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Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

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

#731

Post by ianferrel »

efitz wrote: post #726

I would love to see a law that for corporations, once the corporation exceeds some commercial threshold (e.g. 1M customers or 10M/year revenue or whatever) then you are no longer allowed to discriminate against your users for any reason other than violation of non-discriminatory terms of service. I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hi…

I'm not sure I agree with this, though I think it's an interesting idea.

The threshold you've suggested seems way too low. 1M customers or $10M/year revenue isn't "near-monopoly", it's barely a player in the game.

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

#732

Post by Karunamon »

FireBeyond wrote: post #721
Karunamon wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The executive order signed today is far too detailed and far too nuanced to support the idea that its cause for existence is Trump being upset at Twitter a few days ago. This has been being prepared for a long time.

You underestimate the productivity of some underlings and lawyers pulling an all-nighter. It's also not Day 1 of "Trump being upset at Twitter for much the same reasons", so no doubt there's been a plan. But ascribing the timing of this EO to "just a coincidence" stretches credulity, to me.

I'd agree that the Twitter Kerfluffle is what surfaced it, but keep in mind that this has been on the radar since at least last year[1] (actually earlier[2]).

The timing of this release is hardly coincidental, but it's been on the minds of the politicians for long enough that this reads to me more like an opportune time to push something forward that's been brewing for a while, rather than an off-the-cuff reaction.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/donald-trump-twitter-f...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/us/politics/twitter-shado...

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

#733

Post by buzzkillington »

christophilus wrote: post #667
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…

> I'm not sure how much more embarrassed I can get for my country. Every election season, I’ve said, “These are some of the worst candidates I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how much lower the bar can get.” And then it gets lower.

Remember that Kennedy won because the mob stuffed ballot boxes for him.

The only thing that's changed every election is that you're 4 years older an paying attention.

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

#734

Post by thomaslord »

jtbayly wrote: post #317
threeseed wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers have restricted what they publish for centuries. They don't allow libellous, defamatory, salacious or inappropriate comments for example. So it sounds 'new tech' hasn't really changed anything.

Newspapers do that because they are liable for what they publish. Twitter is not liable for what it publishes. Why should it not be liable? The answer is because they are just providing a platform and others are publishing. But the moment they use their platform to modify and censor what people publish, then they should probably be liable, right?

I don't see why they should be.

If someone uploads their library of child porn encoded to base64 split across tons of tweets, do you want Twitter to have a choice between removing that content and continuing to operate?

We have 3 options here:

1. No moderation allowed whatsoever on a site without a court order. That obviously leads to a terrible, toxic community with lots of reprehensible content that the average person wouldn't want to participate in.

2. A good faith effort at moderation. This allows the most reprehensible, highest-impact content to be removed and allows users to participate in the moderation process.

3. No content can be published without moderation, on any site anywhere. Want to post a Facebook status? Have fun paying $20 for the privilege of waiting 48 hours for a human to review it.

All of this is irrelevant though, because this executive order is not targeted at censorship. It's targeted at a private individual who voluntarily, for free, passed on a message from one person to many other people and decided to tell them "this seems fishy, you might want to read up on it."

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

#735

Post by thephyber »

rbanffy wrote: post #527
sneak wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my Twitter account was suspended recently after 12 years, I also lost access to my DM history, including usernames which I had not memorized. For some of my friends, Twitter was the only contact information I had for them. I have now totally lost the ability to communicate with those friends in the midst of a global emergency, even if I make a new account (which itself would be subject to immediate termination a…

> You can’t export your data or do “data takeout” from a suspended account, sadly, and you can’t view your DM history either inbound or outbound. This is a big problem.

That example seems like something you can fix yourself by keeping offline backups of content that you need (general gd practice for all digital content).

More impactful would be access to any accounts which you only have access to with Twitter/Facebook/Google/etc federated login (like OAuth). It's very significant if you can't access your email/cloud/DNS accounts if you make a gray area ToS-violating comment/video on YouTube.

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

#736

Post by awillen »

efitz wrote: post #726

I would love to see a law that for corporations, once the corporation exceeds some commercial threshold (e.g. 1M customers or 10M/year revenue or whatever) then you are no longer allowed to discriminate against your users for any reason other than violation of non-discriminatory terms of service. I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hi…

The problem is defining what those "non-discriminatory terms of service" are and applying them evenly to everyone. That's why Facebook is making a theoretically independent content review board - things aren't black and white, especially in today's climate in which people just deny facts. Trump's issue with Twitter illustrates this point - he's just factually incorrect about a lot of his voter fraud claims, but he calls it discrimination against his view point and he's got millions of people who support him in that.

So where's the line? I think anti-vaxxers should be censored because their viewpoint causes actual harm to people, but they would obviously argue otherwise. You can say that anything that causes harm is not permitted and call that a non-discriminatory term of service, but whenever you apply it, the person you're applying it against is going to claim discrimination.

A lot of people don't like FB's stance of letting anything go in terms of political ads, but they don't have a good alternative, because otherwise any stance they take will face claims of discrimination. In that case, I think the government should be defining what is acceptable content for political ads and leaving it to FB to enforce, but of course the people in government are more biased than anyone.

It is, to say the least, a tough problem.

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

#737

Post by stevebmark »

efitz wrote: post #726

I would love to see a law that for corporations, once the corporation exceeds some commercial threshold (e.g. 1M customers or 10M/year revenue or whatever) then you are no longer allowed to discriminate against your users for any reason other than violation of non-discriminatory terms of service. I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hi…

I'm baffled by how short sighted and ignorant this line of thinking is.

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

#738

Post by [deleted] »

efitz wrote: post #726

I would love to see a law that for corporations, once the corporation exceeds some commercial threshold (e.g. 1M customers or 10M/year revenue or whatever) then you are no longer allowed to discriminate against your users for any reason other than violation of non-discriminatory terms of service. I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hi…

[deleted]

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

#739

Post by efitz »

ianferrel wrote: post #731
efitz wrote: post #726

I would love to see a law that for corporations, once the corporation exceeds some commercial threshold (e.g. 1M customers or 10M/year revenue or whatever) then you are no longer allowed to discriminate against your users for any reason other than violation of non-discriminatory terms of service. I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hi…

I'm not sure I agree with this, though I think it's an interesting idea. The threshold you've suggested seems way too low. 1M customers or $10M/year revenue isn't "near-monopoly", it's barely a player in the game.

Completely fair, and maybe the idea isn’t the right way to do it, but I am frustrated with the cancel power that many companies wield in our society and hadn’t seen this proposed anywhere. And corporations are controlled by people, usually a small number of people with unbelievable ability to wield power:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5839cf32e4b000af95ee5b68

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

#740

Post by username90 »

newacct583 wrote: post #700
viscanti wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like having the president attack Twitter for their speech (adding extra speech that suggests that some shared information is disputed) is the actual violation of Free Speech. The First Amendment says that the federal government can't stifle free speech, which seems like what is happening here.

That's exactly it. Twitter disseminated the president's words as he wrote them to everyone that wanted to see it. They also said it was wrong. Fundamentally the whole exercise is an attempt to conflate Twitters (first amendment!) right to speak its own opinions with somehow "restricting" the rights of their subscribers. And that's insane. Just look at how many people in this very thread are buying into the frame by d…

Personally I think that Twitter inserting their own articles is overstepping their own role. Nobody goes there to view what Twitter writes, nobody goes there to care about Twitter opinions. Them doing this forfeits their status as a public square, now they are publishing their own editorialized content, and not as Tweets but as privileged inserts in others Tweets.
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