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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

#871

Post by perl4ever »

username90 wrote: post #690
perl4ever wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your tone is as if they were editing his message. I don't believe they were doing that in a way that would create any confusion as to what he wrote, were they?

It doesn't matter, they didn't post a message like everyone else instead they made an official statement using their own privileged way. It is fine to do it on this message, I don't see the harm, but if this continues and people gets used to that blurb then Twitter will definitely start misusing it sooner or later. I don't think that companies should have this kind of power to influence public discourse, I might not…

Twitter already limits and controls virtually every other user, so is that a problem, and if so, why is this the trigger?

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

#872

Post by [deleted] »

freehunter wrote: post #861
free_rms wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bedhead's point still stands in isolation from this week's bullshit, though. Trump will be on to some other highly divisive circus act next week. The question of whether Twitter is a public square will persist.

The laws of America already provide a way to resolve that though. If one company is becoming too powerful and unfairly damaging competition because of it, anti-trust exists. Arguably twitter isn’t even that powerful except that the president uses it as an official communications platform. Before this current administration, Twitter was circling the drain. It was an afterthought in modern social media. The president p…

[deleted]

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

#873

Post by prawn »

belltaco wrote: post #814
prawn wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not a lawyer, but have run a forum for 15-20 years and survived many legal threats.) You would potentially have legal recourse against the author, and the platform if they didn't act on you reporting the content. I don't know how that would apply were the author in another jurisdiction/country. I don't know if it's universal, but in Australia you'd request identifying information (IP and timestamp) from the platform…

It's much harder in the US. You may want to read this. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john...

Not sure which bit in particular, but the YouTube response says what I was trying to say - you need to demonstrate that something was legally questionable before they will comply and identify a user.

With my forum, I ask the disgruntled user to have their lawyer contact me as a form of pre-action discovery. That weeds out the ones complaining without a leg to stand on and gives me a little bit of protection. The timestamp and IP address (at least with Australian ISPs) is rarely a slamdunk, and it pushes the real judgement on ISPs who have established systems, and police.

BTW, this is just incredible: "An Economist/YouGov poll in late December 2016 found that 46 percent of Trump voters and 17 percent of Clinton voters thought Pizzagate was real."

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

#874

Post by lurquer »

jwalgenbach wrote: post #821
theduder99 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you sure you are dealing with the same issue? Twitter didn't restrict Trump's tweet. It added their own speech (and not masqueraded as Trump). Follow me here: Citizen United says that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals, thus allowing them to exercise their "speech" by dumping tons of dark money into politics. Twitter exercised free speech by publishing something on their own platform. Th…

This is not a Trump tantrum. The issues are real. As we speak, courts across the country are using Zoom for hearings.

Would there be any legal impediment to Zoom automatically inserting a caption on YOUR video feed that says "jwalgenbach is a liar"?

If you were to complain, would we be justified in saying "it's just another jwaldenbach tantrum..."

Would it be right to simply say, "if jwaldenbach doesn't like Zoom's polices, he doesn't have to use it"?

What is Western Union added a 'fact check' to your telegrams? What if Google inserts a 'fact check' in your emails?

These issues are not trivial, and viewing them through a partisan lens is naive and immature.

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

#875

Post by stale2002 »

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…

Twitter's first amendment rights would not be violated, if they were to be treated as a publisher.

This is not about forcing Twitter to do anything. It is instead about having them being treated as a publisher, if they act like one.

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

#876

Post by lifeformed »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #784
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully it will lead to what happened on reddit: the worst go off to a competitor which then fails to gain mainstream attention (e.g. Voat, Gab, etc). While they’ll be in an echo-chamber (which isn’t a good thing at all), at least they won’t ruin other communities.

Doesn’t that just lead to an echo chamber on the site they left also ? When Trump supporters were banned from the political subreddits, they formed /r/The_Donald. And it’s an anti-Trump-criticism, anti-anything-left-leaning echo chamber. But that left /r/politics to become a left leaning echo chamber itself. Now, one can’t have a civil discussion about anything because /r/politics will ban anything saying Trump did a…

This is a false equivalence - r/politics is not the left leaving equivalent of r/The_Donald. Trump supporters weren't broadly banned from political subreddits, just the ones that broke the rules did, like everyone else. r/politics is a left leaning echo chamber, yes, but you won't get banned for being pro Trump (just downvoted). On the other hand, you will get banned from r/The_Donald or r/conservative for being anti-Trump.

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

#878

Post by tonfreed »

freehunter wrote: post #861
free_rms wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bedhead's point still stands in isolation from this week's bullshit, though. Trump will be on to some other highly divisive circus act next week. The question of whether Twitter is a public square will persist.

The laws of America already provide a way to resolve that though. If one company is becoming too powerful and unfairly damaging competition because of it, anti-trust exists. Arguably twitter isn’t even that powerful except that the president uses it as an official communications platform. Before this current administration, Twitter was circling the drain. It was an afterthought in modern social media. The president p…

I just think it's a little ironic that the left has been arguing against corprotisation of politics until the companies doing it switch their logos to a rainbow flag one month of the year.

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

#879

Post by chongli »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #864
chongli wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I read the Wikipedia article as well. Read the section on application and limits: In analyzing the availability of the immunity offered by Section 230, courts generally apply a three-prong test. A defendant must satisfy each of the three prongs to gain the benefit of the immunity:[9] 1. The defendant must be a "provider or user" of an "interactive computer service." 2. The cause of action asserted by the plainti…

> Imagine if dang, the moderator here on HN, decided to edit people's posts with addenda or disclaimers about the factual content of the writing. That'd make him an editor too, rather than a moderator, and then should in fairness be subject to all of the liabilities that publishers face. Sure, that’d be editing , but what Twitter did was not editing. It’s akin to a reply tweet that was pinned to the top. They did not…

It's not akin to a reply tweet. It was attached directly to his message. It's like if you sent out political campaign literature in the mail and the post office attached a "fact check" sticker to it. That is very obvious editorializing.

If Twitter wants to give their opinions, they should do it through their own official accounts. Inserting content into other people's tweets is not participating on a level playing field. It's subordinating all of the users to Twitter's editorial control.

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

#880

Post by natechols »

tekknik wrote: post #849
natechols wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think those laws will be enforced, if not the government telling companies "you must allow this defamatory and/or untrue content on your servers"? Facebook and Twitter can't censor me, because I am not a customer of either company, and neither has a law enforcement wing. The government, on the other hand, has unlimited firepower and I have no choice whether to "do business" with it. So yes, I will absolute…

Why is it up to the company to decide what is defamatory or untrue? If you read the rebuttal twitter posted on his tweet you’ll see it boils down to “no evidence”. This doesn’t mean his claims are not true, it means there’s no evidence they are. These are very different concepts. So now twitter is running around saying it’s untrue when legally it hasn’t been proven untrue. They should instead take a hands off approac…

I personally feel much freer to think for myself if government officials can't force private companies to carry their personal content. Of course it's highly unlikely that Twitter fact-checking the president will make any difference - everyone who's been paying attention made up their minds about the guy years ago - but if Trump is really so triggered by it, he is of course free to post his thoughts elsewhere. It's awfully telling that he immediately decided to involve federal regulators, although I suspect this will be just as effective as the fact-checking.
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