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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#791

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

Given the scope of it, I have to assume some outside pressure was applied. WH speaker is banned off Twitter ffs

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#793
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because it was written by a major American newspaper. Twitter should not be exercising editorial control over the news.

The New York Post is not a serious newspaper; it is a sensationalist tabloid. Sometimes the NYPost will report on real news, but I believe absolutely nothing they report until it is verified by the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, or other major broadcast outlet with actual journalistic standards.

The three outlets you cited lean left and regularly avoid articles inconvenient to the left (and paint much of the remainder as "Republicans pounce on reports that..."). Consider balancing with centre-right outlets like National Review.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#794
post #780
post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that terrifies me more than Trump is the number of my tech industry colleagues who seem to think we can and should abuse our power to shape public discourse.

Highly underrated comment. It's easy to be a free speech advocate when it benefits your own views. It's not easy when it doesn't.

Being a free speech advocate when it benefits your own views is an oxymoron. Defending free speech by definition means defending people's right to say things you disagree with. If you only defend people's right to agree with you then you're not a free speech advocate.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#795
post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't think it's going to have the impact you think it will. The major criticism for S230 is that social media companies are rampant with fake news, and not doing enough to combat misinformation. If anything, it gives FB and Twitter a defense against an accusation of spreading political misinformation.

The only thing that terrifies me more than Trump is the number of my tech industry colleagues who seem to think we can and should abuse our power to shape public discourse.

The only way Facebook has to not "use its power to shape public discourse" is to turn itself off. Having the platform up shapes the discourse. Algorithmic timelines shape the discourse. Adverts, whether political or not, shape the discourse.

Neutrality is only an option if you limit yourself to making cuckoo clocks.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#796
post #615

Good for Twitter and good for Facebook for once not bowing down to conservative demands to allow them to spread untrue propaganda and conspiracies ( https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357663/facebook-removed-... ) I'm very surprised so many people have a problem with this. I'm even more surprised people are demanding that forums and social media be stripped of the ability to moderate porn, spam, and vile personal at…

Welcome to 1984 where social media overlords get to decide what we are allowed to see and read. If it goes against their ideas they can ban it

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#797

I think it is crazy that twitter has gone down this path. Being the arbiter of truth makes their job much harder and doesn’t seem to have a big upside. If they have an agenda they want to push the upside might be there but otherwise it’s just a perpetual shitshow.

"If" they have an agenda? Really? Jack Dorsey admitted his bias. In the Joe Rogan interview he couldn't address any of the examples of biased censorship.

Jack Dorsey gave $10 million to Ibram Kendi, a man who wants to create an unelected and unaccountable "department of anti-racism" with the power to veto any federal bill that doesn't conform to Kendi's specific, contentious political agenda.

In other words, Jack Dorsey supports totalitarians.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#798

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

Freedom of speech should be a civil right and I hope that’s the result of this. No entity should be allowed to censor speech.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but this is what makes the situation so dangerous in the U.S. If no one’s mind is changed over events like these, then we’re at a point where there are essentially two citizenries which both see the other side as toxic. We’re slouching towards civil war. Most people don’t want war, but do see the other side as harmful, so we have to try hard to avoid it. Maybe we’re all looking at it wrong, maybe a civil war i…

I had assumed it was just that people were consuming two entirely different media streams. But I’ve had conversations recently where college educated people won’t even concede basic factual points left out of a media narrative. Like, things that can be established just by looking at some publicly available document, which I have given them. They keep just circling back to the narrative. It’s scary.

It is a "bad faith" problem. Bad faith arguments are made on all sides of the political spectrum, but anecdotally, it feels like one side is a little more fact challenged and relies on them fairly heavily. And the amount of arguments being made in bad faith means it is often more productive to just ignore or dismiss the other sides arguments outright.

Here is a good example. Right wing media likes to point at the homelessness problem in CA and claim that that is proof that Democrats are bad at governing. The homeless issue is a fact, supported by data. And CA being a Democratic state is also a fact supported by data. But pointing to both those facts and claiming it as proof that Democrats==bad is a bad faith argument. Blue states have higher GDP, higher levels of education attainment, and lower poverty rates than red states. And homelessness is a weird metric to use as it is partially a by product of regional economic success, where a good job market coupled with an overheated housing market results in an increasing number of people willing to tough it out on the streets or in their cars. I could make a similarly bad faith argument, and point out that West Virginia has the highest number of opioid overdoses per capita, therefore Republicans==bad. But I don't need to do that because the statistics that most reasonable people would agree to use as an arbiter of state level success are already in agreement with my position.

As you can see from the length of the above paragraph. These bad faith arguments require a decent amount of effort and/or knowledge to effectively counter. So as we move into this post-fact world, can you really blame people for just sticking to the 'narratives'?

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#800

This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…

Freedom of speech should be a civil right and I hope that’s the result of this. No entity should be allowed to censor speech.

So hacker news shouldn't be allowed to remove spam comments?
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