actively intervening to support those businesses if they were being "leaned on" to enforce the rules of other states extra-territorially. We really don't want a world where any sufficiently large political power -- the US, EU, China, India, whoever -- can unilaterally set rules that apply to everyone else as well.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#70

Post by 1MachineElf »

rubymamis wrote: post #23

Nietzsche predicted the current course of events: "Step by step, private companies incorporate state businesses; even the most stubborn vestige of the old work of governing (for example, that activity which is supposed to secure private parties against other private parties) will ultimately be taken care of by private contractors..."

Source, for anyone interested: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human...
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