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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

#961

Post by efreak »

ibejoeb wrote: post #681
sparkie wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dangerously factually incorrect information Here's the problem. Who is doing the fact checking? Who fact checks the fact checkers? The world isn't black and white. State press releases are not facts. There is no authority that is the arbitrator of truth.

Moreover, twitter has demonstrated its inability to do this already. From their repudiation of the claims made about mail-in ballots: >Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to "a Rigged Election. We don't know if the claim is false; it hasn't happened yet. It could have said unlikely, improbable, whatever. Making this statement, however, is just as charged as the one it opposes.

From the article:

> Clicking through the new prompt from Twitter brings users to a fact-checking page debunking the president’s false claims with the header “Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud.” The page also offers a summary of the issue with bullet points providing context for the misleading tweets and links to stories by CNN, the Hill, the Washington Post and other news sources. Still, the prompt itself stops short of calling the tweet’s claims incorrect or misleading, instead opting for neutral language.

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

#962

Post by themacguffinman »

BurningFrog wrote: post #940
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…

One factor is that Trump says a lot of dumb things, and almost none of them are true. Instead he seems to say whatever outrageous thing that can get attention so he's the center of the news cycle. Once again, it worked. When he actually does something to silence twitter, I'll be upset too. But I'm not falling for the "big crazy talk ploy" again.

Hot off the press:

> President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order aimed at social media companies on Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Wednesday evening, a move that comes as the president and his allies have escalated their allegations that companies like Twitter and Facebook stifle GOP voices.

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/05/27/trump-executive...

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

#963

Post by asdff »

koheripbal wrote: post #540
asdff wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as simple as toning down the virulance and addiction potential that has been baked into social media over the years. Revert to chronological feeds based on timestamp alone, and not sorting based on how many inflammatory comments and shares they have. Ban more pages that produce and share these misinformed posts. These are problems that these engagement algorithms themselves created, and social media companies ar…

I don't think reverting to chrono content makes sense. If popularity doesn't influence what's top-of-feed, then we'll just be flooded with un-interesting content. Imagine if HN or Reddit didn't sort by popularity? Everyone would need to sort through /new. ...that's not scalable. What would be better would be to reward controversial content. If lots of people downvote something, and also lots of people upvote, then ma…

I think hn is an exception because the raw feed is a firehose, and votes serve to filter it (I actually follow hn chronologically via RSS, but with a vote threshold as a filter), but most people aren't following 1000s of accounts posting to their timeline at once. Networks like facebook and twitter used to be chronological, you could scroll through in 10 minutes and catch up on all new content for the day if you were in a rush akin to RSS, and one day that changed.

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

#964

Post by gigatexal »

mc32 wrote: post #743
kgin wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- but for exercising their own right to free speech alongside the free speech of others (in this case the president). There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech, regardless of how you interpret the right to free speech.

Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward. Will they get into the business of fact checking everyone over certain number of followers? Will they do it impartially world-wide? How can they even be impartial world wide given the different contradictory points of view, valid from both sides? Cyprus? What’s the take there?

In the game of whack-a-mole of false-information spewers I think it makes sense to tag those with the largest audiences who have the largest sway like Trump as this is the most efficient way to curb disinformation. Twitter is doing the public a solid by doing this and I laud them for it.

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

#965

Post by strken »

kitd wrote: post #605
0x5002 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that base…

FWIW, the BBC World Service podcast "The Compass" [1] has an excellent series on free speech by the veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig. I highly recommend it. He covers tech companies, universities, blasphemy laws, etc. [1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and t…

The platforms themselves are an established authority. Giving them power over what the media and politicians can say should be recognised as a real transfer of power. Objecting to such a concentration of power in the hands of three unelected American tech companies (Google, Twitter, and Facebook) who have billions of users and whose products cannot be avoided without significant difficulty is not exclusively right wing and has nothing to do with tyranny of the majority.

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

#966

Post by Khaine »

kgin wrote: post #661
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…

I think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- but for exercising their own right to free speech alongside the free speech of others (in this case the president). There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech, regardless of how you interpret the right to free speech.

I'm sorry that Rubicon was crossed a long time ago. When you told businesses who they must serve. Hilariously, many people want it both ways, they want it illegal for a bakery to not make gay wedding cakes, but also want twitter et all to stop people from saying bad things.

I am not a free speech extremist, and recognise you need to balance the competing demands as these platforms are defacto digital town squares. There are several problems that currently exist. They are:

1) Who decides what is and isn't on the platform Now that the web has effectively been centralised into a handful of organisations, being locked out of a platform can be seriously harmful. There are no appeals, or arbitration on decisions made. No courts to provide an independent check.

2) Asymmetry of rule application The biggest issue is rules are not applied fairly. Certain types of people seem free to repeatedly break the rules on platforms without recourse.

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

#967

Post by geofft »

Khaine wrote: post #966
kgin wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- but for exercising their own right to free speech alongside the free speech of others (in this case the president). There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech, regardless of how you interpret the right to free speech.

I'm sorry that Rubicon was crossed a long time ago. When you told businesses who they must serve. Hilariously, many people want it both ways, they want it illegal for a bakery to not make gay wedding cakes, but also want twitter et all to stop people from saying bad things. I am not a free speech extremist, and recognise you need to balance the competing demands as these platforms are defacto digital town squares. Th…

There is a coherent distinction between the two cases (it's entirely fair not to think it's a distinction that you care about, but it's worth presenting the other side's argument right). The argument against Masterpiece Cakeshop was that gay people are a protected class in state anti-discrimination laws, and that the constitutional right to free speech (and free exercise of religion) does not include the ability to treat gay customers differently. "Being the president" is not a protected class.

(If you want to argue that a platform is treating people differently because of political affiliation, then yes, I'd agree that the argument about Masterpiece Cakeshop would apply - but it's far from obvious that any platform is in fact treating people differently because of political affiliation.)

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

#968

Post by dmode »

I wish we could just all tune Trump out. In this 75 years of existence his contribution to humanity is a big fat zero. His tweets are useless, only exist to peddle conspiracy theory, to deflect, to self congratulate and to rile up his base. I don't know why we pay attention to him and forget about the vast kindness that exist is our day to day life.

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

#969

Post by lostmsu »

ashtonkem wrote: post #913
sizzle wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source a transparent, government sponsored free-speech communication platform that clones Facebook functionality for organizing information in an intuitive way for the most tech unsaavy person. Outright ban all user tracking and profiling transparently with annual code audits and watchdog groups that can punish those in charge for not adhering to this, no advertisements, no selling data, and put 18f on the job o…

It's actually pretty hard to run an online platform that sets the bar at "free speech" and not have it kind of suck. Trolling is free speech, being a jerk is free speech, hate speech is free speech, pornography is free speech. Any forum that sets the bar at "free speech" is going to be filled with the dregs with depressing speed. There's a reason why Gab never really gained serious traction.

I don't think it is impossibly hard. The platform can just let users pick what they want to see. E.g. be it trolling, hate, or pornography (search engines already do the latter).

Another concept is just following a set of moderators.

Either way there is already Secure Scuttlebutt.

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

#970

Post by lenkite »

mc32 wrote: post #743
kgin wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- but for exercising their own right to free speech alongside the free speech of others (in this case the president). There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech, regardless of how you interpret the right to free speech.

Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward. Will they get into the business of fact checking everyone over certain number of followers? Will they do it impartially world-wide? How can they even be impartial world wide given the different contradictory points of view, valid from both sides? Cyprus? What’s the take there?

Yes, especially when so-called fact checking is also deeply flawed and does not link to the actual congressional reports and investigations.
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