Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#701

Post by burfog » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #301

oarabbus_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you mean this seriously, or in an exasperated but joking manner. If you are serious, it's because Trump has done more for the legitimacy and usage of Twitter than any engineer, businessperson, or celebrity other than Dorsey & cofounders. To be clear: Twitter may take a tough official stance against Trump, but behind closed doors he is the MVP.

That made my curious about what Twitter accounts have the most followers. The top 10 are [1]: 1. Barack Obama, 118 million. 2. Justin Bieber, 111. 3. Katy Perry, 108. 4. Rihanna, 96. 5. Taylor Swift, 86. 6. Christiano Ronoldy, 84. 7. Lady Gaga, 81. 8. Donald Trump, 80. 9. Ellen DeGeneres, 80. 10. Ariana Grande, 74. The next highest politican is Indian Prime Minister Modi, at #17 with 57 million. The Office of the Pri…

Obama has a huge advantage over Trump and Modi. When you make a new account, Twitter normally suggests following Obama. That gets him followers for zero effort. On the other hand, new accounts that immediately follow a bunch of people like Trump get hit with random annoying account restrictions that might cause a person to hesitate or even delete their account.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#702

Post by ausbah » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #676

JacobGoodson wrote: post #340

Regardless of ones views pertaining to the current president, does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"? I do not like anyone acting as the sole arbiter of truth, whether it be the president, the pope, or the random fellow screaming in the park. I prefer that corporations trust their users to make their own choices about what people say instead of making edits or including addendum's to peoples post…

If Trump can post claims about voting by mail, why can’t Twitter? How could a fact-check not be considered free speech like anything else and why shouldn’t twitter be able to post content?

because they're a platform not a distributor, or however the argument goes

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#703

Post by TeaDrunk » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #672

TeaDrunk wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so baffled by this because there are plenty of places where speech is suppressed and its fine. A highschool teacher can fail a student for shouting answers in an exam. A person can kick someone out of their house for saying horrible things. A cafe can ask someone to leave for saying slurs. A professor can ask a student to leave a lecture hall for talking... The right to speech is curtailed all the time in private…

You are misunderstanding free speech, it isn't a literal statement. Free speech is about being allowed to express ideas, not disrupting classrooms or harassing others. If you are allowed to express your idea after waiting for your turn, then your speech wasn't suppressed even if people told you to be quiet for a while.

"The ideal of free speech and its merits applies just as well to private actors and we should try to live up to it whenever we can."

What exactly does this mean if it doesn't apply to actively telling people when and where they can speak?

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#704

Post by Thriptic » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #604

pengaru wrote: post #92

What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector. It's like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave. And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being moderated on a web site after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s. I'm n…

Additionally, the intervention Twitter seems to have chosen here wasn’t actually to silence the user (who happens to be the current President), but to mark/annotate with a fact check label, which is essentially responding to speech with more speech. That’s entirely compatible with even far-reaching 1A readings and robust philosophical perspectives on it. And in fact, Twitter’s civil leadership policy has been allowin…

Exactly this and I'm surprised that I had to scroll this far down to find this comment.

Extract this scenario out into meat space. Imagine if a town was running a bulletin board where anyone could post town news and a citizen posted a flyer talking about town crime statistics that were wrong. A town employee noticed and posted an addendum identified as being from the town right next to the flyer saying "actually the real data is X". Should town employees not be allowed to do that?

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#705

Post by seph-reed » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #566

seph-reed wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would it be bad idea? Because whether you want it to or not, it empowers trolls. The following is counter-intuitive, it goes against our best nature, it's even tragic: you can't high-road a troll. Trolls are in a race to the bottom, so being on the high-road is setting yourself behind. You want to fuck with Trump? You're going to have to either force a race-to-the-top narrative on him and his followers (not eve…

Why would it be counter-intuitive? What exactly do you mean by our best nature? (What kind of behavior, bias, habit, etc goes against it?) Oh, you mean "fact checking" empowers trolls. Yeah, sure, strictly speaking any interaction, any expenditure of energy/attention/resources on the troll is a "win" for the troll. I don't want to "fuck with Trump", I want Twitter et al. to provide some sanity, the proverbial common…

> Yeah, sure, strictly speaking any interaction, any expenditure of energy/attention/resources on the troll is a "win" for the troll.

I don't think you have a much developed "troll framework" in your mind.

I believe you're a good, noble person, and I really want your life to be amazing for that. Unfortunately, what you said implies you think trolls are just trying to take energy. That they have no point. Seemingly, you're missing even the most basic and fundamental aspect of trolling: to show the other person is also a self-absorbed asshole who cheats and lies when they can, but then on top of that is too weak to admit it to themselves.

Trolls pick on "holier-than-thou" people because they live in a self-centered illusion about how good they are. The truth is, we're all garbage, selfish beings that do everything for ourselves and take credit for anything we can get away with. Fact checkers included.

The only way to approach a troll is as a fellow stupid piece of shit. So ignoring trolls is a pretty POS move... ignoring anybody is shitty. But to really show you're a piece of shit, you have to same something lame before you ignore them like: "ur mom." You need to prove not only that you don't give a shit what they say, but also that you've got no "good human" bubble to pop. Whoever says the most loses.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#706

Post by CMYKninja » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

This is a symptom of a larger problem. The Constitution and thusly the election system is woefully out of date and needs a formal rewriting based on a more general and modern consensus of ideas and principals. All of these issues could be irrelevant with an updated and more precise rule of law and government. I think we can all agree that any document which counts some people as 3/5s needs to be reassessed.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#707

Post by username90 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

natechols wrote: post #680

username90 wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech as an idea doesn't just apply to the government, it is just that we only enforce free speech on the government. The ideal of free speech and its merits applies just as well to private actors and we should try to live up to it whenever we can. If you think that companies should be able to use their power and influence to suppress the speech of individuals then I would say that you are more authoritarian th…

Or maybe we think that giving the government the power to tell private companies which speech they must allow is more authoritarian than letting the companies decide for themselves. Whenever there are tricky balancing questions like this, I always err on the side of the party that doesn't have a monopoly on violence.

Extending free speech laws to cover companies which acts as public forums is not the same as the government telling companies what they are allowed to say and do. If you think that free speech laws are fine for governments then you should also think it is fine for certain companies which grew too powerful and influential.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#708

Post by newacct583 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

malwarebytess wrote: post #697

pengaru wrote: post #92

What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector. It's like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave. And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being moderated on a web site after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s. I'm n…

>What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector. I've only ever heard people complaining that people misunderstand the first amendment. I've yet to see someone say they believe the first amendment governs and protects against private censorship. However, I constantly see people conflating the concept of free sp…

I'd be curious to hear real lawyers weigh in on this, but... that sounds pretty dubious to me. Executive orders aren't laws, they don't get interpreted by courts in general and they absolutely don't override existing case law! I mean, who cares what the executive branch says about section 230? We know what congress wrote, and we know how the judiciary has interpreted it, because we've already had that fight.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#709

Post by sixstringtheory » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

isoskeles wrote: post #685

sixstringtheory wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com do use moderation in an effort to maintain a safe and respectful environment in our online community. If your comment or username includes vulgar, racist, threatening, or otherwise offensive language, it will be removed. https://help.foxnews.com/hc/en-us/articles/233194608-Do-you-...

It's disingenuous to compare political speech to, for example, copy/pasting the N word a dozen times. It seems reasonable for a "neutral" platform to allow "moderation" of the latter, but perhaps not the former.

The question was

> Where have Fox News editorialised (sic) users content?

not

> Where have Fox News editorialised (sic) users political speech?

so my reply should in no way construe my opinion of what is or is not political speech.

Now that we've established that Fox News does in fact editorialize user content, we can move on to the original question of whether or not they should now

> be liable for suit for anything posted by commenters to their online articles

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#710

Post by tenebrisalietum » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #637

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"? This has nothing to do with any real person, but is just a hypothetical situation pertaining to this question in your post: Let's say an account X with many followers calls you a pedophile. You're not, of course, so you responded and said you weren't, but since the followers tend to like X, they don't listen to you. X's followers then dox you, find yo…

Fact checkers are necessary because otherwise people will believe a bad thing and commit crimes? Committing crimes like threatening people is not the natural outcome of the freedom to decide for yourself what you believe.

I'm not sure the term "natural outcome" is very meaningful. Things either happen or they don't. It's a possible outcome and possible enough to merit discussion.

But let's take bad effect down a notch, from a crime to just an unpleasant consequence if you want. Let's say instead of getting doxxed and physically threatened, you just get turned down for a job offer instead. What about that?