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

bbc.com

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

#651

Post by Zarath »

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…

Tell that to megacorporations? Why are prescription drugs allowed to be advertised on TV? Free speech.

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

#652

Post by madeofpalk »

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.

Is it ‘pro censorship’ or pro ‘companies should have the freedom to run their company the way they want’?

I don’t understand how the government enforces private companies to (re)publish content in a way that doesn’t infringe on the companies first amendment right.

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

#653

Post by joe_the_user »

crusso wrote: post #650
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.

We're in a power transition where the Left is now in control of major societal levers: Academia, Hollywood, sports entertainment, the mainstream news media, large government bureaucracies, and big tech. Once the loudest champions of free speech because they were trying to break down the old power structures, the Left is now consolidating its power and sees no need to allow upstarts to criticize the new order.

To call this "the left" is ridiculous. What you're talking about is the "multicultural mainstream", the neoliberal center.

Essentially, it's the ideology of those major corporation that want to ban all sexist and racist discourse because this sort of thing makes it harder for teams of people scattered about the world to work together. It's an ideology that's still OK with tremendous wealth disparities but which want those disparities to not be reinforced chauvinistically.

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

#654

Post by 86J8oyZv »

joeloya wrote: post #282

The Galileo Principle. If you and everybody else is trying to silence something. You probably are on the wrong side of history.

Seems like only a few groups tried to silence this because it was demonstrably fake news. Others are happy to play it up. This is more like the type of journalism that put Hitler into power than, say, the smear campaigns against Snowden.

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

#655

Post by tomjakubowski »

orangecat wrote: post #81
taxicab wrote: post #23

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition th…

Yes, it's sketchy. I'd rate it as slightly more plausible than the gang rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, which Twitter had no problem with.

Unlike the Kavanaugh accusations, no one has yet testified under oath to Congress to any of this.

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

#656

Post by draw_down »

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.

The truth is that everyone has a list of speech they would curtail. Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone.

This is not to excuse it here, to be clear. Just to say the pattern of history is- whoever is in charge gets to decide what speech is dangerous, and then when who’s in charge changes the dangerous speech changes.

You used to couldn’t say the war in Iraq was bad. Now you can’t say ___________.

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

#657

Post by subliun1 »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #483
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.

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…

> Voltaire put it well ...

Voltaire did not say this.

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

#658

Post by jandrese »

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.

The question is: Does the news media (which includes Facebook, Twitter, and other social media) have a duty to objective reality? In the old days major news organizations had a public obligation to stick to the truth as much as possible. They had fact checkers, independent editorial boards, and other firewalls against false information.

Without such protections people end up believing convenient lies at a much greater rate, which is destructive to society. We've tried the big experiment with unfettered flow of information and it resulted in people being less informed and more radicalized. Clearly it doesn't work, at least not at scale.

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

#659

Post by stjohnswarts »

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.

The problem is this isn't a Freedom of Speech issue except from Twitter's point of view. They can delete whatever they like on their platform. People are free to leave the platform if they don't like that policy. Everyone gets what they want (as reasonably as possibly!) in the end.

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

#660

Post by rllearneratwork »

subliun1 wrote: post #657
rllearneratwork wrote: post #483

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…

> Voltaire put it well ... Voltaire did not say this.

I actually don't care who said it, I like that quote because of its meaning and not due to the authority (or lack of thereof) of whom could have been its author.
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