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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#621

Post by millstone »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #520
Karunamon wrote: post #291

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

> it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason The GOP is prioritizing § 230 reform. Given their likely fall from power and prioritization of the SCOTUS confirmation, as well as Democrat control of the House and its focus on stimulus bills, the short-term threat is minute. From an a…

GOP is talking big about Section 230 reform, but it is absurd on its face.

Prior to Section 230, if you censor ANY content (say, child pornography) then you are "moderating" the discussion and are liable for ALL content. If Twitter deletes a death threat tweet, why didn't they delete the defamatory tweet against Hunter Biden or whomever? Biden could sue. So Section 230 allows websites to delete the kiddie porn without becoming a "publisher" of everything that gets posted. Biden can sue the poster but not Twitter.

Reforming (weakening) 230 would force Facebook, Twitter, etc. to choose between allowing all content, and blocking anything that could be the basis for a lawsuit. Of course Facebook and Twitter are not going to become an 8chan free-for-all, so they would be forced to crack down harder, censoring much more aggressively.

Also far-right sites (e.g. InfoWars) very much do not want increased liability here.

So "230 reform" is a useful rallying cry for conservatives who feel censored (rightly or wrongly) by social media giants, but the idea is so obviously bad that I can't imagine they'll go beyond minor tweaks.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#622

Post by remarkEon »

bosswipe wrote: post #612
remarkEon wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is indicative of the absolute sea change that has happened over the last four years with how we treat speech and journalism. Gone are the days when if you read a story and thought it was BS, you ignored it and moved on. Or when a politician says something dumb, that's obviously untrue or a distortion, you just laughed and said "what an idiot". Today, these things are "disinformation" and are "an attack o…

There's a difference between framing events vs fabricating them from whole cloth. The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy.

I'm not sure there's a sufficient difference between those things to make the point you're trying to make stick. There's a non-trivial amount of people in this country (and on this website, it seems) who think Trump is, literally not metaphorically, an agent of the Kremlin. Are those people a threat to democracy? I certainly don't think so. I think they're idiots, but I don't think they're literally threatening democracy.

>Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy.

The line you are drawing here is very very close to accusing people who share false information of treason. Are we sure we want to walk up to that line? I'm not. I think it's frankly pretty silly. It's also interesting that you assume there is some neutral arbiter that can decide what is "real" and what is "true" and what is "fact" (all different things, btw).

>The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information.

It's also interesting that you think this was ever the state of democracy, and not the status quo.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#623

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

specialist wrote: post #512
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #455

To be honest it sounds like a regular end of the election craziness. To all those people, who think this is somehow special and deserves special new set of rules, I can only point to 2016 ( Comey saga that also included Guliani ). It is not special. It is not new. It is still speech. It may be lies ( and I am sure we will find out soon enough ) and I get that a lot of people can be influenced. I get it. And it still…

"What I do not get is why some people honestly do believe that an average person needs to be protected from lies by a censor?" I was a Chomsky style free speech ultimatist. Unfortunately, humans aren't rational. Lying is super effective, its effects pernicious. They activate identity and trigger negative partisanship. Simply trying to refute lies only embeds them further. Profiting from the outrage machine (dopamine…

I don't think you are wrong. I would not dare to suggest there are easy answers here. My initial reaction was to attempt to argue that we are not, in fact a democracy, completely derailing the conversation in an attempt simply to 'win' an argument. I am oddly surprised with myself over this. There is no ego here. Nothing to prove. And yet, the need to be right on the internet prevails. This agrees with your note that humans are not rational.

I definitely agree that lying is effective. I agree that outrage machine is getting really annoying, but I also found a way to deal with it in an imperfect way. Stop consuming this information and, eventually, stop internalizing this overwhelming pile of crap that is shoved into our minds 24/7.

There is a reason we are a republic. There is a reason we protect ( or at least give lip service to protecting ) minority voices. And that's usually, because popular opinions don't need defenders. And I want those voices protected even if they are unpopular, ill-informed, dishonest, or even just lying.

The alternative is that we ban lying. Period. No cute ads that dance on the edge of misrepresentation. No white lies. You had a shitty day. Say so. No lie of omission. Your company uses child labor, disclose it in 10-k ( oi, all material facts should be available for investors ). No politician talk. We usher a new world where dictionary police is king and every single one of us has to weigh each word carefully..

I feel I should apologize. This post may be now coming across as snarky. I think that fact that I don't really have a good answer makes me frustrated.

edit: added don't in last sentence.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#624

Post by blhack »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #563
blhack wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did twitter censor all stories regarding the claim that Trump paid $750 in taxes? In case the point I’m making isn’t obvious: the NYT never published their source for that, and still haven’t. If twitter is removing stories for having dubious sources, then that story should not pass muster either. If they’re removing stories for having “hacked” (or in the case of both this story about Hunter Biden, or Trumps taxes: “l…

That's a bizarre comparison, because Trump has repeatedly lies about being willing but unable to release his own copy of his tax returns. And the NY Times didn't publish personal documents, they published facts about a certain class of personal documents (tax documents of a Presidential candidate) which for decades have been considered public information by all major corners of the political arena.

How did the NyTimes get those tax documents?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#625

Post by remarkEon »

drewrv wrote: post #619
remarkEon wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is indicative of the absolute sea change that has happened over the last four years with how we treat speech and journalism. Gone are the days when if you read a story and thought it was BS, you ignored it and moved on. Or when a politician says something dumb, that's obviously untrue or a distortion, you just laughed and said "what an idiot". Today, these things are "disinformation" and are "an attack o…

It's been argued time and again, from one side that Facebook and Twitter are private companies and that free speech doesn't apply on their sites, and from another side that what we're talking about is an abstract principal of free speech, not the legal definition. But if you remove the loaded term of "free speech", what's actually being discussed here is "website moderation policies". With that framing, what is the e…

You can redefine the discussion all you want, but my comment was related to how people have changed their views on speech in the age of social media and the internet (and especially since 2016). I don't really care to rabbit hole right now about TOS policies on these websites, but I do care about how we collectively think about principles like free speech and what constitutes a "threat" to democracy.

So, to directly respond to what you're bringing up, laissez faire moderation policies are not a threat to democracy.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#626

Post by dang »

jimmydorry wrote: post #411

Absolutely agree, but I don't think this is the tipping point yet. An important line was crossed, but it will probably take a bit more before there is enough political capital to do something. On the other hand, if the party benefiting from this move gets into power, that might be enough to stop any change from happening.

Please don't take threads in a partisan direction. That guarantees predictable, nasty, flamewar responses.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24782753.)

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#627

Post by dang »

bosswipe wrote: post #476
jimmydorry wrote: post #411

Absolutely agree, but I don't think this is the tipping point yet. An important line was crossed, but it will probably take a bit more before there is enough political capital to do something. On the other hand, if the party benefiting from this move gets into power, that might be enough to stop any change from happening.

What happens if the party that is attacking our democracy by spreading disinformation in the last few weeks of the election gets into power?

Please don't take HN threads further into partisan flamewar. It's predictable and nasty. We want curious conversation about unpredictable things, which is kind of the total opposite of that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#628

Post by artificialLimbs »

iaw wrote: post #509
alehul wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzzfeed has been deemed left, which is a category beyond left-leaning, by an objective fact-checker [1]. As one example of why: > In June 2016, the left-leaning media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that in 100 BuzzFeed stories about Barack Obama, 65 were positive, 34 were neutral, and one was critical. [1] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/buzzfeed-media-bias

I don't think having more positive stories about a Democratic president makes a publication left-leaning, especially given that Obama is the only president in recent memory not actively involved in some scandalous behavior. This is coming from someone who did not agree with most of Obama's policy decisions but at least could respect his integrity.

Weird that nobody has mentioned Benghazi yet.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#629

Post by ajxs »

partiallypro wrote: post #475

One might even argue that Facebook/Twitter are doing this explicitly to ensure a party is put in power that won't try to reform them in any way. Their actions show it, and their political donations show it. That's my putting on the tin foil, but I think you could make such an argument. We always talk about Big Oil, etc being friends to Republicans, but often ignore Big Tech's close ties to Democrats.

You're absolutely right. The idea that a corporation's board would decide collectively what political stances to take is not groundbreaking. However this kind of critical thinking seems to be so rarely applied to organisations trafficking in information, such as those making up 'big-tech'.

I was speaking elsewhere on Hacker News recently about how the attitude towards trusting corporations seems to have shifted so dramatically. Distrusting the motivations of large corporations was once a pillar of liberal thought in the west. Now many liberals seem to be willing to empower these corporations absolutely as long as they control online discourse in a way that largely benefits the liberal establishment.

I would encourage people to consider for a moment the financial incentives for organisations at the scale of Facebook, Google, Twitter et. al. to support globalist political agendas. This isn't 'conspiracy theory' thinking, it's shareholder primacy, it's simple politics. Anyone who thinks that these organisations support liberal causes out of the goodness of their hearts needs a reality check. They pursue these choices for their own gain.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#630

Post by dang »

taxicab wrote: post #90

To be fair, the fact that it was published by the New York Post already seriously undercuts the article's credibility. Edit: and also the fact that it was written in collaboration with the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927.)
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