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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

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

#921

Post by Thorentis »

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…

Entirely, 100% disagree. The Internet is now our primary form of communication. It is the information highway. Sticking to the whole "free speech only applies to the government" is adhering to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest. Allowing private companies to shut this down because we made the terrible mistake of handing over our primary means of communication to private companies, doesn't mean it has to always be that way.

EDIT: Imagine if we allowed phone companies to listen to all calls and then censor the ones they didn't like. People would be outraged. This is what is happening on the Internet.

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

#922

Post by thewileyone »

meragrin_ wrote: post #789
standardUser wrote: post #652

There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to communication. The latter is almost cert…

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…

Also not in the Constitution that you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, but decent human beings understand that that's not to be done.

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

#923

Post by Thorentis »

standardUser wrote: post #652

There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to communication. The latter is almost cert…

> its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post

It is an unacceptable form of censorship to hand over our modern day equivalent of the public square to private companies, and then allow them to police what people say in it.

Freedom of speech was always intended to be protected in public. The Internet is now our equivalent of the public space. It is time this problem is solved once and for all, and the Internet is now reclassified as both a public utility and a public space.

Yes, those of us with technical know-how can argue that personal websites are that equivalent. But this is depriving those that see Twitter, Facebook, et. al. as a public platform, of the right to have their voice heard. A tweet is now the equivalent of a placard on the street. Do we really want to censor that because we messed up in how we allowed the Internet to be run?

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

#924

Post by ryanlol »

Thorentis wrote: post #921
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…

Entirely, 100% disagree. The Internet is now our primary form of communication. It is the information highway. Sticking to the whole "free speech only applies to the government" is adhering to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest. Allowing private companies to shut this down because we made the terrible mi…

> Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest

Don’t you think it’s more akin to standing in a privately owned square and yelling your protest?

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

#925

Post by pmarreck »

Considering the fact that every fact checker in existence has consistently rated Trump the least accurate candidate (or president), unless you believe in an evidenceless conspiracy that there is mass manipulation of the broadly accepted truth going on, this should not be the least bit surprising

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

#927

Post by javagram »

Thorentis wrote: post #923
standardUser wrote: post #652

There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to communication. The latter is almost cert…

> its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post It is an unacceptable form of censorship to hand over our modern day equivalent of the public square to private companies, and then allow them to police what people say in it. Freedom of speech was always intended to be protected in public. The Internet is now our equivalent of the public space. It is time thi…

> Yes, those of us with technical know-how can argue that personal websites are that equivalent. But this is depriving those that see Twitter, Facebook, et. al. as a public platform, of the right to have their voice heard. A tweet is now the equivalent of a placard on the street. Do we really want to censor that because we messed up in how we allowed the Internet to be run?

Disagree, because street space is limited, whereas there are a multiplicity of websites you can go to. It isn’t just a matter of personal websites. There’s a Twitter-like, Gab, which can be used. The president and his multi-million dollar campaign apparatus could easily strike a deal with Gab to host some more Gab servers and get their message out via Gab to anyone of their twitter followers who wants to sign up.

Never mind that Trump is not actually being censored on twitter in any way - his message still went out to all his followers, simply with an appended notice that Twitter itself considers the message to be factually wrong.

EDIT: this is like saying that the President has the right to publish whatever content he wants in a specific newspaper. Back in the day, a city might have a dozen newspapers - they could each print what they liked and if they decided not to print a person’s letter to the editor, that was no violation of free speech. Or if they print the letter to the editor with a note explaining they disagree with it, that certainly doesn’t violate free speech either.

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

#928

Post by missosoup »

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…

> distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment

Until everyone can agree on a universal arbiter for what those things mean in a concrete way, there will always be demographics who strongly disagree.

The reason free speech exists as a concept is because of a historic understanding that there fundamentally cannot be an unbiased arbiter for 'good' or 'bad' speech.

On the other side of this, the internet is increasingly controlled by a particular demographic with a particular definition of what things like 'hate speech' mean. Which suppresses and censors a wide range of topics that the other demographics do want to discuss. When the entire internet makes it impossible to express certain views, we can't claim to have free speech anymore. It's not good enough to say 'well if you don't like it then you can go and shout your views out on the street instead'.

The weapon against 'incorrect information' is education, not censorship. Censorship has never worked to actually quash 'wrongthink', it only marginalises and energises demographics who are censored, and drives them to eventually revolt. See: trump winning presidency.

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

#929

Post by Thorentis »

ryanlol wrote: post #924
Thorentis wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely, 100% disagree. The Internet is now our primary form of communication. It is the information highway. Sticking to the whole "free speech only applies to the government" is adhering to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest. Allowing private companies to shut this down because we made the terrible mi…

> Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest Don’t you think it’s more akin to standing in a privately owned square and yelling your protest?

Not all at. The legal fact that it is privately owned goes against the spirit of the law in terms of freedom of speech. How many people used to stand in private squares and protest? Nobody sees Twitter as a private square. They see it as the Internet.

I am taking issue with the fact that we have allowed private companies to be the gate-keepers of what should be public spaces.

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

#930

Post by JSavageOne »

The hypocrisy of the Pro-Business Republican party is really astounding. One one hand they fight for deregulation and small government so that coal and oil companies can pollute the environment (because you know, according to Trump global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese. Yes he really believes that), and now they want to censor and shut down social media platforms? Trump was impeached and should have been kicked out of office, but thanks to the Republican party, he is still in office. I can't even tell what the Republican party even stands for anymore. Low taxes and reduced safety net? Climate denialism? Christian values?

I honestly think you could pick a random 16 year old kid off the street and they'd make a better president than Trump. That's the sad and embarrassing state of affairs that is U.S. politics. I tend to err on the free speech side when it comes to social media platforms, but when you're the U.S. president and spreading baseless conspiracy theories and blatant lies with real consequences, then you damn well should get fact checked and called out on your nonsense.

Never been a more embarrassing time to be an American.

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