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

I still think this is horribly wrong.

Having groups "approve" information means having gatekeepers who wield a lot of power. Censors. Who is to ensure that they exercise that power both fairly and accurately? It opens a huge can of worms. It might seem to make sense for "obviously" black and white issues. But most are not so clear cut, and choosing a "correct" side is impossible.

"False information" isn't countered by suppression. It's countered with facts and open discussion.

I absolutely agree that the current state of affairs with social media is problematic. That's the reason I quit all of them and deleted my accounts permanently. But what you're advocating still amounts to censorship and a failure to treat individuals as capable of evidence-based rational thought, and is still the antithesis of what we want in an open and free society.

You are advocating censorship of "objectionable" views. Who is to judge what is and what is not "objectionable" and what can and cannot be spoken in public? This is absolutely wrong.

To do this is to revisit some of the worst days of the 20th century. I am astonished that views like this are getting more popular. Have we learned nothing from history?

In all seriousness, what do you think will be the eventual outcome when you marginalise people this way? Don't just reply to me here. Go and do some real reading.

The fundamental problem with the regulatory environment in the UK, as far as I can tell, is that both the big parties have been authoritarian on security and technology issues when in power, but neither appears to have a deep understanding of how modern technology works and the moral issues it raises. Consequently, in this field more than most, policies are set almost entirely for political expediency and appearances, rather than because they will achieve any other form of positive result.

This is how we get conflicting positions, such as "we value security and want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online", but also "we want our police and security services to be able to access any online communications".

The handling of social media has often been similar. Apparently we are a democracy that values free speech, yet we also want the social media companies to use unspecified technology that they are assumed to have available to identify and block harmful content, for whatever definition of "harmful" is politically convenient at the time.

A recurring theme is being seen to object to negative consequences of modern technology but without ever taking a clear stance or positive action for which they could be held responsible if it has other negative consequences of its own. It's the epitome of trying to have a cake and eat it, instead dumping the hard questions on the big tech firms. Those firms make good targets politically because obviously they do have some real problems, so a lot of people will be fine with blaming them for the evils of the tech world and won't have much sympathy for anything bad that happens to them.

The UK Cabinet traditionally operates on the principle of collective responsibility. Once a position has been adopted, it is everyone's public position and everyone is responsible for it, even if they disagreed or argued for something else in private. If you're not OK with that, you're expected to resign from the Cabinet, and from time to time people do.

A corollary of this is that when any Cabinet minister speaks publicly, they speak on behalf of the government, and they are expected to be able to respond to general media enquiries on matters outside their specific role. They may choose not to respond substantially or to refer the enquiry to a colleague more familiar with the details, and they very often do. If they don't, it is almost certain that they are expressing an agreed Cabinet position and they just happen to be the minister doing the media rounds that day.

Fortunately, in the US, the constitution prevents the government from forcing private companies or individuals to promote/broadcast/display the messages of government leaders.

It’s a little weird he tries to characterize Twitter exercising their ability to choose who has a voice on their platform as a new thing. That’s not new. They’ve been doing this all along.

If you only promote free speech in defense of authoritarian sedition, you aren’t promoting free speech. You’re promoting authoritarian sedition.