Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

841–850 of 1001 posts

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#841

Post by randyrand »

The fundamental question is, do people have a right to free speech on the web?

The web is nearly entirely privately owned, which makes answering this question difficult.

On one hand, the web is where we do 90% of our communication these days.

On the other hand, the web is privately owned not public.

I’m convinceable either way. Did telephone companies have a right to censor land line speech? Should ISPs be able to censor? Should Cloudflare? AWS? If telephone companies would have run afoul of the 1st amendment to regulate phone speech, It seems like other “foundational” industries like ISPs and Cloudflare should be regulated to be “dumb pipes”.

Where social networks fall is less clear.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#842

Post by ck2 »

Traster wrote: post #36

I 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…

wait, how does this work, someone in power does something tyrannical and authoritarian and so we just step back and argue the finer points of why it may be okay to have certain regulations or not, thereby ignoring the whole point it's their tyranny dodging democracy?

to be fair this has been going on for three years now, something insane is done, instead of focusing on the insanity, people pivot to the policy

this is not how democracy works

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#843

Post by Mikeb85 »

thephyber wrote: post #749
Mikeb85 wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are playing word salad with lots of different concepts and it looks like you are making hypotheticals with what we could make companies do. Companies growing does not make them into utilities. Utilities are providers of very specific commodity services which are specifically defined by statutory law. Monopolies (as in anti-trust law) are companies which abuse their power to hurt the consumer. Traditional anti-tru…

The law is basically word salad. And the idea of Twitter and other social networks being utilities isn't something I invented.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_public_uti...

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#844

Post by randyrand »

Traster wrote: post #36

I 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…

The fundamental question is, do people have a right to free speech on the web?

The web is nearly entirely privately owned, which makes answering this question difficult.

On one hand, the web is where we do 90% of our communication these days and losing that right seems like losing most of the first amendment.

I’m convinceable either way. Did telephone companies have a right to censor land line speech? Should they? Should ISPs be able to censor? Should cloudflair? AWS? It seems like industries like ISPs should be regulated to be “dumb pipes”. But where social networks fall is less clear.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#845

Post by api »

Traster wrote: post #36

I 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…

One thing that gets me about the people who use "free speech" in this way is the sense of entitlement.

20-30 years ago mass media was only accessible to people with large amounts of money to purchase advertising or run their own media platform such as a TV or radio station or a newspaper. It was closed to everyone else unless you could pull off some stunt to get five minutes of fame and somehow leverage that to deliver a message.

Now you have these vast platforms enabling anyone with a few bucks and cheap computer to potential address millions upon millions of people in near real time. It's completely unprecedented. In many cases these platforms are free as long as you comply with some minimal platform rules and regulations around what you can and cannot say. For most platforms the rules really are pretty minimal. Twitter is one of the least restrictive. You have to be a real obnoxious ass to get kicked off Twitter.

Somehow people have become so accustomed to this free and ubiquitous open access mass media that what was just a few decades ago impossible is now seen as an entitlement. Refuse to let your platform be used to deliver my message? You're censoring me!

Censorship refers to the use of force to prevent someone from speaking. The government has a legal monopoly on force, so generally this requires a law to be passed or perhaps an abuse of the civil court system to leverage the government to shut down someone's speech.

I can't speak for every country but in the USA that is extremely rare. We take the first amendment very seriously around here. You've got to go pretty far to get actually censored. You can buy books on how to make illegal drugs for example, or slander public figures on social media with baseless accusations, or publish software designed to directly facilitate illegal activity, and rarely will anything happen to you.

Being denied access to speak via someone else's privately owned and operated platform is not censorship. Nobody is preventing you from speaking. They're just refusing to assist you in delivering that speech.

Imagine someone walking into a newspaper office 40 years ago and demanding to have their op-ed printed (for free!) and then shouting "censorship!" when the newspaper refused? It's ridiculous.

I thought conservatives were skeptical of entitlements, especially when they involve other peoples' property.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#846

Post by dntbnmpls »

Traster wrote: post #36

I 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…

> 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.

Firstly, stop qualifying it with "hate", "factually incorrect", etc. It's a cheap tactic by authoritarian types to justify censorship. The religious zealots, authoritarian governments, etc all use the same argument you do to censor. Free speech is free speech whether you like it or disagree with it or whether it is factually incorrect.

Secondly, the question is whether a private company has a monopoly position. For example, we wouldn't allow power, water, telephone, etc companies from denying service based on what these companies feel are hateful or not. A christian ceo of these companies can't deny service to lgbt homes/companies/etc just because he doesn't like them or their speech. You get the idea?

Thirdly, if a social media platform is a vehicle for communication by elected officials, should that platform be allowed to limit citizen's access to said politician. I believe the courts already ruled twitter cannot deny people access to trump's twitter. But I'm not sure.

> Surely, it's clear here that having the actual head of the US government threatening to shut down private companies for how they choose to manage their platforms is a far more disturbing and direct threat against free speech even in the narrowest sense.

Yes. It is a concern worthy of discussion. But so are the other aspects of this issue which you naively dismiss as "hate"/etc.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#847

Post by nitwit005 »

dvtrn wrote: post #146
tuna-piano wrote: post #133

There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet. After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome (and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries). So what should the social media companies do? Censor…

Media literacy and criticism classes in middle school?

I took a critical thinking class in university, which covered deceptive messaging from advertisements fairly heavily. I'd like to think they all came out of that class no longer able to be fooled by this sort of thing, but I know it isn't the case.

It's easy to get people to question advertising, because they aren't emotionally invested. Once you stray into religion and politics, people often stop caring that they're hearing plainly untrue, or even self-contradictory, ideas.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#848

Post by austingulati »

standardUser wrote: post #806
meragrin_ wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they see it as targeting a political figure because of political differences rather than trying to prevent the spread of misinformation. I'm not seeing any annotations on a number prominent members of Congress spreading misinformation. Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten companies? Obama had his share of threats. I'm sure they could find a suitable legal issue with Twitter targ…

"Obama had his share of threats." Cite two.

A quick Google found two:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/obama-tax-inve...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-financials/obama-th...

Not sure this will support the original commenters point, as these "threats" have a basis in reality and appear to be good causes unlike Trump's, but these are "threats" by Obama at least according to the journalists involved.

Edit: why the downvotes? I am showing that the Trump supporter above is full of shit, Obama's "threats" were for good causes

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#849

Post by colejohnson66 »

busymom0 wrote: post #826

It seems like any remotely political post on HN gets flooded and upvoted with provable incorrect comments. Twitter team which is doing "fact checks" is severely biased and factually wrong. Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth boasts on his LinkedIn that he is in charge of "developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules". > “He leads the teams responsible for developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules” Here's a few of…

So he’s biased. Does that mean him fact checking is wrong? Sure, we should demand accountability on both sides, but it’s hard to be completely neutral.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#850

Post by Buttons840 »

tuna-piano wrote: post #133

There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet. After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome (and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries). So what should the social media companies do? Censor…

> how do you lessen the spread of misinformation?

It's a problem that we cannot actually engage in any debate or correction. President Trump is a perfect example of this, he drops his Tweet and then, poof, he's gone. He will not respond to difficult question about freedom of speech, etc.

Trump drops his talking point and runs away, then Twitter drops their "fact check" and runs away. I don't think anyone is the better for it. Nobody's minds have been changed. Nobody has been educated or given serious thought to difficult issues. Nobody has had empathy for others. Having the "fact check" is better than not, but not much, and "fact checks" are not always correct.

If we could somehow social engineer our way to meaningful debates on these difficult topics, we would be much better off. I know the President can't respond to millions of people, but if we could, somehow, systematically choose just a few of the best counterpoints and force some dialogue, then a lot of the "bullshit" would immediately evaporate.

Post reply on HN