Free speech includes adding labels for fact checking.
But yeah, what would you expect from such an bully. It's the only thing he has proven to be good at, being rude and attack fast. Lol
What a president, I would be deeply ashamed.
Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
691–700 of 1001 posts
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#692I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…
I feel that because web tech advanced more quickly than much of society, a vacuum of power developed and Google was forced to step in. If Google had its way, it wouldn't police any content and it would illegally host HBO shows like Game of Thrones -- when you try to hold them responsible, Google would pass off all burden to the offending individual. That's how YouTube used to run. Other industries have things like th…
Do you think digital media needs a state run mediator?
I think it's probably time.
We've become quite protective of the data that's collected by digital products for fear of a concentration of power.
But then we all see the internet as a great 'leveller', and we don't want to disturb that balance.
The likes of the FDA (or your local equivalent) work at a certain scale... Perhaps civilly agreed constraints can be applied to companies who have managed to cultivate a userbase of a certain size.
Like a 'tax' of a kind on the amount of 'trash' you're allowed to ignore, before the police physically ensure you and your users can't abuse state infrastructure for whatever your nefarious purpose is.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
If companies are going to self-moderate their platforms then they should not receive any kind of legal protection from user-generated content. I wholly believe companies have every right to dictate what is on their platform but they cannot have it both ways. If you can afford to moderate content you disagree with, you can do so for illegal content as well. If I own a store and someone injures themselves on the premis…
Do they have protection right now? Platforms are already held responsible for illegal activities and are subject to requests by law enforcement and copyright holders. They're generally given a chance to respond to a request, challenge requests through channels and listen to appeals. But they would eventually be culpable if they weren't compliant.
Sounds like you're referring to DMCA where as I was referring to heinous crimes like drug/sex/child trafficking. They do have protection right now in either case.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only does it not seem to be a free speech issue to me, from my point of view this is basically the best-case scenario for avoiding censorship of contentious issues on dominant platforms like Facebook/Twitter. It's the obvious conclusion to arguments like, "the way to deal with bad speech is with more good speech." Twitter saw speech they disagreed with, and they fixed it with more speech. They haven't censored an…
And twitter doesn't do this with leftist speech that's wrong/inaccurate propaganda for the sake of propaganda, like (oh, for instance) today someone was posting a photoshopped picture of one of the recent reportedly abusive cops in a "Make America White Again" red hat. So wave the bloody shirt, that's AOK, but say that vote by mail facilitates fraud, and you get a personalized "We Don't Think So!" message from twitte…
One of the coolest features of the web is the hyperlink. You can provide one of these "hyperlinks" to another site as a way to back up assertions you're making or to provide context.
A great place for one of these "hyperlinks" would be to show everyone this photoshopped picture you're talking about. Not everyone follows whatever sites you'd consider to be "news".
And no, I'm not going to do the legwork and search for random articles trying to figure out what the fuck you're talking about.
You also might want to consider that a person with legal power, say a government official, might be held to a higher standard of informational accuracy than some rando posting a photoshopped picture.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aye but with no one in charge, how can the masses protect themselves against ever-increasing disinformation campaigns?
If there is control over information, how do the masses protect themselves against disinformation campaigns coming from official sources? Conspiracy theories and baseless nonsense is the price you pay to be able to criticize those in power. It is a price worth paying.
Independent fact checkers not associated with government authorities (like what Twitter is doing in this case) seems like one solution.
I'm really bugged by the leap of logic that fact checkers will supposedly always parrot the government line, when even this specific thread itself is about a fact checker existing that's going against the president's line.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#696I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…
I wasn't going to post anything because of the direction HN seems to lean and because they get enraged about these sort of discussions. Hear me out and feel free to respond instead of shunning me out. The bigger issue is these platforms only get those free speech protections because they're platforms. The moment they start editing content like this, they become editors to a publishing platform, and they should be hel…
> editing content
Twitter are not editing they are editorializing.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
If companies are going to self-moderate their platforms then they should not receive any kind of legal protection from user-generated content. I wholly believe companies have every right to dictate what is on their platform but they cannot have it both ways. If you can afford to moderate content you disagree with, you can do so for illegal content as well. If I own a store and someone injures themselves on the premis…
Because the scale makes this nearly impossible. Or rather, extremely expensive to the point where only the biggest of companies can do so, and at the cost of real-time information.
How often are people bootstrapping a social media site? That's not something you rollout with a tight budget. Most websites do not allow user-generated content. This won't have nearly as big of an effect on the sector as you think.
Whether they are paying people or writing automated systems to remove content they disagree with, these companies argued for this legal protection on the grounds of protecting free-speech, and now that they want to restrict it they don't deserve those same protections.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#698I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…
And on the flipside, these companies have grown to the point they could be considered a public utility or even monopoly. There certainly is precedent for governments compelling utility providers to not restrict their services arbitrarily.
There are companies that come close to that point (Google comes to mind), but Twitter certainly isn't at that level.
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#699(I think we need a semantic refactoring tool for threads like this one to extract the minimal graph of argument-and-counter-argument; DRY for discussions.)
Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
#700A new controvery for Trump so people ignore his previous Controversy of the Week. More airtime for Trump, it's a repeat of 2016. Unfortunately.