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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

#921

Post by prawn »

seph-reed wrote: post #409
JacobGoodson wrote: post #340

Regardless of ones views pertaining to the current president, does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"? I do not like anyone acting as the sole arbiter of truth, whether it be the president, the pope, or the random fellow screaming in the park. I prefer that corporations trust their users to make their own choices about what people say instead of making edits or including addendum's to peoples post…

I think they should have just banned him without any reason but that they felt like it and they could. Instead, this was an attempt to high-road one of the most powerful trolls in history, and high-roading a troll is the absolute most losing strategy around. Basically, however imperfect you are, that's how much ammo you've just given the troll. Twitter is very imperfect, so 1/10, tactless strats imo. And the whole "f…

Banning him would be great for popcorn.gif but it almost guarantees you create a rising threat plastered over mainstream media when he picks a rival network. Surely that would be a monstrous commercial risk?

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

#922

Post by [deleted] »

tonfreed wrote: post #878
freehunter wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#923

Post by kgin »

bedhead wrote: post #227

The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that the lines are getting blurry with regards to public vs private. Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares. Not saying I have any answers, just saying it's definitely not a clear issue anymore.

Thats true it’s becoming unclear, but only sociologically.

Legally, it doesn’t matter if people think of Twitter as a public space. No amount of perception turns twitter into a governmental organization or subjects it to laws that only pertain to the government.

This case is even further from the first amendment because Twitter didn’t prevent any speech. It just exercised its own right to free speech alongside the president’s free speech.

Nobody has the right to uncontested or un-responded-to speech.

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

#924

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

space_fountain wrote: post #903
Fjolsvith wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter as a company didn't even have a presence on Twitter until they posted the fact check.

Does that matter? Are they not allowed to start having a presence whenever they choose?

Allowed to? Depends how you view publisher vs platform.

They are a private company and can do as they like... but if they’re going to “take ownership” of information on their service they are breaking the spirit of neutral carriers and Section 230.

This seems like an odd hill to die on. Surely they could have fact checked 100 different Trump tweets with actual misinformation and not just his concerns/prediction.

I am of the opinion they wanted to do this for awhile, planned it out poorly, and pulled the trigger at the wrong tweet.

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

#925

Post by [deleted] »

kgin wrote: post #923
bedhead wrote: post #227

The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that the lines are getting blurry with regards to public vs private. Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares. Not saying I have any answers, just saying it's definitely not a clear issue anymore.

Thats true it’s becoming unclear, but only sociologically. Legally, it doesn’t matter if people think of Twitter as a public space. No amount of perception turns twitter into a governmental organization or subjects it to laws that only pertain to the government. This case is even further from the first amendment because Twitter didn’t prevent any speech. It just exercised its own right to free speech alongside the pr…

[deleted]

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

#926

Post by cm0000cm »

thephyber wrote: post #617
torben-friis wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking as an outsider, what's really weird to me is how the things Trump clearly says or does on a whim result in serious, deep debate in all the media and public forums. He goes "I will build a wall spanning a continent to stop mexicans" and you see deep debate about how effective it would be, the price, the logistics of it... it's clearly a dumb idea, why does everyone pretend it's not and engage in deep considera…

> it's clearly a dumb idea, why does everyone pretend it's not and engage in deep consideration of it? I've learned that Trump is an incredibly dull instrument, but the points he raises (when you get past the verbal diarrhea) tend to be things that some significant fraction of his "base" care about or that are not actually novel policy ideas. "The wall" as he describes it is dumb. But it has existed in some form sinc…

I think a lot of people blindly follow Trump because they also hate who he hates. Trump is a divider, and his supporters feel empowered by agreeing with whatever he says.

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

#927

Post by LordDragonfang »

tonfreed wrote: post #878
freehunter wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's just since Bad Orange Man started saying they were bad. (And I emphasize that I'm saying this as someone on the left)

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

#928

Post by TheBobinator »

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…

The heart of this discussion is not the freedom of speech, it's the the ability to say whatever you want without consequence.

What Twitter wants, though selective undocumented "curating" of its platform, is the ability to slander, intimidate, harass, terrorize and verbally abuse whomever they don't like, without actually being drug infront of a jury and tried for crimes.

Telco's wanted the same government exemption that USPS had; someone mailed a letter with a bomb, they can't be held responsable. This was something the courts were likely to give them anyway.

Intentionally promoting a user's post containing a manifesto about assassinating a standing president is no different than USPS mailing millions of manifesto letters to people. One mechanism is simply more automated.

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

#929

Post by newacct583 »

mikekchar wrote: post #902
chongli wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. What we don’t want is for Twitter to have their cake and eat it too. That is, to enjoy all of the privileges of being a publisher (editing posts and saying whatever they want) while upholding none of the responsibilities that eg. newspapers and magazines have to uphold. If Twitter wants to be a communications service (a la Comcast) protected by safe harbour then they need to act like one. That means if they reall…

This is frequently brought up. Does Twitter want safe harbour? I don't think they need it and I haven't noticed them invoking it. Is that incorrect?

Sure they "want" safe harbor protections because it's better not to be sued. But no, they don't "need" it as a platform really. Lacking that, they'd just start banning folks more aggressively to protect themselves.

Which, of course, is exactly what the president's supporters don't want, given his reliance on the platform. I mean, Trump literally (literally!) baselessly accused Joe Scarborough of murder last week. What do we think is going to happen if Twitter genuinely thinks they might be liable for the president's libel?

The cynical goal, obviously, is just to "hurt" twitter in the abstract, by making them look like a risky investment, drive off advertisers, etc... And that's why this is so distressing: here we have the president of the united states using the executive branch to attack a company simply because he's angry with him and not out of any kind of principle at all.

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

#930

Post by jaredklewis »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #889
threatofrain wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First amendment is the issue as we're contemplating who should be liable for the consequences of bad speech. If FB is liable than FB is incentivized to censor risky people; if I'm liable then I might watch what I say on Yelp or Wikipedia. Right now we have a situation where the platform owner can collect the fruits of popularity, while the platform users experience basically no-liability gossip, such as empirical cla…

> while the platform users experience basically no-liability gossip, such as empirical claims about businesses. Not true. You can be sued for Libel on Twitter and Facebook [1]. https://slate.com/technology/2012/11/libel-on-twitter-you-ca...

I think the parent comment recognizes that but is saying there is "basically" no-liability because it is so impractical to sue a random internet commenters one by one.

For sure, if you are Elon Musk and you claim on your twitter account that a world renowned diver is a pedophile, you might suffer real consequences.

But if someone posts on my restaurant's yelp page a totally fabricated negative review, what are my options? Even let's say I have video or other evidence that disproves their assertion (unlikely), I will need to quantity the harm that this particular internet comment did to my business, which is in most cases nearly impossible. And all for what? A median wage worker isn't going to be able to cover my lawyers fee's (assuming I can prove malicious intent) before going into bankruptcy.

What businesses really want is to be able to sue Yelp itself for libel. They want to say: "Yelp, you didn't quality control your comments, these reviews are being fabricated. After my 5 star rating dropped to 1, my business’s income plummeted, now pay up."

I don't think it would be a good idea if our laws worked like that, but as the parent points out, the current situation is that the platforms are more or less immune to libel, and suing random internet commenters for libel makes no sense.

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