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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

#671

Post by 4bpp »

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…

Counterpoints:

- Attention is a zero-sum game. In the past, we'd get more of our news from local papers, radio stations or lunch break gossip, resulting in a natural diversity of viewpoints. Nowadays, it's all the same social media outlets and handful of national newspapers (whose staff generally spend all day and form their opinions on Twitter, which thus winds up being upstream anyway) for everyone. Compared to what we had before, one side winds up getting free amplification anyway.

- I don't think free speech as a positive right for the speaker is necessarily the correct framing; at least, it neglects half of the issue at hand. I consider it at least equally important that "free speech" protects my right as an information consumer to get exposed to as many viewpoints as possible on a matter. Right now, my sense is that national newspapers all echo the Twitterati consensus, Facebook has developed in such a way that social and increasingly technological pressure would not allow even those people on my friend list who I suspect had interesting and generally well-thought-out non-mainstream opinions to share them with me, and the rest is all conspiracy websites that are unusable as a source because they've largely been cut off from the means of establishing credibility and separating wheat from chaff via social proof.

If I were a US voter (I'm not), I'd want to know whether Biden was involved in corrupt dealings. As it stands, it seems that if there were a compelling case that he was (and, well, I don't know if there is one!), the media and its allies would be working overtime to prevent me from learning about it.

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

#672

Post by phkahler »

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…

>> and we go back to uncurated things and to an internet where you have to look for the things you want to read/watch, versus getting content pushed onto you.

But people are lazy. Why write a post when you "share" some crap that came through your feed with one click.

We will get to self hosted distributed social media when it becomes easier than Facebook or Twitter.

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

#673

Post by mattchew »

SECProto wrote: post #533
mattchew wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little older than you, but same basic experience. I also don't understand how the tide turned so swiftly against freedom of speech, and in favor of authorities deciding what people should be allowed to hear or read. But it did turn, and I don't see the trend reversing. While I don't like the prospect of an increasingly censored society, it will be interesting to watch the struggle between the big platform censors a…

> I also don't understand how the tide turned so swiftly against freedom of speech, and in favor of authorities deciding what people should be allowed to hear or read. Freedom of speech meant freedom from /government/ control of speech. It has never meant freedom from the any impact. This article (facebook et al blocking/removing/deplatforming) is functionally no different than a newspaper choosing what to publish in…

Freedom of speech has always meant the idea that different points of view should be aired, not suppressed, and that people should decide for themselves what is right or what is correct, rather than authorities deciding for them.

A society where "wrong" points of view are thoroughly suppressed by giant social media companies or angry mobs (or angry mobs on social media) might not violate the literal text of the First Amendment, but it lacks the spirit of free speech that inspired the First Amendment in the first place.

What I find most disappointing is not that Facebook is censoring QAnon (or whatever), but that the popular sentiment is they should be. That's a big change from the culture I grew up in, and not for the better.

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

#675

Post by airtonix »

montagg wrote: post #621
nemo44x wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech is considered violence by some people. It has been this way since the late 80's but it was confined to certain subcultures that weren't taken too seriously. But they have taken over certain institutions, like the university (and increasingly big-tech), and own that platform and teach this as esteemed fact rather than an opinion. And it's dangerous because when you equate speech with violence then how far are w…

There is absolutely speech that is violence, and it is typically not protected by free speech. Harassment, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, calling for literal violence against others, these are allowed to be regulated (in the US) and understood broadly to be dangerous.

you're wrong.

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

#676

Post by phkahler »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #635
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'm also curious on another aspect, as I don't believe "right to free speech" is meant in any way to imply a lack of liability for damages caused by that speech. If I convince millions of people that Example companies widgets kills kittens, when I have no reason to believe that to be the case, I would be held liable for the damage to the brand. But the pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet and most platforms, and e…

It's sad that mainstream media outlets even get away with slander in politics. Everything is twisted either to fit their views or just to make outlandish headlines to get clicks.

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

#677

Post by disown »

dkackman11 wrote: post #48

Maybe getting rid of professional journalism, and crowd sourcing the news via secret algorithms, isn't such a great idea after all...

> Maybe getting rid of professional journalism

That is why we are in this mess. Social media was fun before "professional journalism" started getting involved.

Think about it. The toxicity on social media is entirely driven by the news media. The culture wars and everything from smollet to "culture of rape on campus". The news blames social media but it's actually the news traveling within social media that is the problem.

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

#678

Post by ahallock »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #479
donohoe wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its is not censorship. No censorship has taken place. The article still exists on the NY Post web site and their newspaper. Their audience is still sizable. Their article included personal information and was consistent with policies that have been in place for almost a year. Twitter is not a public utility in the way that phone services are. They were (rightly) criticized along with others for letting mis-informatio…

But that standard has never been used before and was manually engaged here. Trump's taxes were repeatedly shared and there are photos of the content (not to mention the content itself, which is far more private than an email address). This standard has never been applied like this, and you can still link to the Web Archive version without limitation - same content. It's also not "limitation of deliberate misinformati…

The selective application of their terms is precisely the problem. It renders their policies essentially meaningless when certain groups are given preferential treatment.

The thing is, I would have thought by now that these companies would have learned from the past. The more you try to censor information on the internet, the more attention you draw to it.

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

#679

Post by II2II »

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.

Over simplified version: free speech advocates of the bygone era started hearing too much that they disagreed with.

The reality is that people were always saying what is being said today, but there were many more checks that reduced how far and how quickly the message would spread. You may have had right and left leaning media outlets, but they were typically closer to centrist views. This is more due to them having to maintain their reputation by checking facts than censorship, so the main thing that differed was their spin on a story. That pretty much left word of mouth and fringe publications. Fringe publications are just that, they had limited distribution. Word of mouth was pretty much restricted to social circles. Anything too far from reality (or people's perceptions) quickly died off.

Online business models changed that. Fringe publications are no longer fringe, at least not in the historic sense. Word of mouth is no longer word of mouth, since people have access to publishing platforms. Reputation is no longer a restraint, so fact checking is irrelevant. Rather than settling on more centrist views, we tend to focus upon the extremes. A lot of disagreeable stuff is being said at those extremes, which is why (I suspect) that a lot of the old-time free speech advocates have reevaluated their positions.

(And all of that is before considering how some people are actively manipulating what we are exposed to.)

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

#680

Post by btbuildem »

mikenew wrote: post #606
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…

> People were also stopped from sending the article in a private direct message In this instance, the solution has already reached beyond the realm of "don't allow certain things to be amplified". You literally cannot share this information even in a private 1-on-1 chat. > we go back to uncurated things Yeah. The more I reflect on things the more I think social networks are just a thing that shouldn't exist. Although…

They can text it, email it, send it over messenger or whatsapp..
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