[HN Gopher] Twitter sees jump in govt demands to remove content ...
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter sees jump in govt demands to remove content of reporters,
news outlets
Author : hassanahmad
Score : 279 points
Date : 2021-07-14 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| user764743 wrote:
| ITT: people with no education in political thought confusing
| censorship and moderation to feel smart.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I'm not sure it's to feel smart or make a facetious argument,
| but yeah wow. This article is about government coercion--not
| Twitter moderation.
|
| According to the article, the US is the number two requestor of
| takedowns today.
| 3minus1 wrote:
| No, it says the US government is the number two for
| "information requests." It doesn't mention anything about the
| US and requests to remove content.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I like Github's policy where they publish all of the takedown
| requests to a public repository to be viewed by anyone. I hope
| this can be a standard for other tech companies as well.
| bananapub wrote:
| do they really do that? or do you just mean DMCA?
| h_anna_h wrote:
| https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns
| duxup wrote:
| There's a report in there for "xi-winnie-rainbow-fart" ...
| that's kind of amusing.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I was just referring to the DMCA notices here
| https://github.com/github/dmca , but I think it is a great
| idea for transparency.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| DMCA takedowns don't legally compel GH to be quiet about them,
| my guess is many of the ones above might.
| mannerheim wrote:
| They have government takedown requests from China, Russia,
| and Spain.
|
| https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree but Australia was trying to pass a law that said they
| could request encrypted data but the platform was legally not
| allowed to disclose that such a request/action happened. Even
| if we had this transparency today, it would quickly become
| illegal.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I am sure Australian restrictions on freedom of speech would
| not override the US constitution for a US company.
| jp42 wrote:
| Is this the one you are referring to?
| https://github.com/github/dmca
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Yes that is the one, thanks
| kbenson wrote:
| Probably not, DMCA takedowns are not from the government, but
| from non-governmental entities that claim copyright is being
| infringed.
|
| Governments have the ability to require a request not be made
| public, so a repo of their requests would not be complete,
| and I suspect some large offenders would be absent entirely
| because of that.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Julian Assange was the canary in the coal mine. Authoritarian
| censorship is going to be a major political battle this decade.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Authoritarian censorship is going to be a major political
| battle this decade.
|
| It has been one since arguably 2001, probably earlier. It's
| just the populace wasn't aware we were fighting it.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| If the populace isn't aware they're being fighting
| authoritarian censorship then I'd question if they are
| experiencing authoritarian censorship.
| Clubber wrote:
| That's kinda the point of censorship though isn't it? So
| the populace doesn't know things. I didn't know the US was
| requesting journalistic takedowns on Twitter until today.
| Keep in mind, the same government is also threatening anti-
| trust action and subpoenaing CEOs of these companies, while
| making these requests, so I would consider that a coerced
| request.
|
| I request that you let me search your car or you go to jail
| isn't really a request.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Yesterday, buried in an article about combatting vaccine
| fearmongers, a pretty disturbing snippet was included:
|
| "Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National
| Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more
| aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel
| misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social
| media and text messages."
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-
| vaccina...
|
| Though the goal in this case is seemingly well-
| intentioned, the idea of the government inspecting and
| editorializing private communications is incredibly
| worrying to me. I don't trust feds to perpetually
| restrict this capability to only public health...
|
| Imagine if Trump had the capability to append "fact
| checks" with any SMS that included a link on articles
| which cast him in a negative light.
| Clubber wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of that and it's hardly being reported on.
| It's very disturbing.
|
| >Though the goal in this case is seemingly well-
| intentioned
|
| I'm not even sure it's well intentioned, that is just the
| excuse they are giving. "For the children," was often the
| reason given for constantly ramping up the drug war and
| mass incarceration. It makes a good headline.
| cwkoss wrote:
| "Remember, it's illegal to possess' WikiLeaks Clinton
| emails, but 'it's different for the media,' says CNN's
| Chris Cuomo"
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
| conspiracy/wp/201...
|
| I think keeping the general public in the dark about
| censorship is a fundamental part of it. Leadership of
| newspinion shows are certainly aware that restrictions to
| free speech will increase the power of their businesses.
|
| See also: NSA director lied to congress about scope of
| surveillance dragnet, and continues to deny that was a lie.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad
| windex wrote:
| Time for more service decentralization.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| People go to these social medias because there is a large
| audience, how is decentralization going to help?
|
| The only people who are using decentralized tools are the ones
| that have been kicked out of these big social medias at first
| place.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "The only people who are using decentralized tools are the
| ones that have been kicked out of these big social medias at
| first place."
|
| Do you honestly believe that? Some of us use decentralized
| tools because we remember the Internet _before_
| centralization and corporate /government control over it
| started turning it into a cesspool of advertising and
| propaganda and see the huge corporate properties (Facebook
| _especially_ ) for the societal _poison_ that they are.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Thank you. I too miss the days when I could find niche
| opinions and in depth knowledge via a simple search.
| ryder9 wrote:
| decentralized networks have just as much propaganda and
| bullshit because of the types of people involved in that
|
| also why are you on HNews, it's not decentralized and it
| def is a social network if your decentralized network is so
| great and popular
| convolvatron wrote:
| ok. done. I've written you a decentralized social media
| platform. why haven't you come and started using it?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| For all you know, windex may already be using Mastodon or
| some other service that's part of the Fediverse.
|
| Your question should instead be aimed at the millions of
| people who still use Twitter, but of course you know the
| answer already: They use Twitter because millions of other
| people also use it, i.e. network effects.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| That's his point, I believe. The problem isn't
| decentralization, the problem is how do you undermine
| network effects.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| With great time, and care. Discord managed to do this in
| only 4 years, so it is possible. The cynical side of me
| says that a distributed social network, by definition,
| doesn't have the ability to run large marketing campaigns
| like Discord.
| [deleted]
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Discord got traction because it was substantially better
| than Teamspeak, and Skype leaks IPs letting jerks DDoS
| you. It turning into something of a social network was
| very unexpected.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Yeah, a better question might be: "How can I convince a
| VC that there's a buck to be made when the user can just
| take all their data and leave?"
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| "Look, many countries are enforcing privacy rights; the
| ad model isn't sustainable. You should start a social
| media network with a different model so that you can be
| the first mover who benefits from network effects when
| the privacy shoe finally drops".
|
| Something like that, although I don't delude myself into
| thinking that's coming in the near future unless perhaps
| Apple makes it part of its new privacy-centric campaign.
| Even then I'm not sure Apple would do better with respect
| to free speech and moderation.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| It's a little different. Discord launched amidst a power
| vacuum, at least with respect to a chat/community
| platform for video games. Xfire was the only real one,
| but it had been on the decline for years. A better
| analogy would be a decentralized Discord competitor
| trying to start right now and with the odds it has going
| up against Discord.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| One way is to compel (via legislation) all social media
| networks to speak a decentralized protocol. Another is to
| make Mastodon, etc a lot better because every one I've
| tried has been pretty abysmal. In other words, make a
| product that is compelling enough to get people to move
| over to it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _One way is to compel (via legislation) all social media
| networks to speak a decentralized protocol._
|
| This seems both feasible and practical. Sure, it will
| have problems - from the point of view of ___ platform
| regulars, it would be like an 'eternal September' of how
| everything got worse once those awful people from Other
| Platform were able to cross-post but that would probably
| spur innovation in client-side filtering.
|
| I like Mastodon (apart from the me-too-ism of calling
| Mastodon posts 'toots') but agree that Fediverse
| offerings are mostly like desktop Linux or cheap fusion -
| they'll be really great when one of them takes off. The
| sad fact is that there are lots of designs that are as
| good as or somewhat better than the big platforms, but
| none of them are _categorically_ different.
|
| Consider the evolution of social media:
|
| Newspapers: Anyone can write to editor
|
| Telephones: Anyone can talk to anyone
|
| Usenet: Anyone can post in a hierarchy of topics
|
| Web: Anyone can have a webpage
|
| Google: Anyone can navigate the web
|
| Blog: Anyone can have an opinion column
|
| Youtube: Anyone can be on TV
|
| Twitter: Anyone can amplify their random thoughts
|
| Facebook: Anyone can publish a yearbook
|
| GitHub: Anyone can be a tech star
|
| Instagram: Anyone can publish a magazine cover
|
| Snapchat: Anyone can look like a celebrity
|
| LinkedIn: Anyone can be a professional
|
| Tinder: Anyone can be a porn star
|
| Bitcoin: Anyone can be rich
|
| Crypto: Anyone can be a central banker
|
| Periscope: Anyone can be be a TV reporter
|
| Tiktok: Anyone can be iconic
|
| Fediverse: Anyone can run a social network
|
| Obviously I'm being very tongue-in-cheek here but what
| makes a platform stand out is providing the ability to do
| something different that was not previously available,
| and either socializing that or making it stupid easy to
| do so - ie 'Love XYZing? Do it here and _get noticed_. '
|
| If your offering is 'YYYYY for ZZZZZ' (where Z might be
| anything from 'hermits' to 'everybody') then you'll get
| some rapid adoption because it's easy to understand but
| it will plateau pretty fast. The secret of success is
| making people say 'No way, how does that work' and being
| able to say 'easy just Do The Thing and press this magic
| button.' The Thing has to be something whose benefit is
| immediately comprehensible but whose availability is
| extremely limited or outright fictional.
|
| >90% of social proposals offer new and improved buttons,
| but experience suggests people are quite tolerant of
| inferior buttons (network quality, uptime, etc) as long
| as Doing The Thing is still novel; you work on the button
| in between getting your first and second competitors. If
| many people hate or don't get The Thing You Do that's
| actually a plus because all the misfits will flock to
| your platform and give you their cult-like loyalty.
|
| I think the mistake with Fediverse stuff is the pitch
| that 'you can have total control/do it all' - if I wanted
| that I would have become a sysadmin, but the reality is
| that everyone wants to use email but hardly anyone wants
| to run their own SMTP server, much as most people want to
| drive fast cars and look good doing it, but relatively
| few choose to be mechanics or take up the risks of
| competitive driving.
|
| You need to have a benevolent dictator/Santa
| Claus/Mommy/Team figure(s) that people can coalesce
| around, who gives you both a way to Do The Thing and
| permission to use it - it's 50% technical innovation but
| also 50% validation. People like having a person they can
| connect with both for technical requests/gripes and to
| serve as surrogate parents/friends. A socially oriented
| product/platform with no personalities attached is a
| contradiction in terms; it might be fun to play with but
| you probably won't tell your friends about it.
| A: I have feelings about this B: Me also A:
| The world should know of my feeling B: Indeed
| A: I shall now Do The Thing B: WHAT A: Yeah
| check it out B: WANT A: Sign up like so
| B: I am momentarily fascinated, who made this A:
| Bro and Sis, they are super cool B: How I do a
| thing... A: Like this, it is the Bro and Sis way
| B: I feel my life changing around me A: Now you are
| family B: Best friend would love this
|
| If your pitch (to anyone) is 'Look at This Thing' or
| 'That Thing but different' or 'Have you tried The Other
| Thing' you are ultimately soliciting someone else's
| attention and the results will be proportionate to how
| people allocate their limited time. What you want instead
| is to improve an existing moment in some unexpected way,
| and then convey a sense of permanence or continuity in
| relation to the improvement. The witness to/beneficiary
| of the improvement will then be motivated to trace The
| Thing back to its source, to whom they will offer
| publicity/ suggestions/ technical help/ money or
| whatever.
|
| To conclude, the breakout path for the Fediverse is not
| to solve this or that problem of social with a nicer
| button; when you offer solutions to a problem some may
| appreciate or even love it, but the appreciation often
| comes with a 'but...'. Rather, it is to build Fediverse
| technology into some novel object, and use federation to
| solve the (inevitable) issues that arise as the novelty
| gains in popularity.
| SamPatt wrote:
| Been there, helped build an open source decentralized
| product. Rhetorical demand higher than actual demand.
|
| Of course it's a ridiculously difficult nut to crack. But
| people like the idea more than the reality, and it's hard to
| blame them when the product typically has some serious (and
| likely unavoidable) tradeoffs.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Nowadays people target multiple platforms in parallel,
| streaming to YT/rumble/odysse at the same time for example.
| [deleted]
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Twitter has no power in this censorship. The power passes through
| them, but it is not their power because they have no choice. And
| it's not coming from the government either.
|
| https://graymirror.substack.com/p/big-tech-has-no-power-at-a...
| throwaway20875 wrote:
| The slippery slope is real.
|
| The power to veto anyone's speech is toxic. Entrusting it to
| anyone, particularly those in power, is the implicit agreement to
| forfeit liberty.
| drieddust wrote:
| Yes and Twitter, FB, YT etc. pushed us on it by firing the
| first shots. When they decided to impose censorship and de
| platform as per their whim, they should have understood the
| consequences.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The power to veto anyone's speech is toxic.
|
| This isn't a veto on speech. It is a veto on a particular means
| of speech, a particular avenue of expression. The fact that we
| now equate that with _actual_ censorship shows how disconnected
| we are from true oppression. Being blocked from twitter is an
| inconvenience, a non-event. Real censorship comes from
| government, covers ideas rather than means, and normally ends
| with people in jail /dead. A loss of one's tweet privileges
| pales in comparison.
| rscoots wrote:
| > Being blocked from twitter is ... a non-event.
|
| Good, then by extension leaving the person on Twitter is also
| a non-event. So it seems there is no need for censorship
| here!
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Governments have done all those things to people because of
| what they've said on Twitter.
| reedjosh wrote:
| And if a person was prevented from printing an article in a
| newspaper, wouldn't that just be a veto on a particular means
| of speech?
|
| Our government isn't supposed to do this stuff. It's evil
| even if the initial intentions aren't.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Our government isn't supposed to do this stuff.
|
| Except that "our government" regularly does this. There are
| all sorts of speech that we censor (copyright violations,
| violence, porn, hate etc). We don't think of it as wrong
| that our laws restrict such speech. Other countries have
| different laws restricting different speech. Certainly some
| countries have greater restrictions than others, but
| absolute freedom of speech is not a practical reality
| anywhere. Real anger should pointed not at twitter but at
| the countries who implement restrictions with which we
| disagree.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > We don't think of it as wrong that our laws restrict
| such speech.
|
| I actually do think it's wrong. Culture and more speech
| is the solution to those issues.
| sreque wrote:
| Michael Knowle's book: Speechless, controlling words,
| controlling minds, covers this topic extremely well.
| Unbridled free speech has never existed and never will.
| There will always be standards of speech. The question is
| always: what are those standards and who is in control of
| them?
|
| For this particular comment thread, the issue people are
| discussing is a relatively recent and very dramatic shift
| in power over speech. Today, a handful of high-tech
| oligarchs are controlling and enforcing standards of
| speech with far more efficacy than governments. It gets
| even scarier when you realize that governments know this
| and are now pressuring these tech companies to do their
| bidding.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| OK, but we censor calls for violence whether they come
| from the right or from the left. We censor child porn
| whether it comes from a Democrat or a Republican. There's
| no _bias_ there (at least, there 's not supposed to be).
| Censoring based on viewpoint is _far_ different from
| censoring copyright violations.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Huh? This is exactly about government telling Twitter to
| silence journalists.
| csunbird wrote:
| Question to people from U.S. or familiar with U.S. law:
|
| Isn't the government pressuring a private company to
| remove/censor a content violation of "Freedom of speech"? As a
| private company, Twitter can do whatever they want, but if
| Twitter is forced to remove and censor, wouldn't that be a
| violation?
| matt_s wrote:
| US First Amendment:
|
| > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances.
|
| It prohibits Congress from restricting the press or
| individuals to speak freely via laws that Congress writes.
| The 1st amendment has nothing to do with Corporations
| restricting things in their purview. The 1st amendment
| doesn't apply to any social media or online commentary by
| people. It might apply to the "press" since online news is
| more pervasive than physical newspapers. What would be
| interesting is a clearer definition of press as it relates to
| social media accounts.
| reedjosh wrote:
| The title is: Twitter sees jump in govt demands to remove
| content of journalists
|
| > The 1st amendment has nothing to do with Corporations
| restricting things
|
| Sure, but it has everything to do with a corporation taking
| instruction from the government to restrict free speech.
| ufmace wrote:
| "Freedom of speech" is a political and philosophical
| principle. It doesn't mean the exact literal text of the
| First Amendment to the US Constitution and absolutely
| nothing else. It's going to ring rather hollow to everyone
| to gleefully censor your political opponents and then say
| that it's not technically censorship since it doesn't
| violate the First Amendment.
| matt_s wrote:
| The parent to my comment was asking about law and
| specifically about violation of the law. Laws are about
| specific text and wordings in documents, who can create
| the laws and how they are interpreted by others (US
| courts).
|
| I never said the philosophical idea about freedom of
| speech was only limited to 1st amendment, just my
| interpretation of the law as the commenter was asking
| (IANAL).
|
| I believe there should be an independent (as in outside
| the company) review process for bans/reinstatement -
| something standardized across various social media
| platforms, maybe per country jurisdiction if necessary.
| That is an ideal whose implementation would be extremely
| hard.
| NotEvil wrote:
| If US govt does that. Sure other countries govt just write
| the laws so it's legal to do taht
| Hamuko wrote:
| The government of India probably doesn't give a shit about
| Twitter's First Amendment rights.
| Wohlf wrote:
| The US Constitution doesn't apply to Twitter operations in
| India.
| safog wrote:
| And yet entrusting it to the platforms themselves seems equally
| bad given the Trump v Platforms saga.
|
| Either let the government make the rules on what speech is okay
| in their countries or let the platforms decide what's okay. You
| can't have both.
| packet_nerd wrote:
| Let companies decide what is ok on their own platforms, but
| don't let them get so big, and break them up now that they
| have become so big.
| meh99 wrote:
| Free speech is not under attack.
|
| No one has ever had a "freedom to demand others broadcast my
| personal speech at great technical and financial cost".
|
| Anyone who thinks "free speech" obliges others to distribute
| their message is of dubious sanity.
|
| It's authoritarian af to believe everyone else is your tape
| recorder.
|
| Edit: of course those who are all about free speech downvote
| me, proving my point; you aren't obliged to import my message
| personally and chose to censor it publicly. But Twitter...
| they're not people. Just big black box. So much for HN being a
| community of thinkers.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"No one has ever had a "freedom to demand others broadcast
| my personal speech at great technical and financial cost"."
|
| Twitter's business model is to get as many users as they can
| and to have them tweet prolifically. The financial impact is
| minimal. Scale matters. We aren't talking about coercing a
| cakeshop. Twitter is a de-facto public square and looks a lot
| more like infrastructure than a publisher.
|
| >"It's authoritarian af to believe everyone else is your tape
| recorder."
|
| Why are we so concerned about being 'authoritarian' against a
| massive corporation when said corporation is making editorial
| decisions and silencing journalists and citizens? We should
| not be putting the 'rights' of a corporation above the
| liberties of human beings.
|
| People are down voting you, I suspect, because you appear to
| be vigorously defending the ability of corporations to
| infringe on personal liberties while appearing to champion
| liberty itself.
| meh99 wrote:
| Twitter is a private organization that owns the physical
| infrastructure it's managing.
|
| When did we switch from capitalism to socialism? You own
| their infra and agency now?
|
| The slippery slope is every pleb thinking they're David
| going against Goliath. Really you're all just berating and
| competing with your neighbors. Turning them into ephemeral
| ideas all living behind a blue bird logo.
|
| The masses cheered this all on ignoring the political
| reality they exist in. The chemical bath washing through
| your brain isn't the same as others.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"When did we switch from capitalism to socialism? You
| own their infra and agency now?"
|
| This is a non-sequitur. Organizations censoring speech
| can happen under any kind of economic system.
|
| As a thought experiment, how would you react if Amazon,
| Google, and Microsoft, collectively decided that
| Libertarians were a problematic and dangerous threat?
| And, these companies decided to de-platform every
| libertarian account they detected in the name of public
| safety. Would you champion such behavior? Would
| principles dictate that you defend their right to
| suppress you? I know this seems like a bizarre thought
| experiment, but I genuinely think the Libertarian crowd
| gladly defends their own censorship.
|
| Ultimately, which do you value more, Capitalism or
| Liberty?
| travoc wrote:
| Take a look at Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center for an
| interesting case that set precedent in California. The CA
| courts have determined that certain areas of shopping malls
| are designed and used for public congregation - the modern
| equivalent of the town square - and should thus be treated as
| public for a for purposes of First Amendment analysis, which
| means that a much higher standard applies to speech
| restrictions in these areas.
|
| This standard could be applied to privately-owned online
| "town squares" in future decisions.
| forz877 wrote:
| This would only apply to local town squares.
|
| You can not reasonably argue that a worldwide forum is a US
| town square.
| naasking wrote:
| > No one has ever had a "freedom to demand others broadcast
| my personal speech at great technical and financial cost".
|
| Common carriers cannot moderate message contents or
| discriminate based on senders/receivers. Social media now
| does both, but they could arguably be regulated under common
| carrier laws. They are of course not obligated to do this for
| free, but that's their business model.
|
| We had a recent discussion on this from a paper written by a
| legal scholar, so I suggest you check it out:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762145
| SllX wrote:
| I'll be the first outside of Twitter to defend Twitter's free
| speech and private property interests, but that doesn't mean
| free speech _isn't_ under attack by governments and the
| politically ambitious.
|
| Twitter wants to kick you off because _Twitter_ wants to kick
| you off? Fine.
|
| But Twitter does kick you off because the Government, _any_
| government because screw authoritarianism wherever it lives,
| asked them to? Then there's a problem.
| ajford wrote:
| It's one thing when it's removed for violating TOS or when
| masses report it. It's entirely another when a government in
| power uses their clout to demand that journalists and
| advocates are silenced. That is the very definition of
| attacking free speech.
|
| The failure to see that is why you're being downvoted.
| meh99 wrote:
| Or you're existing under a chemical delusion that two
| different things are occurring.
|
| It's humans who don't want to perpetuate other humans
| speech.
|
| I'm not going to live in your unscientific epistemology
| about nation states being worse than corporations; both
| enabled by humans. It's all just humans.
|
| I don't have to important other flimsy humans who aren't of
| godly abilities. Tailoring my speech to keep my neighbors
| happy, seeing the nuance their way, _is_ a direct attack on
| my speech.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Tell me when Twitter throws a flashbang into anybody's
| home in a no knock raid at 3AM. The monopoly of
| legitimate violence is a huge difference.
| SllX wrote:
| > I'm not going to live in your unscientific epistemology
| about nation states being worse than corporations; both
| enabled by humans. It's all just humans.
|
| There is an honest distinction you're missing with your
| reductive view of States and corporations: States have
| the power to detain, arrest, try, judge, imprison and
| kill you.
| [deleted]
| armagon wrote:
| Free speech is very much under attack.
|
| If the platforms we use to communicate -- and which generally
| allow any communication, no matter how poignant or inane --
| allow some speech, but not others, we have a problem.
|
| Twitter is compelled to take down some messages. Facebook
| temporarily hellbans users for crossing over lines. I saw an
| article yesterday saying the US wants to filter SMS messages.
| E-mail seems safe at present, but that could change suddenly.
| Governments seem to be enacting hate-speech laws disallowing
| saying certain things, and that's double-plus good only if
| you agree with the power of the day.
|
| How, pray tell, do we have speech of any consequence, if the
| methods we regularly use to speak are denied to us?
| seriousquestion wrote:
| Here's the SMS thing for the curious
|
| > Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National
| Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more
| aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel
| misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social
| media and text messages.
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-
| vaccina...
| aj3 wrote:
| That seems to be about stopping spamming over SMS. AFAIK
| censoring SMS between unknown individuals isn't even
| technically possible.
| floren wrote:
| SMS is unencrypted and routes through the carrier's
| hardware. I can't see that much difficulty in, say,
| implementing a list of phrases or URLs which result in
| the message being dropped, given carrier cooperation.
| (The carrier cooperates or else they end up called into
| Congress over and over to testify about such-and-such)
| aj3 wrote:
| Standards don't provide such filtering functionality and
| telcos operate their equipment as a black box, so they
| don't have ability to implement additional features,
| especially when there is no business case for that and it
| could open them to new liability (undermining safe harbor
| arrangement).
| [deleted]
| meh99 wrote:
| You're right I forgot communication didn't exist before
| Twitter and iPhones. How silly of me.
|
| God said let their be Steve Jobs and suddenly human
| communication...
|
| Privately owned infrastructure was never for you. It's for
| the elites to corral you all along.
|
| Believing Twitter was ever on your side was your first
| mistake. They were Walmart; moved in with low prices now
| they're raising them.
|
| It's an emotional con to keep you focused on a political
| narrative (American dream of free enterprise; for some,
| toil for depreciated wages for the majority) and not
| exploring alternative communication pipelines.
|
| How free is our speech if it's constrained to Wall Street,
| tech companies, SV, and DC? You walked right into
| constrained speech in order to fit in.
| armagon wrote:
| Certainly it is true that speech existed before the
| Twitter and the iPhone, and continues to today.
|
| I (theoretically) could start my own newspaper and spread
| my opinion around, or go house to house and tell people
| there will be a meeting on a specific topic. With enough
| work and funds, I may be able to air my own television or
| radio station. I could do a letter writing campaign and
| spam everyone in a specific area code. I could scrawl
| graffiti on buildings to try to spread word for my cause.
|
| All of these are good things, but it seems silly to me to
| be allowed to speak, but not be allowed to speak where
| people are listening.
|
| And, I fear, all of these could be negated, too.
|
| Imagine, for example:
|
| - you are free to speak, but your newspaper is bad for
| the environment and must not be allowed (while others
| newspapers serve the public interest and are fine)
|
| - you are allowed to transmit your TV or Radio program,
| but your license will be revoked if you talk about
| certain subjects.
|
| - you can paint messages all you like, so long as they
| are inside your house
|
| - you standing in the public square on your soapbox
| violates my safe space and must be disallowed
|
| - you can speak freely, but only inside your own head (or
| far away from civilization), for your every word is being
| tracked and you'll be cut off from the economy if you
| don't say the right things
|
| Fortunately, I don't think we're very far towards any of
| those dystopian ideas.
|
| Truly, Twitter is not required to let me tweet, nor is
| YouTube mandated to let me post a video, but given the
| monopoly on attention they have within their spheres, if
| I can't speak there, my ability to speak freely has
| definitely been curtailed.
| Covzire wrote:
| These SV companies amassed a level of power over the
| public square that nobody saw coming. Especially during a
| time of lockdowns the only speech that American citizens
| had with their other citizens was via 3 platforms, all of
| which were stiffling free speech, even to the point of
| banning some CSPAN coverage of a politician that
| represents them.
| meh99 wrote:
| That's a blatant lie, or more generously, harmfully
| ignorant perspective.
|
| Academics, thinkers, have been warning about private
| power eroding public for decades.
|
| Oh sure SV specifically is new NOW, but they haven't done
| anything Walmart didn't do to little communities decades
| before, or ATT hasn't done; co-opt control of public
| government for private gain.
|
| I'm done with this community. It's a bunch of ostriches
| who are equivocating their failures as political agents;
| don't login. They lose their power.
|
| Stop living in the bespoke simulation in your head.
| Covzire wrote:
| And newspapers also, long before Walmart was choosing
| which books or magazines or music to stock. But Walmart
| has never had direct control over the public square at
| the incredibly grand scale that Twitter, Facebook and
| Youtube do, that's the point.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| social media playbook 1) create company based on free
| exchange of ideas 2) get lots of users, crush all competitors
| with network effects 3) oh no some ideas are icky! they do
| harm to my Black body or are transmysoginist or whatever. We
| must shut these ideas down! 5) restrict controversial
| opinions to just the left wing ones 6) make asinine point
| about private platforms
| meh99 wrote:
| Human playbook: put social agency into enabling invasive
| private and public power, complain about lack of free
| agency, reboot social contract.
|
| If you all don't like it put your agency into dismantling
| these power structures rather than logging in to the matrix
| they erect
| fallingknife wrote:
| Uh, have you heard of the phone company?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| And it's absolutely maddening to watch people defend this
| behavior under the guise of "they are a private company" and
| "you agreed to the ToS".
| sneak wrote:
| Editorial control over twitter.com is Twitter's freedom of
| expression as well.
|
| Their censorship is abhorrent, but shouldn't be illegal.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Indeed the freedom of speech requires the freedom _from_
| speech too.
|
| It's as important to be able to not speak as it is to
| speak.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Editorial control over twitter.com is Twitter's freedom
| of expression as well.
|
| Indeed. I don't know why more people don't see this; also
| note that recommendations are the speech of the person,
| algorithm, or company doing the recommending.
| naasking wrote:
| > Editorial control over twitter.com is Twitter's freedom
| of expression as well.
|
| That's debatable. What twitter decides to _promote_ , in
| feeds and other things via algorithms, certainly falls
| under their freedom of expression. But their "editorial
| control" currently also extends over hosting comments by
| others as well (which they can choose not to promote), and
| _that_ is questionable and arguably could be made illegal.
| We had a recent discussion on an article by a legal scholar
| that argues for this distinction:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762145
| reedjosh wrote:
| I agree Twitter should be able to censor, but the
| government shouldn't be able to ask Twitter to do so.
|
| This article is specifically about the government asking
| Twitter to do so.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I would agree, except in the case of a monopoly, or a
| consortium of companies acting together as a monopoly. And
| in this case I would say that the social media companies
| enforcing the same censorship policies counts. Remember
| when AWS terminated Parler's account, and then no other
| cloud providers would work with them? It's nothing new that
| we require private entities that become too big and
| powerful to give rights to customers that they normally
| wouldn't. e.g. a utility company can't set whatever price
| they want like any other company could.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| I find that scary actually. Many of the same people were
| ostensibly for unions and breaking up big tech to minimize
| their power, but are now embracing the full exercise of their
| power? Worse, endorsing an effective merger of media and
| state, which is an expansion of centralized power into the
| ultimate monopoly. The big tech giants are increasingly
| setting the boundaries of conversation based on government
| agencies.
|
| Is this not an incredibly powerful tool of censorship and
| propaganda? Imagine this in the hands of a dictator. We are
| sowing the seeds of our own oppression.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Yes, thank you for saying this.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I feel like "they are a private company" is a NO U argument -
| after Comcast spent the better half of a decade arguing
| against common-carrier/Net Neutrality rules on the same
| basis. Right-wingers were _very_ supportive of this argument
| when it protected ISPs, even though the result was more
| social media consolidation that ultimately harmed right-
| wingers.
|
| That being said, we _do_ need to be cautious of extending the
| (legal) definition of censorship out this far. You run the
| risk of defining censorship to include any sort of counter-
| speech, or making it impossible to legally moderate Internet
| platforms for _any_ purpose. "Anyone who provides an
| Internet platform must be willing to host any and all speech
| whatsoever" just means nobody will want to host such forums.
|
| Something like common-carriage for large social media
| platforms could work - though it won't give the right wing
| what they want. Most of them absolutely _were_ violating
| those platforms rules, and common-carriage won 't let them
| back on those platforms. The reason why I say common-carrier
| rules would be a good thing for large Internet platforms is
| because in practice companies like Twitter and Facebook
| adopted a policy of "let world leaders do what they want on
| our platform", up until January 2021. This is not at all a
| defensible policy. If you have a rule against doing something
| on your platform, why let people _in power_ do it anyway?
| ufmace wrote:
| It seems like there ought to be something gated around the
| size and market dominance of a platform. If you want to
| spin up a PHPBB forum for like 1,000 people around some
| hobby or something, feel free to ban and censor anyone you
| don't like for any reason. If you're effectively a monopoly
| like Facebook or Twitter, congratulations on getting so
| big, but now any moderation decisions you make effectively
| controls the ability of people to express themselves in our
| new public square. This doesn't seem like a good practice -
| nobody voted for the Facebook moderation team, why do they
| get to decide what is and isn't okay to say?
|
| I'm not sure exactly where the line should be drawn or
| exactly what the rule should be, but it seems clear that we
| need to do something here.
| duxup wrote:
| If I'm hosting some content... I have rights too.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| In thinking on it a bit, you could call Twitter a "printing
| press" of sorts. They have no stake in the content game, per
| se, but are the means of transmission.
|
| The precedent here is that printing presses also held a lot
| of power in their time to print, which is why the newspapers
| themselves owned their own printing presses: so they couldn't
| silenced by a third party.
|
| I don't think you can expect to use someone else's means of
| transmission freely and expect free reign of usage.
|
| That just means we ought to explore ways to decentralize
| distribution systems like Twitter.
| Aunche wrote:
| As a private company, Twitter's goal is to maximize
| shareholder revenue. Without external forces, Twitter
| wouldn't moderate anything because it costs money and reduces
| ad revenue. Twitter is just following what the governments
| and cancellers want.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| And to think that Twitter is an arms length away from the
| government when it - along with every other Big Tech - helped
| the NSA illegally spy on literally hundreds of millions of
| Americans.
|
| Twitter is going to do what the people in the government want
| it to do.
| trentnix wrote:
| That's maddening for sure, but not as maddening as the
| argument that it's okay to censor something that is _wrong_
| or _fake news_ or _misinformation_. History is littered with
| _wrong_ takes that turned out to be correct, _fake news_ that
| turned out to be real, and _misinformation_ that turned out
| to be informative.
|
| And the worst of all is the censorship of _hate speech_ ,
| because _hate speech_ has become a malleable term used simply
| to eventually become _an opinion I don 't like_.
|
| Remember the whole "punch a Nazi", meme? Who doesn't think a
| Nazi deserves punching? But eventually, everyone becomes a
| Nazi, so any violence against them is justified.
|
| This artificially constructed _right not to be offended_
| needs to die in a fire.
| enumjorge wrote:
| The problem is that bad actors can abuse these platforms from
| multiple sides. In this case the issue is censorship, but
| there's also the spreading of misinformation and propaganda
| that can also pose serious threats to democracy. I don't know
| why the anti-censorship crowd doesn't acknowledge this.
|
| In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the
| results of the elections. He tried to pull all the stops to
| stay in power. This is the same President who attacked
| journalism, rescinded access to White House press events for
| news sources that were critical of Jim, and used the Justice
| department to seize records of journalists. Trump was a
| bigger threat to journalism while he was in office than any
| content moderation rules Twitter could ever enforce.
| rscoots wrote:
| >Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in
| office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever
| enforce.
|
| Besides idle threats to "open up the libel laws" and
| temporarily blocking random journos from white house
| events, I don't see how this could possibly be true.
|
| Two things can be bad at once. In measurable terms I'd say
| opaque, coordinated social media bans are the greater and
| more permanent of the evils here. We can't deflect to Trump
| forever.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think I agree with you. But I _also_ agree with
| enumjorge when he says that we need to acknowledge that
| the unchecked spread of disinformation is a real problem.
| Worse, it can be driven by malice in a coordinated
| campaign. _And_ it 's a real problem that, when someone
| gets to define and censor disinformation, then _they_
| define disinformation, and they may be biased (or worse,
| part of a coordinated campaign).
|
| I don't have an answer. But we can't find a workable
| answer without recognizing both sides of the problem.
| enumjorge wrote:
| Secretly subpoenaing journalists' phone records is not an
| idle threat. Trump tried to change the results of a
| democratic election. Because of his lies armed protestors
| broke into the Capitol building while congress people
| were in it in order to disrupt ratifying Biden as
| president. Neither one of those were idle threats. They
| were direct attacks on our form of government. They
| happen to fail but those attacks were real.
|
| I'm not saying social media censorship isn't bad. Of
| course having a few tech companies control the
| information that most people see is problematic. What I'm
| saying is that allowing those platforms to act as a
| megaphone for misinformation is also a huge issue.
| Censorship and propaganda are both tools of abusive
| governments.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > there's also the spreading of misinformation and
| propaganda that can also pose serious threats to democracy.
| I don't know why the anti-censorship crowd doesn't
| acknowledge this.
|
| You can always find the dumb version of any argument, but
| arguing against it is useless and masturbatory (insert
| aphorism about wrestling with a pig). If you define "the
| anti-censorship crowd" as the strongest possible version of
| the argument, you'll find plenty anti-censorship folks who
| acknowledge the harms that unfettered speech can cause, but
| argue that there's no way to cleanly and consistently
| define "misinformation and propaganda" in a way that's not
| heavily prone to abuse.
|
| Looking at the actual psychology of the post-truth part of
| Trumpism, it's not at all clear to me that hamfisted
| attempts at speech codes didn't add more fuel to the fire
| instead of less. There's no good evidence on this either,
| because you run into the same problem of consistently
| identifying disallowed speech and the requirement for a
| "known ground truth" that doesn't exist (lest you think
| that it's Science with a capital S, the pandemic should've
| thoroughly disabused you of that misunderstanding of what
| science actually is).
| koolba wrote:
| > The problem is that bad actors can abuse these platforms
| from multiple sides. In this case the issue is censorship,
| but there's also the spreading of misinformation and
| propaganda that can also pose serious threats to democracy.
| I don't know why the anti-censorship crowd doesn't
| acknowledge this.
|
| Because nobody trusts you or anyone else to classify
| "misinformation".
|
| > In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about
| the results of the elections.
|
| > He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power.
|
| He gave a lot of speeches and told his supporters to make
| their voices heard. Peacefully.
|
| If you assume that he genuinely believes the election was
| marred with fraud, then none of what he said are lies.
|
| > This is the same President who attacked journalism,
|
| The same "journalists" that spent years spreading fake news
| that he was a Russian spy?
|
| The same "journalists" that spent years falsely claiming he
| was referring to neo-Nazis as "fine people" when in fact he
| was saying the complete opposite?
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/26/joe-
| biden-...
|
| The same "journalists" that claimed that Trump instructed
| Georgia Secretary of State to "find the fraud" but then
| completely retracted that he ever said that: https://www.wa
| shingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/16/washingto...
|
| > rescinded access to White House press events for news
| sources that were critical of Jim,
|
| The only one I'm aware of that was revoked was Jim Acosta
| who refused to follow the rules of the press room and hand
| over the mic to the moderator:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/07/cnn-jim-
| acos...
|
| That's not being a "brave reporter". It's just being a
| showboating dick to everyone else that's following the
| rules of the press room.
|
| > and used the Justice department to seize records of
| journalists.
|
| The only instance of this I could find was this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/trump-
| administration-p...
|
| Though that does not go into too much specifics as to what
| or why.
|
| > Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in
| office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever
| enforce.
|
| Trump was the most open and accessible President that we've
| ever had. He would literally spend hours standing in front
| of hostile reporters answering any questions that they
| have.
|
| If you want to see the reverse of that, check out how Biden
| only calls on a preselected list of reporters that ask
| prescreened questions. They even include a wallet sized
| photo in case he can't read the reporters name:
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/photos-biden-cheat-
| sheets-f...
|
| Or how about snapping at reporters that ask questions about
| current events like the pull out from Afghanistan instead
| of "happy things" on July 4th?
| https://nypost.com/2021/07/02/joe-biden-cuts-off-
| questions-a...
|
| That's what content moderation looks like.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I don't know why the anti-censorship crowd doesn't
| acknowledge this.
|
| > In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about
| the results of the elections. He tried to pull all the
| stops to stay in power. This is the same President who
| attacked journalism, rescinded access to White House press
| events for news sources that were critical of Jim, and used
| the Justice department to seize records of journalists
|
| A very significant fraction of the anti-censorship crowd
| are pro-Trump, or at least right-wing, and of course a
| characteristic of that is ignoring all these things that he
| actually did.
|
| (edit: the irony of being downvoted into the grey by the
| angry "anti-censorship" faction)
| reedjosh wrote:
| I'm anti-censorship. I didn't downvote you, but you are
| conflating two arguments.
|
| Anti-government-censorship and anti-private-censorship.
| Myself and I'm guessing many don't actually care what
| Twitter does so long as the government isn't coercing it
| to do so.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| not_today_satin wrote:
| I think it's hilarious. I grew up with Republicans and
| neoliberals using this argument as the basis for anti-LGBT
| discrimination, but now it's problematic? I have some genuine
| concerns about what people are calling censorship and cancel
| culture, but I'm not saying anything for at least a few more
| years.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > now it's problematic?
|
| I know this is hard to believe, but there are people who
| actually hold principles instead of just performing them.
| It's not especially surprising that you don't have exposure
| to them, but the vast majority of people I personally know
| who complain about speech restrictions from the left also
| complained about restrictions from the right when they held
| more cultural power.
|
| Obviously your counterparts also exist, who cheered
| rightwing restrictions and complain about leftwing ones.
| But both of you are the proglem: gleefully proclaiming that
| you have no actual beliefs is practically a non sequitur in
| a conversation among people with actual moral centers
| complaining about the underlying principle violation.
|
| We get it, we know you (and your rightwing counterparts)
| exist, as much as we wish you didn't. You're exactly what
| we're complaining about.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Is it a bad defense though?
|
| I think that the problem is about concentration of power more
| than speech rights and the real takeaway is that allowing 3
| or 4 companies to control such an overwhelming share of
| communications infrastructure is a mistake regardless of what
| rules there are.
|
| The argument that we should lean on Twitter to maintain such
| nebulous concepts as "freedom" at the expense of their own
| profits is never going to convince me.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I think the fact that they're a monopoly is the big thing
| (or effectively one).
|
| Monopolies have always had different rules. My electric
| utility is a private company but in my state they have to
| ask permission before raising prices.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And they can't decide to not serve me because they don't
| like my political views. They can't choose to not give me
| power because they don't like what I put on my neon sign.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I don't want to lean on Twitter to maintain freedom. I just
| want the government not to do the opposite.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| By "the government" do you mean every government in the
| world?
|
| I don't agree with censorship in other countries but I
| also think it's weird to expect transnational companies
| to push western laws and values in places where the
| ruling government doesn't want them.
| nine_k wrote:
| They are a private company, etc.
|
| But here it's not what _they_ choose to remove, not
| "moderation.. It's what those in power press them to remove,
| aka "censorship".
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Excellent point, but it's important to note that currently
| the systems private companies use are little better than
| censorship. We need a non-affiliated govt agency to handle
| censorship/moderation requests.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| All we need is rules about what content can be removed
| for what reasons, and Twitter can just follow those rules
| itself, with the potential for audits. That's how we
| handle every regulatory requirement for companies. Even
| taxes basically work that way.
|
| Censorship is the moderation of content that may be
| disturbing or cause painful thoughts or feelings. So a
| person leaking state secrets on Twitter, and the
| government asking Twitter to take the tweet down, is not
| censorship: it's protecting national security, or law
| enforcement. They're drastically different things being
| taken down for very different reasons.
|
| You don't need an independent body to handle either type
| of request because we already have mechanisms for a
| company to handle both. What people are getting worked up
| over now is the potential for governments to abuse their
| legal right to remove illegal content, in order to
| censor. Since it's the govt doing it, the govt is not
| going to create an agency just to wave a big flag when it
| is doing something bad. That would be like creating a
| "National Agency Of We Don't Trust The Government".
| pyronik19 wrote:
| As someone who leans right wing.... I have 0 trust in
| these types of institutions. They overwhelmingly have
| views that are aligned directly with the far left and
| they seem to exercise their authority when given it to
| further their own political objectives. Take the SPLC
| which is used by some tech platforms to decide who to
| censor. They wield their power to label people as white
| supremacist to get them banned not because they are in
| any reasonable persons view based on evidence have said
| or done things that are clearly racist.... but its just
| the labeling of an enemy to fit narrative. We don't need
| censorship with extra steps... we need free speech.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| See also the SPLC labeling people like Maajid Nawaz and
| Ayaan Hirsi Ali "anti-Muslim extremists."
| barbacoa wrote:
| Years back a Colorado bakery refused to bake a cake for a
| gay wedding, the resulting lawsuit ended up going all the
| way up to the supreme court. The law firm that
| represented the baker is now officially labeled as a anti
| gay hate group by the splc.
| [deleted]
| antonzabirko wrote:
| What's the alternative? Anything private and you risk
| for-profit suppression just like we have now. Removing
| moderation is not an option imo.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > Anything private
|
| You don't have to support.
|
| The government will take your support at gunpoint. This
| is the crux of the issue.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| What does it matter what you support though? Case in
| point: twitter, fb, reddit, so on
| reedjosh wrote:
| I don't have to be there, and my dollars don't go to
| these corps. I don't understand your point.
|
| I'm not on either of those platforms, so they're not
| shipping me ads. I do what I can to be private, so that
| their data mining doesn't get me.
|
| I have that choice. Unfortunately if I don't agree with
| what my government is doing, they'll still take my tax
| dollars and fight forever wars with them.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Basically it doesn't matter if you support them because
| most speech happens on those platforms and you are
| suppressed from there. Sure you can go elsewhere, but
| that doesn't work when you need to reach out to others.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > They overwhelmingly have views that are aligned
| directly with the far left
|
| Your president repeatedly advocated for having
| journalists with opposing views shot.
| rscoots wrote:
| When did this happen?
|
| Genuinely curious
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Repeatedly, at the 2020 rallies.
|
| After the applause died down, he would follow up his very
| sincere trial balloon with a much less sincere "just
| kidding." Find a clip, decide for yourself if it's a
| trial balloon or a genuine funny joke, but either way
| it's pretty damning from a freedom of speech angle.
|
| He has also repeatedly expressed a similar sentiment in
| other forms, like open admiration for oppressive regimes'
| control over the media.
| rscoots wrote:
| I couldn't find any clips.
|
| My parent comment has been downvoted a bunch. Why?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| For the same reason as my comment, but from the opposite
| team :)
|
| If you're looking for _good_ reasons, you 'll be looking
| for a long time.
| Igelau wrote:
| > Find a clip, decide for yourself
|
| The onus is on you to back up that claim.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The onus is on me to the extent that it's in doubt. I was
| hoping it wouldn't be, since it made the rounds
| thoroughly enough at the time to shift the counter-
| discourse from "that never happened!" to "it happened,
| but it wasn't a problem, because it was just a joke."
|
| I guess I'll have to spend more time wading through the
| cesspool of political youtube. I spent 15 minutes trying
| to track it down and couldn't find it. It is buried under
| at least three incidents with similar search terms since
| last year, but two of them could have had attenuating
| circumstances and one of them is second hand, so none of
| them are as singularly indefensible as the statements he
| made on the campaign trail about having journalists shot.
|
| If I get some more time I'll go digging again.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| They are a private company but they chose to position
| themselves as a public square, open to anyone, with no
| barriers to entry.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Not only that, they have been requesting to reveal the
| identity of anonymous users.
|
| There are both attempts of censorship and
| surveillance/espionage.
| naasking wrote:
| > But here it's not what they choose to remove, not
| "moderation.. It's what those in power press them to
| remove, aka "censorship"
|
| Moderators are literally censors, _by definition_. Look up
| the definition of "censor" if you don't believe me.
|
| People need to stop playing word games to avoid the label
| of "censorship". Just accept that you're ok with some types
| of censorship and try to justify the types you support
| rigourously. That's the only way to avoid a slippery slope.
| Trying to tap dance around calling it censorship serves no
| one.
| nine_k wrote:
| I'm trying to make a distinction between removing literal
| hooliganism and obstruction, like repetitive posts
| consisting of "aaaaa", goatse links, etc (the
| "moderation"), and removing meaningful but politically
| unpalatable content (the "censorship").
|
| BTW I like how HN allows for moderation that makes
| certain low-quality comments invisible, but there is a
| mode when you still can inspect them if you want to. It's
| like the "spam" folder that allows you to have a clean
| inbox, but also allows you not to miss something that was
| deemed spam by mistake.
| pjc50 wrote:
| So .. are we back to demanding that twitter delete
| nothing, ever, no matter how pornographic, libellous, or
| threatening? Or even just spam?
| reedjosh wrote:
| I don't care what Twitter does. I just don't want the
| government mandating what it does. If a private company
| wants to censor, then sure.
|
| But as soon as the government requests takedowns and
| shadowbans, that's majorly crossing the line into
| infringement of free speech.
|
| The whole reason we constitutionally limit the
| governmental repression of free speech is because we're
| all made to support it. If I could chose to pay my taxes
| to an alternative, then fine, but we're made to pay taxes
| to a government that now can take down speech critical of
| it.
| username90 wrote:
| Twitter has many friends in the government and vice
| versa. So politicians enacts policies keeping twitter in
| power, and twitter enacts censorship keeping those
| politicians in power. This is completely fine and not
| "real censorship" since there was no formal agreement to
| do this, just some friends helping each other.
|
| Either we can keep that corrupt view, or we can agree
| that huge corporations are inseparable from governments
| and reign in their freedoms in a similar manner.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Counter-argument:
|
| Government is (in theory) elected by people, counter
| balanced by court.
|
| Facebook is accountable to nobody, it don't even have any
| competitor in social network business.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > (in theory)
|
| Yes, exactly.
|
| > Facebook is accountable to nobody
|
| Except when I hop off their platform.
|
| > it don't even have any competitor in social network
| business.
|
| True-ish I like https://peakd.com/ and
| https://flote.app/.
|
| They're not as popular just yet, but they're excellent
| distributed alternatives.
|
| Further, and most importantly, I can withdraw my support
| from Facebook. I cannot withdraw my support from the US
| government.
| reedjosh wrote:
| But with moderators on a forum, it is private censorship
| all the way.
|
| The issue is when at gunpoint people take my money from
| me, then use that money to fund more guns to point at the
| Twitters et al. of the world.
|
| If I don't like moderation on a forum, I just leave the
| forum. I don't _have_ to give my support to it.
|
| I can't just not support the US government.
| naasking wrote:
| This distinction is meaningful, but not as persuasive as
| you might think. If you're, say, a journalist with
| unpopular opinions that are typically censored on social
| media, you arguably do need to support those venues.
| Consider the fact that corporate power now extends beyond
| national borders, so in some very real senses, some
| corporations are more powerful than many governments.
| clairity wrote:
| it's not simply wordplay when they defined their
| understanding of these terms explicitly.
|
| with that said, neither moderation nor censorship should
| be tolerated for (political) speech by any (large)
| organization or bureaucracy, because they are using
| outsized power to influence opinions unduly, and thereby
| stripping us of our independence (literally coercing
| conformation). we can otherwise quibble about drawing a
| small line at the very far end of the slope where child
| porn lives.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Moderators are literally censors, by definition_
|
| If that's the case then "censorship" is not inherently
| wrong, since moderation is often times a good thing.
| wtallis wrote:
| There's a meaningful and important distinction between
| restrictions on speech that are enacted and enforced by
| private companies, and restrictions that are enacted by
| the government with enforcement outsourced to companies
| (that may be reluctant to comply).
|
| Using the word "censorship" for the latter but a milder
| word like "moderation" for the former seems like a
| perfectly reasonable way to convey this distinction in
| this context, even if a dictionary might provide a
| broader definition of "censor".
| naasking wrote:
| I don't think the distinction is as clear as you imply.
| Facebook is a multinational corporation that is arguably
| more powerful than many governments, and it can and has
| swayed elections.
|
| At what point are Facebook's "moderation" decisions
| "censorship"? You're effectively saying that it's only
| when moderation is driven by some kind of government
| policy, which completely erases the factors that
| _actually_ matter in evaluating the danger of any given
| suppression decision, ie. understanding of harm,
| considerations of power and oppression, etc.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| It's moderation when it's content I don't like. It's
| censorship when it's content I do like. Period. That's
| how it's treated in the public discourse. Accept this,
| and let's build upon it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| While there are people who misuse the s to score
| political points, that doesn't erase the real differences
| in sense and meaning behind them.
|
| Strictly speaking, moderation is a subset of censorship.
| The key aspect of moderation is that it is generally done
| by community members (usually volunteers) and done to
| enforce standards agreed with by the community. Other
| forms of censorship generally come from outside a
| community to enforce some rules the community does not
| support.
|
| Thus perspective and community identity are integral to
| the distinction but there is still a basis by which you
| can objectively view the powwr dynamics and distinguish
| moderation from other forms of censorship (such as
| corporate censorship or government censorship.)
|
| I do think the term "moderation" is a misnomer when
| applied to Facebook and Google as their moderators are
| generally not part of the communities they censor.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Moderation a conversation implies somebody is getting
| threatened with their comment being deleted or account
| suspended. That is censorship. Moderation is just the
| brand friendly term for it.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| When corporate and government power are tied at the hip
| the distinction is meaningless. Its been meaningless for
| a long time. Look up Banana Republic as a term.
|
| Think of it this way. If AliBaba does something you know
| China the government is connected. Same goes true for
| Zoom.
|
| America is no better. (as the Banana Republic example
| shows) The head of Apple can call the Speaker of the
| House directly on the phone whenever he wants and that
| person will answer. I can guarantee you that the same is
| true of Google. I am also sure if Jack Dorsey wanted to
| talk to someone with decision making power in the
| Whitehouse it could happen within the day. (probably
| slower than Google or Apple though)
| kube-system wrote:
| Corporate powers in the US have a relatively quite strong
| ability to push back on government requests compared to
| most other jurisdictions.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Twitter literally censored presidents and ex-presidents. We're
| already way down the slope. Twitter can't act like they are
| victim of government pressure when they act like an extension
| of a certain political party in power and literally does their
| bidding...
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Why would you think that censorship of Trump was purely
| voluntary decision by the big tech?
| fullstop wrote:
| That was their decision, and it's absolutely different than
| the government demanding that content is removed. The First
| Amendment applies to the government demands and not Twitter
| operating as a private entity.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| It seems to me that if you really want to be a despot, you
| should own the companies that control the flow of
| information. The beauty of it is that the Bill of Rights
| don't apply to you and you're not obligated to respect the
| rights it gives citizens because you aren't the government.
| fullstop wrote:
| 1. The government demanding that messages of private
| citizens be removed is a violation of their First
| Amendment Rights.
|
| 2. Twitter deleting content, banning users, etc, is
| entirely within their rights and is in no way a violation
| of anyone's First Amendment Rights.
|
| Twitter is not a government entity. Full stop.
|
| I'm currently sitting on some downvotes, which I find
| kind of unusual for a topic like this. Here's the text of
| the first amendment:
|
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
| of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
|
| Which part, specifically, has Twitter violated?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Twitter is not a government entity. Full stop."
|
| That's exactly my point. You can violate the principles
| of liberty freely as long as you aren't "the government".
| And the beauty of it is that people will defend you while
| you do it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| OK, but imagine some rich guy becoming president. Imagine
| that he owns some companies. Imagine that one of those is
| a media company. Imagine, for instance, Zuckerberg as
| president. He ran as part of party X. Now imagine that
| Facebook (not government, but a private company) suddenly
| starts deleting content that supports party Y. Is that a
| problem?
|
| We just had a president with significant business assets,
| but he owned hotels. The next one may own media
| companies.
| fullstop wrote:
| There's some misunderstanding here. I'm not suggesting
| that there is no problem. I am saying that it is not
| violating anyone's first amendment rights and I am
| absolutely correct on that matter.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I concede that you are correct based on the letter of the
| law but I think the spirit of the law is being violated
| in a significant way.
| fullstop wrote:
| ... but it's not. The entire purpose of that amendment
| was to prevent congress from passing laws which infringe
| on your rights, and Twitter is definitely not the
| congress or the government.
|
| The USA is a capitalist society. If there is a market for
| an "uncensored" social media platform, the invisible hand
| of the market will take care of it, right? Even so, you
| yourself are likely pro-censorship in some way. Surely
| you are against child porn being on Twitter, likely along
| with discussion about planning mass shootings, bombings,
| and things of that nature. We all have a line that is
| drawn between what is acceptable and what is not.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Ok... Now what if what people actually care about is not
| being censored?
|
| To give an example, if there are two situations,
| situation 1 is that the government comes to my house, and
| threatens me for speech that I made, and situation 2, is
| that the mob comes to my house, and threatens me for my
| speech, the thing that is on my mind is not "Well,
| situation 1 is a violation of my speech rights, and
| situation 2 isnt!".
|
| Like, literally that does not matter. Nobody cares about
| that technically that you keep talking about. What
| matters is that I don't want someone coming to my house
| and threatening me, regardless if it is the government,
| or the mob.
| fullstop wrote:
| It's not a technicality. One is limits that we have
| carefully placed on our government to prevent such abuse.
| The other is a matter for the police and the legal
| system.
|
| This is akin to a private company only allowing men to
| vote in board meetings, and people saying that it's
| violating the 19th amendment. Is it wrong? Absolutely!
| But it's not violating the 19th amendment.
|
| I'd also argue that a lot of people care about this
| "technicality". Businesses are not the government, end of
| story. The 1st amendment is quite succinct, and there's
| little room for misinterpreting it.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > It's not a technicality.
|
| In the context of this discuss it is.
|
| It doesn't matter because what people want is to not be
| censored. Thats the point of all of this.
|
| And you are bringing something up that just isn't
| relevant at all, that nobody brought up, but yourself.
|
| > But it's not violating the 19th amendment.
|
| Its not violating the 3rd amendment either. But nobody
| brought that up. Nobody cares if the 3rd amendment was
| violated, in this context.
|
| What people care about is the bad thing happening. And
| you are distracting from the conversation, by not
| focusing on the fact that it is bad, and instead focusing
| on something that nobody cares about, in the context of
| this discussion.
|
| The original context of all of this, is that someone said
| "It seems to me that if you really want to be a despot,
| you should own the companies that control the flow of
| information".
|
| They didn't bring up the 1st amendment. You did. And that
| distracts from the important conversation, which is, that
| if someone wants to censor a bunch of other people, then
| they can get around all these laws, by just having a
| private company do it instead.
|
| Thats why you got downvotes. It is because your point
| about the 1st amendment comes off as a bad faith way, of
| ignoring what everyone was actually talking about, which
| is about how a despot can censor a bunch of people, and
| cause a lot of harm, and that they can do that without
| running into 1st amendment issues, by just getting a
| private company to do it.
| fullstop wrote:
| It is absolutely not a technicality for the purpose of
| this discussion, and I'd argue that it's actually
| imperative.
|
| The US Government can not demand Twitter remove content
| (of US citizens) without violating their rights, which
| was implied by the actual article given that a large
| percentage of these requests came from the US Government.
| Conversely, Twitter can remove whatever it feels like
| without violating the rights granted to every US citizen.
| If Twitter is succumbing to US government pressure then
| we have the legal means to push back. If it is Twitter
| moderating content on their own volition, there is
| currently no legal means to do anything about it.
|
| > And you are bringing something up that just isn't
| relevant at all, that nobody brought up, but yourself.
|
| It's all over this discussion, not just this thread.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Do you understand at all, that the original thing that
| someone brought up, was how a despot could censor a bunch
| of stuff, without doing it through the government?
|
| You are ignoring the point that is being brought up.
|
| You bringing up this other thing, makes it seem like you
| are trying to dismiss this other concern, by bringing up
| a fact that does not actually address their point.
|
| Are you actually going to address the original point
| here, or are you going to keep ignoring it?
|
| The fact that you refuse to actually talk about the
| issue, which is that a despot can get away with censoring
| things, by doing it through private companies, makes it
| seem like you don't actually have a response to that, and
| are trying to misdirect.
| fullstop wrote:
| No. I'm saying that there's no legal means to stop a
| despot from doing this, no amendment to help you, and you
| have no rights. If you want to do that we're going to
| need another amendment or monopolies will need to be
| broken up.
|
| In the eyes of the law, Twitter has done nothing wrong by
| moderating their content.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > I'm saying that there's no legal means to stop a despot
| from doing this
|
| So then you agree completely with what the other person
| was originally saying, got it. You have no disagreement
| with them.
|
| So you should not have said "No". Instead, you should
| have said "Yes I agree with you".
|
| > If you want to do that we're going to need another
| amendment
|
| Actually, we could simply make a law. Such as by changing
| our existing, and uncontroversial, common carrier laws.
|
| > In the eyes of the law
|
| Literally you are agreeing with the other person. You are
| agreeing that a despot could cause huge amounts of harm
| to society, by just doing everything through private
| companies.
|
| Yes. Thats the problem. You have correctly identified
| that someone could engage in mass censorship, that is as
| bad as other forms of censorship, by just doing it
| through private companies, although this can be fixed by
| changing the law.
|
| > you have no rights.
|
| Got it. So you agree completely with the other person,
| that mass censorship, and lots of very bad things could
| be done to society, and currently it is difficult to stop
| all of these extremely bad things from happening. (Which
| could be fixed by changing the law)
|
| I am not sure why you keep stating things, in the way
| that you do, when in reality, you are agreeing completely
| with everyone else as to what the problem is, and you are
| agreeing that all of these very bad things could be done
| to lots of people, right now.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"the invisible hand of the market will take care of it,
| right?"
|
| I don't see this happening and I think the premise is
| flawed. In fact it looks like the dominant players in the
| market ganged up on nascent competitors like Parler and
| shut them out of the ecosystems they created. In
| practical terms, when payment processors, server hosting
| companies, domain registrars, and app stores ban you, how
| are you even supposed to compete? Sure, you can
| _theoretically_ bootstrap your own payment processor,
| cloud service provider, even your own smartphone
| ecosystem with gobs of cash, but we all know that 's not
| going to happen.
| fullstop wrote:
| Would you agree that, perhaps, your concern lies more
| with monopolies and not with censorship? Dominant players
| shutting out competitors is one of the most capitalist
| things that I can think of.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I am more concerned with censorship than I am with these
| monopolies (or near monopolies) in question. Censorship
| is not reliant on having a monopolistic position and even
| disparate companies that don't compete can effectively
| come together and deplatform people. I know "begging the
| question" is a logical fallacy, but I can't help but ask
| the following: What happens when 'the market' decides
| your personal liberties are problematic?
|
| "I'd also argue that a lot of people care about this
| "technicality". Businesses are not the government, end of
| story. The 1st amendment is quite succinct, and there's
| little room for misinterpreting it."
|
| What is gained from focusing so intensely on this fact?
|
| I feel frustrated because I believe that tyranny and
| infringements on the rights of man can come from both the
| public and private sector. I fully accept the 1st
| Amendment says "Congress shall pass no law...". But to
| me, the actual preservation of civil liberties depends on
| both domains. You can't have one without the other.
| fullstop wrote:
| > What happens when 'the market' decides your personal
| liberties are problematic?
|
| That's capitalism. Sorry?
|
| > What is gained from focusing so intensely on this fact?
|
| Because people (US citizens) complain that their free
| speech rights are being violated.
|
| They're not, unless the US Government itself is
| restricting what they can say.
|
| As it is right now, Twitter can do whatever the hell it
| wants with its platform and you're free to start your own
| if you feel so compelled.
|
| >I feel frustrated because I believe that tyranny and
| infringements on the rights of man can come from both the
| public and private sector.
|
| I think that there's some misunderstanding of what the
| "rights of man" are, and where they are set. Do you
| really want the government involved in your private
| interactions with a private company?
|
| Who or what gives you these rights? As far as I can tell,
| it's only granted by the constitution and amendments.
|
| The 9th amendment is somewhat of a grey area, I suppose.
| Even so, I don't think that "I deserve to tweet whatever
| I want without being banned" is an enumerable right. If
| you want to go further, an amendment would be needed.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"I think that there's some misunderstanding of what the
| "rights of man" are, and where they are set." and "Who or
| what gives you these rights? As far as I can tell, it's
| only granted by the constitution and amendments."
|
| I'm talking about the concept of Human Rights. You can
| say that we are "endowed by their Creator with certain
| unalienable Rights", if you'd like. There's also the
| "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" passed by the UN.
|
| >"Do you really want the government involved in your
| private interactions with a private company?"
|
| Yes. The government _already_ does this and it 's not
| necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this sort of thing is
| ubiquitous and quite tolerable.
|
| >"What happens when 'the market' decides your personal
| liberties are problematic?" >"That's capitalism. Sorry?"
|
| I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I dread the
| idea of my human and civil rights being dependent on
| Capitalism. And I'm a supporter of Capitalism! The
| exercise of civil liberties should not be dependent on
| their profitability.
|
| Edit: We've been going back and forth for a while now and
| I think it's been a good and respectful discourse. I
| understand if you want to drop the subject and move on.
| fullstop wrote:
| > Yes. The government already does this and it's not
| necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this sort of thing is
| ubiquitous and quite tolerable.
|
| I'm glad to see this, a lot of the anti-censorship people
| are, surprisingly, anti-regulation. I'm not quite sure
| how they balance the two.
|
| > I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I dread
| the idea of my human and civil rights being dependent on
| Capitalism. And I'm a supporter of Capitalism! The
| exercise of civil liberties should not be dependent on
| their profitability.
|
| We actually agree here, and it sounds like you may be a
| bit less capitalist than you think you are. I'm
| definitely capitalist, but abhor things like price
| gouging, scalping, and predatory loans. They exist
| because there is a market for them, gained through what I
| would consider a lack of morals.
|
| The free market is great, until it isn't.
|
| As for censorship, it _needs_ to exist in some form or
| fashion. The reason why platforms such as Parler failed
| was because they were unable to moderate their platform.
| If you have a bunch of people posting child porn,
| planning attacks, etc (edit: and you, as a platform, do
| nothing about it), you will become toxic and nobody 's
| going to want to work with you. I think that the
| disagreement that you and I have is where that line
| should be drawn.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"I think that the disagreement that you and I have is
| where that line should be drawn."
|
| Agreed. And, I think another source of us not quite
| seeing eye-to-eye is the fact that I as an individual
| tend to lean a lot more on "I know it when I see it" kind
| of thinking when it comes to applying rules to the real
| world. Plenty of other people are a lot more "by the
| book" than I am.
|
| Along those lines, I'm not an absolutist and there are
| plenty of cases where Twitter removed content and it was
| perfectly reasonable for them to do so. But I'm
| increasingly worried about them removing content that is
| merely controversial, or unorthodox, rather than truly
| wrong. You could say I'm more worried about "innocent men
| going to jail" than I am about "guilty men going free".
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Can we stop pretending that the right didn't do this to
| themselves? It's fine for politicians and elected officials
| to have their own opinions, it's not OK for them to
| misrepresent them as outright facts. That's literally the
| definition of "fake news" which they love to tout anytime
| someone says something uncomfortable about them. As these
| politicians continue to live in an alternate reality, they
| bring with them an inordinate number of voters. As we go from
| stretching the truth to lying, the lies become more extreme,
| as do the political views. We are no longer Americans with
| different views, we are opponents unable to have a discussion
| about the issues. And of course now the left is also free to
| use similar tactics going forward. It's a slippery slope.
| Both parties must be held accountable for their b.s.
|
| I'm an unaffiliated/independent voter and I've voted for both
| parties in the past (with varying levels of regret for both
| parties.)
|
| It's not OK for Fox News & CNN to be political party
| propaganda machines. It's not OK for Twitter/Facebook/etc to
| censor only the right for their opinions. Having said that I
| think it's completely fair for them to kick them off their
| platform for perpetuating outright, destabilizing lies.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| UK seems especially ignorant about this. This just came out,
| Mike Graham wants those considered "racist" to be stripped of
| their human rights.
|
| "No bank account, no ability to travel, no passport no benefits
| nothing."
|
| https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1414888566941958144
| partiallypro wrote:
| I saw they just arrested a man for saying racist things
| online after the Italy v England game. That's totally bonkers
| to me. We all agree racism is wrong but should speech backed
| by no actions be criminalized? I personally don't think so.
| Just ban the person from the platform and have private
| individuals handle it. The government has no place policing
| speech, it's a slippery slope to saying anything falls under
| x. I remember people complaining the governments were
| sweeping everything into the category of "terrorism" in order
| to stifle speech...that has disappeared. People seemed less
| inclined to support free speech now. Something I don't
| understand.
| hanniabu wrote:
| So verbal assault, harassment, and threats shouldn't be an
| issue?
| partiallypro wrote:
| Of course its an issue, but arresting someone for saying
| it and not acting it out seems ridiculous. Words are not
| actions, even if they are hurtful. Shun the person, ban
| them from games and platforms, educate them, etc...but
| arresting them?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, verbal assault, harassment, and threats are issues.
| They should be dealt with as those issues, whether or not
| there is a racist component.
|
| I'm not condoning racism here. Racism is morally and
| ethically bankrupt. But I think that your objection to
| partiallypro's comment doesn't hold water.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > Something I don't understand.
|
| We're going through a fascinating phase right now. If one
| is at all interested in philosophy, politics, religion &
| history there is a lot of discourse happening on Twitter
| and Substack, by extremely smart people. Look around, see
| for yourself who has the best arguments.
| adsharma11 wrote:
| Journalists are crossing the lines more and more these days, so
| the number of such requests will continue to increase.
| _jal wrote:
| Which lines are those? Specifics would help.
| k33n wrote:
| Questioning the establishment is now completely off limits.
| [deleted]
| foolinaround wrote:
| When one government/party (implicitly or explicitly) gets twitter
| to put content favorable to it to the detriment of its opponents,
| right there, twitter lost the script, and the moral standing.
|
| the talk of legality is nonsense, because there are jurisdictions
| where anything can be made legal.
|
| The vast majority of the world will be better off with a
| twitter/fb etc cut down to size, and the current massive power of
| social media networks being reduced.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| Funny how a surge in requests of this nature coincided with
| proliferation of tools for managing, "misinformation". Who gets
| to decide what or what constitutes misinformation, anyway. Is
| it the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party or African Democratic
| Congress? I guess for the time being rich white Californian
| tech executives and product managers decide what information or
| news stories are or are not real.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The vast majority of the world will be better off with a
| twitter/fb etc cut down to size, and the current massive power
| of social media networks being reduced.
|
| That's exactly what state sponsored media, dictatorships and
| big media conglomerates want to promote. Having layman question
| if social media is really good or not is great for these
| people.
|
| People forget so fast [0]
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2021/05/04/993605477/as-arab-spring-
| unfo...
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| The line you're promoting is exactly what the state sponsored
| media that the U.S. employs wants you to believe. Remember
| that the U.S. set up a fake Twitter clone to sow division and
| misinformation in Cuba? 2014:
| https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-
| twitt...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Apparently they didn't need it: Cubans spreading real
| information is enough to cause massive riots and for the
| regime to shut down internet access. [0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27812670
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| People keep bringing up the Arab spring as an argument for
| Twitter being socially beneficial.
|
| However, I am not sure the Arab Spring was a net positive.
| Tunisia turned out ok, but Libya is still a disaster. Egypt
| went from Dictator to Islamist Party to Military
| Dictatorship. Syria has seen massive death and destruction
| and Assad is still clinging to power. Yemen is involved in a
| nasty civil war.
|
| I think many in the West take a too rosy view of the Arab
| Spring. For the average Middle Easterner in those countries,
| the Arab Spring has been a disaster.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Those outcomes are often referred to as _Arab Winter_ that
| followed the Arab Spring.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It takes courage for a nation to take matters into it's own
| hands and march toward democracy. And it's not an easy road
| either.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _The vast majority of the world will be better off with a
| twitter /fb etc cut down to size, and the current massive power
| of social media networks being reduced._
|
| There is no "cutting down to size", these sites are popular as
| the function of individual choices, short of authoritarianism
| you can't dictate which sites people decide to use.
| buran77 wrote:
| > you can't dictate which sites people decide to use
|
| You can invest in education and empower people to make
| informed choices about the source or value of the
| information. This is an investment governments go out of
| their way to avoid because it just so happens the same lack
| of education that gets people hooked up on low quality
| content is what makes them easily manipulated by the
| political class.
| root_axis wrote:
| I don't see a problem with educational outreach, but what
| kind of education do you think the public needs?
| DoubleDerper wrote:
| From an early age more public investment in STEM,
| financial literacy, empathic education.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| *Are* these sites popular as functions of individual choices?
| It's been pretty well established that governments and
| regulators in the U.S. overlooked the actions of or actively
| supported these companies from the start.
| root_axis wrote:
| Sure they are. The popularity of one website does not
| diminish the availability of another website. The
| popularity of YouTube didn't prevent tiktok from also
| becoming popular. Using one website does not make it more
| difficult to use another website which is why literally
| everybody on the internet uses multiple websites. Not
| everyone uses FB, twitter, or reddit, others use some
| combination of them, some use all of them, others none of
| them, this is entirely the result of free choices made by
| individuals.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| Right. Plenty of people are free to use MySpace these
| days, what with its thriving community full of friends
| and family, everyone using the shared platform to
| communicate with each other.
| root_axis wrote:
| Right... MySpace was once the most popular social network
| on the internet and that fact meant absolutely nothing
| with respect to its longevity because individuals made
| their own choices about which sites they wanted to use
| and MySpace wasn't one of them.
| foolinaround wrote:
| tiktok and youtube are not synonymous in functionality...
|
| It is extremely hard to have a 2nd youtube, reddit or
| facebook... because of the network effects
| root_axis wrote:
| > _tiktok and youtube are not synonymous in
| functionality_
|
| This is a subjective distinction, but setting aside
| subjectivity for the sake of argument, it's a user-driven
| video sharing website, it's pretty similar to YouTube in
| many ways, but the fact that it is not _synonymous_ is
| exactly my point - TikTok created something that
| differentiated itself from YouTube and so people flocked
| to it, and the fact that YouTube was already popular didn
| 't diminish TikTok's accessibility nor did TikTok's
| explosion in popularity come at the cost of YouTube's
| popularity. TikTok created something attractive and
| people made individual choices to use it.
| visualradio wrote:
| Eh, governments could probably take a supply-side approach
| and throw money at new ARPAnet protocols for developing
| federated content publishing networks to grow competing
| networked application ecosystems without resorting to heavy
| handed authoritarianism.
| root_axis wrote:
| Another layer of federated content publishing doesn't solve
| any problems. The web is already federated, websites are
| the "nodes", these big websites are just very popular
| nodes, if fediverse style apps take off the problem would
| just move to the most popular nodes on that network.
| visualradio wrote:
| > Another layer of federated content publishing doesn't
| solve any problems.
|
| HTTP is a request-response rather than content broadcast
| or publish-subscribe protocol. Presumably you could
| develop a publish-subscribe protocol with low-latency
| encryption support embedded in protocol layer similar to
| QUIC.
|
| > if fediverse style apps take off the problem would just
| move to the most popular nodes on that network.
|
| So suppose the Department of Energy provides a public
| cloud which people can get a network address to hold
| files for them similar to how they can get a Post Office
| box number at the post office. Except when you put a file
| in your own PO box the PO will make free copies of the
| file for others on your behalf which are subscribed to
| your PO box without destroying the original copy.
|
| This would really just create a lower-level protocol or
| new number system for publish-subscribe content. It would
| compete with the other ARPAnet protocols such as TCP.
| burnished wrote:
| Can you point to some specific examples, instead of leaving it
| vague? I ask because I'm curious whether there are more
| pertinent framings than of a disagreement purely between
| political parties.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Making them smaller will make them more likely to resist
| government censorship how exactly?
| username90 wrote:
| Being large just makes you a large target, smaller things
| like HN wont get targeted since governments lack the capacity
| to handle that many things. And being large doesn't offer
| much protection to resist once targeted either, no matter how
| large they are they wont sacrifice significant revenue for
| moral reasons.
| foolinaround wrote:
| twitter is attacked exactly because they are the only voice
| out there.
|
| As an example, There are several newspapers in India, which
| still continue to post opinions critical of the government.
| There is a system of courts still, sort of working, and would
| step in if things got too bad.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| They don't want them smaller they want their autonomy not
| their sized reduced. Specifically they cling to the idea that
| social media ought to be a common carrier as obliged to carry
| their views as that of their detractors. If you look at the
| actual speech that is being disincentivized this looks
| objectively terrible in our present context.
| foolinaround wrote:
| i dont know who you are speaking for, but agreed that the
| need for reduced autonomy for any agency of that size.
|
| In general, conservatives believe in markets, and if they
| happen to grow to a particular size with these constraints,
| so be it.
|
| --
|
| > If you look at the actual speech that is being
| disincentivized this looks objectively terrible in our
| present context.
|
| I'll give one example to see what the reaction ought to be.
|
| A private citizen makes an otherwise legal speech at a
| political meeting - and youtube and all media wipe it out
| of the internet last week.
|
| Regardless of the private citizen being Trump and the party
| being Republicans, a liberal ( as the word used to mean
| before) should have been up against such censorship.
|
| 'Moderation' does not come into play in this example, but
| there is nothing specific to moderate really in what is
| essentially a semi-private meeting of free people.
| munk-a wrote:
| A single shut down of a platform can be written off as "for
| the children" or some other character assassination BS. When
| you start repeatedly attacking platforms that's when you get
| the moderates of your country to start taking umbridge.
|
| I think a good parallel might be TikTok in the US, Trump was
| exploring banning the platform toward the end of his term
| without a particularly large pushback from the general
| populace (though a whole bunch of pushback from tech literate
| folks). You can use excuses like that a time or two without
| raising too many eyebrows, but once it becomes a pattern
| people get angry.
|
| Having more smaller platforms makes it harder to effectively
| accomplish any censorship since your few shutdown freebies
| won't significantly impact the ability for political
| opponents to communicate with the public.
| jmull wrote:
| The idea that Twitter -- or any other company or person --
| should not be able to choose or express it's own side in any
| matter of political contention because one side or the other
| wouldn't like it is insane to me.
|
| How does that even work? Who gets to decide which topics or
| points of view are off-the-table for normal social-media
| moderation? I guess you're saying government figures and major
| political parties could decide unilaterally. We'll have to
| repeal the first amendment, anyway.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > should not be able to choose or express it's own side in
| any matter of political contention
|
| It goes back to the conversations expressed elsewhere in this
| post about twitter being an utility, de-facto.
|
| If it is given that status, then there are some expectations
| that come with it.
|
| Once a company takes a political position, then it cannot
| appeal on 'moral' or other subjective grounds.
|
| > How does that even work?
|
| I don't know... maybe an entity like the Swiss? Not sure if
| it is a good example, being a country itself? The reason
| people seem to be ok with the presence of the country is that
| it is strictly neutral, and both sides protected it.
|
| > Who gets to decide which topics or points of view are off-
| the-table for normal social-media moderation?
|
| How about no one?
|
| > I guess you're saying government figures and major
| political parties could decide unilaterally. We'll have to
| repeal the first amendment, anyway.
|
| The 1st amendment is for the US exclusively. This version of
| the Freedom of speech is a distinctively American concept,
| and for that reason, twitter actually finds some tepid
| support from conservatives.
|
| Each country is sovereign in the laws that govern their land,
| unless they breach some major crimes, and thats when the UN
| steps in. Nothing new here.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The way nations relate to one another is fundamentally
| different from the way parties relate to one another within
| a nation. The UN is a debating society that serves to
| provide a venue for potentially belligerent actors subject
| to different laws who ultimately can only truly enforce
| their will with bombs and bullets if debate fails.
|
| Parties within a nation are all subject to the same laws
| with established responsibilities and rights with
| established procedures for settling differences.
|
| The fact that some platforms choose to exclude a minority
| of players from using said platforms to spread ideas that
| the majority finds evil and harmful is a feature not a bug.
| There are established laws that protect actual rights and
| privileges. Just none that would privilege you to stand on
| others property and shout hateful offensive things.
|
| Get your own bullhorn and stop trying to make laws
| demanding your neighbor lend you his.
| foolinaround wrote:
| The UN also theoretically can step in if a nation does
| bad things to its own citizens ( like genocide etc).
|
| What is being discussed here is Twitter, an American
| company in relation to countries like India, etc.
|
| > to spread ideas that the majority finds evil and
| harmful
|
| Who is the majority? And how did twitter find it? If
| twitter lets a ranking system similar to HN/reddit, and
| content below a particular ratio is hidden, that might be
| fine I guess. it would be a mob, I would'nt like it, but
| atleast, its uniform.
|
| > Get your own bullhorn and stop trying to make laws
| demanding your neighbor lend you his.
|
| What does that even mean? Is twitter my neighbour? Do I,
| a ordinary citizen have similar clout?
|
| In a way, I see twitter as a bully (a loud bullhorn) who
| was terrorizing the neighborhood one after the other. He
| walks into this one, where there is a stronger bully
| (with laws that have teeth) and slaps him silly.
|
| This bully now cries, and yeah, not getting much sympathy
| from the folks he bullied.
| yibg wrote:
| Problem here is "favorable" and "political position" are
| pretty subjective. Who's to decide what is favorable to
| whom and what constitutes political position? Is saying
| wear a mask a political position? These days it seems to
| be. So someone still has to decide what is political and
| what is not right? So seems like we're back to square 1.
| foolinaround wrote:
| the deeper point about the mask is that AFAICT, the
| people are not really opposing the mask, but the
| government that is directing those mandates, and the real
| root cause is the lack of trust in the government.
|
| it is also coinciding with a period of extreme distrust
| of the media, wherein, if some thing is spreading outside
| of the media, the position being taken is that it must be
| true, whereas one would expect the opposite to happen.
|
| The media and the government must introspect their roles
| in leading to this situation.
|
| Many lump twitter as being part of the media itself,
| because of its proactive actions.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| People distrust the media because one half of our
| political spectrum is busy as a beaver spreading lies so
| blatant that they can't be credibly presented as another
| side of the issue or an alternative perspective.
|
| Because the media is presenting reality in a fashion
| vastly closer to objective truth the liars are obliged to
| explain why their positions and the medias differ and the
| most trivial response is to continue lying and call the
| media liars. The liars audience has chosen their own
| alternative facts over objective reality and there is
| absolutely nothing the media could have done to prevent
| it.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > because one half of our political spectrum
|
| and the other half comes out smelling like roses?
|
| Let me ask you this, as atleast you know there are 2
| universes (which many do not ):
|
| - Do you sample both of the universes and make up your
| mind?
|
| - Do you know which direction the media thats most
| accessible (otherwise called as mainstream) leans
| politically?
|
| - Do you lean that same direction yourself?
|
| - if so, it is that side that needs to seek out the
| alternate universe and figure if there is any truth to
| it. ( theoretically, there can be right?)
|
| --
|
| The people on the right are generally exposed to the
| mainstream media, and therefore, and also consume
| alternate media from the right, and at least, get to hear
| both sides.
|
| The people on the left, on average, simply do not do this
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Swiss neutrality was noticeable more in the breach than the
| observance: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-
| articles/switzerlan...
|
| Militarily, invading Switzerland would have been far more
| work than it was worth.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > How does that even work?
|
| Well, it could work similar to the existing and
| uncontroversial laws, that are already widespread on certain
| communication companies.
|
| Specifically, we could take common carrier laws, which
| already apply to certain communication companies, and extend
| them.
|
| Those laws are uncontroversial, and established. So it is
| silly to claim that such a thing is unconventional.
|
| > We'll have to repeal the first amendment
|
| No we won't. Common carrier laws already exist, and we didn't
| have to repeal the 1st amendment to have them.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Please cite the exact laws that we ought to apply to social
| media companies and do touch on how the application of said
| laws will avoid infringing on these companies civil rights.
| baumy wrote:
| Exact laws: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/ch
| apter-5/subchap...
|
| The rest of your question I consider invalid. Companies
| do not have civil rights [1]. Hell, it's in the
| definition of the word:
|
| "relating to ordinary citizens and their concerns, as
| distinct from military or ecclesiastical matters"
|
| But clearly the existing common carrier regulations don't
| infringe on the "civil rights" of the companies they
| apply to, so even accepting your false premise, this is
| very straightforward.
|
| [1] or at least, they didn't until extremely recently
| https://www.inquirer.com/business/hobby-lobby-citizens-
| unite...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The law you linked just in plain language doesn't apply
| to websites. Not only does it not apply to websites but
| laws like CDA Section 230 explicitly disclaim any such
| regulation by explicitly providing for and protecting
| their right to moderate their users content.
|
| It's disingenuous to suppose that existing laws already
| cover the situation when one law has nothing to say about
| the matter and at least one contrary law would need to be
| repealed. We must then look at WHY common carrier laws
| exist.
|
| It is often impractical to have parallel communication
| infrastructure in the same way as it is impractical to
| have a parallel system of roads and bridges so it is
| important that it serve all comers in order to provide
| for the needs of society.
|
| Social media is the exact opposite. They are a dime a
| dozen and no barrier exists to making another one. If it
| comes to pass you don't have much of an audience on your
| alternative network that is a personal problem not an
| issue for society to solve for you by enforcing your
| presence where you aren't wanted.
| stale2002 wrote:
| You _just_ said this "Please cite the exact laws that we
| ought to apply "
|
| Emphasis on the word "ought".
|
| And you responded to someone bringing up other laws by
| saying this "to suppose that existing laws already cover
| the situation ".
|
| Which nobody said.
|
| Instead, the other person was directly answering your
| question, of which specific laws "ought" be applied to
| social media companies. The implication being, that they
| do not currently apply now, but _should_ , by changing
| the law such that they do.
|
| > at least one contrary law would need to be repealed
|
| You used the word _ought_. That was your premise. And
| someone answered your question of what ought happen. So,
| the implication, is that other contrary law, also _ought_
| be changed.
|
| I am not sure why this always happens in these types of
| conversations. People say X is bad, and then someone else
| comes in and says "Well actually, X is totally legal!".
|
| Nobody here said anything about it being illegal. Instead
| we said that X is bad. And the implication being that we
| want something to change, such that the bad thing stops.
|
| Saying X is legal, is just an end run around, to ignore
| the original point that was brought up, by talking about
| the legality, when nobody brought up was _is_ legal in
| the first place.
|
| Yeah, we knows the bad thing is legal. Thats why it is
| happening. Thats why we are complaining about it. Because
| it is legal, and happening, and we don't want it to
| happen, and we want to figure out a way to make it not
| happen.
|
| That why, in my original comment I said that we should
| "extend" common carrier laws. "Extend" means change. It
| means that I already know that common carriers laws don't
| apply, and I _want_ them to apply. By changing those
| laws.
|
| Like, my god. This always happens, and the conversations
| are so stupid.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Rest of the world doesn't care about your laws or rights,
| when youtube is doing business in a country they have
| every legal right/opportunity to write laws to demand
| whatever they want from the company.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| In some cases it would make sense to comply in others it
| would make more sense to refuse especially if compliance
| with one nations laws would interfere with the companies
| core product. For example if smallistan decided that
| material critical of its monarch must be expunged from
| all of youtube not just the content served inside
| smallistan then it would be in everyone else's interest
| if Google ignored them.
| [deleted]
| username90 wrote:
| > company or person
|
| Billion dollar companies are not persons, they should not
| have the same rights at all. At that size they start to
| mingle heavily with politicians. They want politicians to
| enact the right policies, and in return those politicians
| wants the company to censor the right people or fund their
| campaigns. Just because there is no formal agreement here
| doesn't mean that the companies aren't just the extended arm
| of the government and vice versa.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Billion dollar companies are composed of people
| individually acting within their rights and although they
| should be provided no special privileges neither should
| they lose their individual rights. Having companies have
| too close a relationship with donors is a defect not a
| reasonable basis for regulating businesses as if they were
| in fact part of the government.
| grb100 wrote:
| Newspapers and persons obviously should choose to express
| their own opinions.
|
| Twitter is different: It is close to a common carrier, and
| you can't just shut down one side of the political
| discussion. If you do, you'll have the appearance of free
| discussion, when in reality you are exercising totalitarian
| control.
|
| That is more harmful for democracy than occasional idiots
| dressing up in Viking costumes and entering the capitol (of
| course, riots of the opposing spectrum can be safely promoted
| on Twitter anyway).
| andred14 wrote:
| Welcome to Fascism
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Twitter isn't FBI raid-proof and that's a SPoF. The US govt has
| the technical power and legal force to shut it off when it has or
| invents the authority to do so. This existential threat means
| Twitter, in the absence of moral/ethic leadership courage, is
| compelled to bow down to individual legal demands.
|
| If end users want freedom with a centralized service, it has to
| be based in a neutral country and also accessible by VPN, p2p
| overlay network, etc. It would also be better if such a service
| were also distributed.
| baldeagle wrote:
| Key points:
|
| Timeline for the report was the back half of 2020.
|
| India and the US were the top requestors for take downs. There
| are new laws in India and some other countries regarding control
| of speech online.
|
| I wonder if the US based takedown trends will continue into 2021
| with the new administration.
| ntrz wrote:
| The article says Twitter ``declined to elaborate on which
| countries submitted the [journalist takedown] demands'' but
| that India and the US were the top sources of ``all information
| requests'', which is a more general category that also includes
| things like requesting a user's IP address, etc. I don't think
| it's necessarily true that the `information request' rankings
| match the journalist takedown request rankings.
|
| The takedowns aimed at journalists were only 2% of all the
| `information requests' they received, according to the numbers
| in the article (361 journalist requests, 14,500 total
| `information requests').
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Those information requests also likely include law
| enforcement investigations for a wide range of activities.
| Plenty of crooks get caught just because they blabbed about
| it on social media.
| murph-almighty wrote:
| So these "information requests" could be, say, checking a
| user's IP to track fake news?
| insulanus wrote:
| I'm glad to see this topic so hotly debated here.
|
| After having read most of the comments here, most of the
| discussion is turning on the point of what the first amendment
| does or does not require. That's great - the law should be the
| low bar for behaviour of the government, corporations and
| populance.
|
| The first amendment is an excellent part of the constitution,
| putting the U.S. far ahead of many other regimes when it comes to
| free speech. However, it's not the be-all end-all. The corporate
| and political landscape, the balance of power between the people
| and government, and the U.S.'s geopolitical situation have
| changed since 1791.
|
| Too many people treat the American constitution like the U.S.A.
| Law-Bible - ever correct, never flawed, never to be updated. That
| is absurd. The last amendment was ratified in 1992, and I'd say
| we are overdue for a few more.
|
| In your arguments, please distinguish what is legal from what you
| think is the right thing to do.
| mattnewton wrote:
| As an aside, I think there is a growing concern among
| politically active moderates in the US that the first amendment
| is the best we can do, and that more stringent protections
| couldn't be safely passed in today's hyper partisan
| environment. There is a sense, true or not, that 1791 had most
| lawmakers pulling for the same ultimate goal, of a healthy
| democracy, and that today that spirit has given way to red vs
| blue zero sum manuvering. So for practical purposes they treat
| it as the "law bible" - better than anything we could hope for
| today.
| vmception wrote:
| It's about governments around the world which can only also
| include the US and municipalities bound by the US Constitution
|
| The US Constitution's first patch having almost no relevance on
| Twitter complying with foreign government
|
| So despite the audience here having a US centric perspective, I
| dont think your post about asking people to clarify legal vs
| feelings really helps move this discussion forward. Maybe
| slightly disambiguifies a US persons kneejerk response, but not
| really the topic.
| SllX wrote:
| > Too many people treat the American constitution like the
| U.S.A. Law-Bible - ever correct, never flawed, never to be
| updated. That is absurd. The last amendment was ratified in
| 1992, and I'd say we are overdue for a few more.
|
| This is reductive. The arguments I see and participate in are
| generally those who view the Constitution as an arbitrary
| document that can change meaning over time without amendment,
| and those that demand you respect the words on the pages and
| actually amend the Constitution through the proper channels
| instead looking for new ways to reinterpret it.
|
| This is before getting into the quality of the proposed
| amendments: most laws can be passed statutorily by either the
| the States or Congress. Most disputes can be settled in Courts
| with no changes to the law.
|
| So when whether or not something would be a Constitutional,
| which is to say, a _legal_ violation is not the subject of
| debate, the quality of the proposals _is_.
|
| Are you proposing any actual amendments you think Congress
| should take up? Or simply suggesting we pass amendments to pass
| amendments?
| zpeti wrote:
| We can't have no moderation. There are a million reasons from
| spam to hostile government bots etc.
|
| At least the US legally allows companies (ie prevents
| government censorship) to choose what they moderate, rather
| than almost any other country where governments can easily
| censor.
|
| But I believe we can't really have winner takes all markets any
| more, for political reasons. The current winners in these
| social network markets have basically aligned with one
| political side. This isn't even a question any more.
|
| So what will happen? The market will correct. At a minimum
| these markets will split in two with duopolies, one for each
| political side, but it could be more fragmented.
|
| Just like in old media. We have fox and cnn, we will have
| Facebook Twitter and whatever the right will build.
|
| It's inevitable. Network effects won't save the day when you
| are censoring mainstream right views. You can't be seen to be
| against half your market. The customers will leave. It might
| take time, but they'll leave.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I agree that we can't have zero moderation, but we should
| also recognize that large social media platforms have become
| the de facto public square and while it is lawful for them to
| moderate content, it's detrimental to our society. If I had
| to choose between trusting Twitter to moderate such a large
| volume of our society's speech and flat-footedly regulating
| them like a public utility to the extent that their quality
| drops and they vanish into the ether whence they came, I'd
| certainly choose the latter. That said, I think we can find
| middlegrounds that provide for high quality digital content
| while also allowing people to have robust speech freedoms _in
| practice_.
|
| One such incarnation which is particularly interesting to me
| is the idea of regulating compliance with an open protocol
| such that Twitter doesn't own your social network, but rather
| they are simply one option through which you can access that
| social network. If you like Twitter's monetization model and
| moderation, great. If you don't, you can trivially go
| elsewhere (i.e., you don't have to leave your connections and
| conversations behind--you can continue to participate in the
| same conversations from your new social media portal) or even
| build your own.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > but we should also recognize that large social media
| platforms have become the de facto public square and while
| it is lawful for them to moderate content, it's detrimental
| to our society.
|
| Strong disagree. Social media platforms are no different
| from any other media platform. Should a newspaper or tv
| station be required to host official communications from a
| government administration? It is absolutely vital to
| democracy that they should be free to avoid publishing
| anything that they don't want to publish _for any reason
| whatsoever_ including reasons we disagree with. Otherwise,
| every public sphere would devolve into state-controlled
| media.
|
| The same restrictions must also hold true for
| communications from private citizens, especially given the
| global trend towards oligarchy.
| neutronicus wrote:
| > we should also recognize that large social media
| platforms have become the de facto public square and while
| it is lawful for them to moderate content, it's detrimental
| to our society.
|
| I don't think you appreciate how controversial this
| assertion is.
|
| In certain circles, progress is seen as unattainable
| without a collectivist commitment to defining and
| suppressing harmful speech, and a _de facto_ public square
| controlled by private entities as a welcome opportunity to
| do an end run around an onerous, entrenched legal obstacle
| in the first amendment.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I appreciate this but I also suspect that many of the
| people who advocate for this kind of private public
| square aren't thinking through the implications from the
| perspective of their own professed ideals. In general,
| many anti-free-speech, pro Twitter Inc folks are left
| wing and left wing ideals don't align well with
| privatizing the regulation of civil liberties. I think
| this is more of an emotional reaction on their part than
| a principled stance.
| kypro wrote:
| > We can't have no moderation. There are a million reasons
| from spam to hostile government bots etc.
|
| Why not though? Why can't I choose how I moderate spam? If
| platforms like Twitter and Facebook want to protect users
| from spam content, why can't there be law requiring any
| moderation operate as a opt-in / opt-out system so long as
| the content is otherwise legal? If a platform doesn't want to
| do this that's fine and we can just treat them as a
| publisher.
|
| I'm sure some people will complain that Twitter is biased in
| how they operate their spam filters, but for me this is fine
| so long as whatever they're doing to curate the content is
| entirely optional.
| schuyler2d wrote:
| First there's the legal set of things: doxxing, child porn,
| copyright violations, revenge porn, etc.
|
| Then there are softer aspects: disinformation, threats,
| abusive language that are often easier to block than for
| the company or for society to 'climb back out of' or
| address post-facto.
|
| Twitter and other platforms are built for viral marketing
| -- not all content should have the privilege of viral
| marketing. Then as a product, Twitter and others might want
| to think about the minimum experience level. What kind of
| demographics are going to be present over time, if every
| woman-identifying account, if they peek at the default-
| moderated content, see 1000s of abusive and hostile tweets
| directed at them?
| dooglius wrote:
| Disks aren't free. You'd need to come up with something
| preventing a bad actor from using Twitter as a personal
| multi-exabyte storage service. Simple rate-limiting won't
| work due to Sybil attacks.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Platform/publisher isn't a thing, that's a made up talking
| point.
|
| Even if it were a "publisher" they can still refuse to
| publish your content, they can remove the content, and can
| edit the content. Publishers are not forced to do business
| with you.
|
| "Curating content" is their business. That's how social
| media operates. You and I don't get to tell them that they
| can't run their business simply because we don't agree with
| their politics. You have to prove a significant public harm
| that's not protected. They're not a monopoly, nor do they
| control the infrastructure for social media. Nor do they
| have power over preventing you from creating your own.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > Platform/publisher isn't a thing, that's a made up
| talking point.
|
| It mirrors an offline legal distinction that has a huge
| impact on liability. A printer is not liable for what
| they print because they don't exert editorial control
| while a publisher is because they do.
|
| There are specific legal protections for online platforms
| that allow they to exert some moderation without
| qualifying as a publisher for liability purposes.
|
| Thus the platform/publisher distinction is extremely
| relecant when discussing exactly how much moderation (and
| especially curration) can happen before a platform should
| assume the legal liabilities of a publisher.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| True, but if I'm a publisher my liability would arise
| from publishing false stories like 'shkkmo distributes
| ransomware' or incitement like 'push shkkmo into
| traffic.' On the other hand, if I am the editor/publisher
| of _Dweeb Aficionado_ I am under no obligation to give
| you editorial space or sell you advertising, except (in
| US law) if you can show that I am systematically
| excluding advertising from a class of people like you
| which enjoys some sort of legal protection.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I fail to see the relevance of this. As a publisher
| exerting editorial control, you also assume some
| liability for your content as that editorial control is a
| form of speech.
|
| Printers who exert no editorial control are not engaging
| in speech and are thus not liable for the content they
| print (same with the ink, paper and printing press
| manufacturers.)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The first sentence in my comment above defines the scope
| and limits of my liability.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Publishers aren't special, they have 1st amendment rights
| that protect them as well. Publishers are not
| automatically liable for their published works. You have
| to prove a causal link between the publisher and
| something in the book itself. And then you have to prove
| a harm that goes beyond the limits of 1st amendment
| protections. There's conflicting precedence on it, courts
| disagree on the limits of 1st amendment and how it
| applies to publishers. More commonly, it's the author
| that is targeted, because they wrote the work, not the
| publisher.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Why can 't I choose how I moderate spam?_
|
| Well, you can run your own mailserver and likewise some
| sort of social stream. But it's not so much about what you
| can or can't do, as the much larger number of people who
| can't or don't want to run their own communications
| infrastructure but also don't want to be inundated with
| spam.
|
| Consider the parallel of robocalls, ie phone spam. People
| regularly complain to their phone provider and/or the FTC
| about being deluged with unwanted calls, many of which are
| scams.
| [deleted]
| yifanl wrote:
| Moderation still exists in your system, presumably as a
| default-on.
| duxup wrote:
| >Why can't I choose how I moderate spam?
|
| The scale of work there would make that more than a full
| time job. I can't imagine very many if any people want to
| do that...
| judge2020 wrote:
| > The current winners in these social network markets have
| basically aligned with one political side. This isn't even a
| question any more.
|
| Sure it is. Corporations are not hive mind beings, they make
| arbitrary rules then enforce them arbitrarily based on who's
| looking at the data feed when they see borderline TOS-
| breaking content.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Instead of calling them "bots", call them propagandists.
|
| They are often real humans writing spin.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > At least the US legally allows companies (ie prevents
| government censorship) to choose what they moderate...
|
| This directly conflicts with the following statement from the
| article itself.
|
| > Twitter said in the report India was now the single largest
| source of all information requests from governments during
| the second half of 2020, overtaking the United States, which
| was second in the volume of requests.
|
| This discussion _is_ about the US (but also other
| governments) censoring Twitter posts.
|
| As far as the distinction between what is legal and what I
| think should be the case... I think this is illegal as the
| government is coercing censorship. It's certainly legal if
| Twitter censors itself.
|
| As far as what I think should be the case... I don't think
| government should be anywhere near the public square, and I
| personally don't use these platforms. I'm doing what I can to
| move to more distributed platforms with better speech.
|
| HN is pretty great, but I left reddit a while ago. If a
| private co censors too much for me, then I have the choice to
| leave.
|
| If the government enforces censorship, then I'm toast.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > This discussion _is_ about the US (but also other
| governments) censoring Twitter posts.
|
| Presumably the US is genuinely _asking_ Twitter to take
| down posts, not invoking any hard power to coerce Twitter.
| That runs counter to free speech _ideals_ , but it's not a
| strict violation of Twitter's _rights_. If there is a
| victim, it 's the folks whose Tweets are being taken down,
| insofar as the de facto public square is privately owned
| and thus not subject to first amendment protections
| (Twitter can legally, unilaterally censor the de facto
| public square).
| ryandrake wrote:
| Twitter is not the public square. It's not even a public
| utility. It's a private company. It's more akin to a
| newspaper's "letters to the editor" section. Users send X
| to Twitter, and Twitter chooses to distribute X to its
| other users. A real public square does not have an
| intermediary with moderation power.
|
| We don't have an Internet equivalent to the public
| square. Maybe 4chan, but even they moderate (child porn,
| etc.), and technically, your messages still get posted
| through an intermediary. Maybe there are darknet sites
| that are true "unfiltered, unhosted, broadcast to
| everyone" social media, I don't know. Maybe SMS is the
| public square, but there's (thankfully) no way to
| broadcast an SMS to the world.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Whether or not Twitter the platform has some technical
| feature in common with the public squares of olde is
| missing the point. The concern is that a significant
| volume of our national dialogue (and indeed the dialogues
| of many nations) is hosted on Twitter, to the extent that
| many people (including the very same people who think
| Twitter's "censorship" is a Very Good Thing) are
| concerned that Twitter is a vector through which foreign
| state actors can and have _indirectly_ influence
| democratic elections (if state actors can do it
| _indirectly_ then that implies that Twitter _the company_
| can do it _directly_ ). Even if you aren't convinced that
| Russia used Twitter to game the 2016 POTUS election,
| there's a larger umbrella of concerns about the outsized
| influence of social media companies (for example, the
| various arguments levied in The Social Dilemma).
| reedjosh wrote:
| > Presumably the US is genuinely asking
|
| This is probably the first honest argument I've seen in
| this thread about whether this is legal or not.
|
| Personally I believe this is not the case. I believe
| there is a lot more coercion behind these asks then we're
| seeing, but that aside I also agree that.
|
| > That runs counter to free speech ideals
|
| and
|
| > Twitter can legally, unilaterally censor the de facto
| public square
|
| but, shouldn't we be wary of even a non-coercive
| relationship like this where government and corporations
| enter into mutually beneficial monopoly supporting
| relationships?
|
| All that said, I will be firing up a Mastadon server
| shortly. (It's been on my bucket list for a bit now.)
| vharuck wrote:
| >Just like in old media. We have fox and cnn, we will have
| Facebook Twitter and whatever the right will build.
|
| I don't think it's destined or even likely to end up this
| way. The reason there's no major conservatively aligned
| social media is because the _vast_ majority of users don 't
| care much about politics. They may vote Republican, but they
| don't follow Republicans on Twitter, and they ignore
| politically heated debates on Facebook. The number of
| conservatives who want to talk politics with other
| conservatives is not enough to sustain anything on the same
| scale as Twitter or Facebook.
|
| Don't compare these services to CNN or Fox News. News
| inherently involves politics, so it's easy for news services
| to differentiate themselves with politics. Instead, think of
| it like Disney+ and Hulu. Which is the one for conservatives?
| munk-a wrote:
| We've had a few very prominent conservatively aligned
| social media outlet - Parler in particular comes to mind as
| a semi-successful one, but there are a bunch of
| conservative oriented message boards and news feeds that
| have existed for quite some time.
|
| I'd strongly disagree that news necessarily involves
| politics as well, political topics can be mentioned and
| reference without turning things into a partisan sh*show
| and it is only recently (probably since about '95) that
| we've had rabid debate shows like Hardball that really
| rewarded news outlets for being extremely partisan.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| There were laws that Reagan did away with about the so-
| called fairness of political television broadcasting,
| which might explain how those shows got more popular.
| However, I think politics and news generally have been of
| a rabid tenor since forever.
| karpierz wrote:
| > The current winners in these social network markets have
| basically aligned with one political side. This isn't even a
| question any more.
|
| In terms of funding of political parties, this is pretty far
| from the truth.
| [deleted]
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Well said. Something being 'the law' isn't an argument for or
| against anything in itself. In fact in extreme cases the
| official law can be extremely immoral and - after a regime
| change - itself criminal.
|
| Regarding the US example, free speech laws were certainly not
| written with the intention of giving powerful companies the
| ability to censor public debates, since they moved from the
| town squares onto their digital platforms. Also corporations
| are not people!
| OhWellLol wrote:
| Over the past four years, this website aggressively supported the
| creation of the nearly autonomous banning policies and
| degradation toolkits social media platforms used.
|
| Why? Because you had to STOP LE EBIL TRUMP!!!!11!!!!
|
| Did you think those tools would magically disappear with a new US
| president? Did you think the other nearly 200 nations in the
| world wouldn't request their usage once the hyper-connected
| "self-appointed permanently rational" faction of American
| consumers signed off of them?
|
| You celebrated and cheered every single time "another evil Nazi"
| was deplatformed.
|
| Your heroes are next and there won't be a fucking thing you can
| do about it.
|
| You are free to say whatever you want, but you are not free from
| the consequences, etc.
| uniqueid wrote:
| So the dire consequence is... I won't be able to read my
| heroes' tweets?
| pyronik19 wrote:
| The 3% of twitterazis who go around terrorizing institutions
| and brands into pushing wokeness are the dire consequence.
| That's the effect these echo chambers are having due to all
| the canceling and banning.
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| 'Cancel culture' is not an actual thing. There do exist
| instances where someone gets shunned or shitcanned for
| something they said 10 years ago, which is a questionable
| practice and not very common, but when someone is in a
| public facing position or otherwise position of power or
| influence, and does or says some heinous shit in the
| present, getting fired or having their show cancelled or
| what have you is not evidence of some wider 'cancel
| culture' to shut down free speech, it's absolutely normal
| operating procedure; society has always functioned this
| way. If you go into a church and start spouting 'God is a
| ball of spaghetti' you'll get shunned and kicked out, in
| 2021 or 1021, and no one's going to call that 'cancel
| culture'.
|
| 'Wokeism' is not an actual thing, either. Sure, there's a
| few nutjobs on the internet but they don't have any actual
| influence; absolutely none compared to conspiracy
| theorists, anyway. The reason corporations do stuff like
| Pride month or Black History month is pure marketing
| pandering to make them seem more human.
|
| You conservatives sure spend a lot of time inventing
| boogeymen to invest your time into fighting. It is after
| all, pretty standard ur-fash protocol.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"'Cancel culture' is not an actual thing."
|
| You may not believe it's an actual thing but society
| does. I sense all you are doing is changing around
| definitions because Cancel Culture has gotten a bad rap
| and you actually like the effect it's having on those you
| deem problematic.
|
| >"'Wokeism' is not an actual thing, either. Sure, there's
| a few nutjobs on the internet but they don't have any
| actual influence; absolutely none compared to conspiracy
| theorists, anyway."
|
| What is your basis for this?
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| Just because society thinks that a phenomenon is real,
| doesn't make it real. See: flat earthers, other types of
| conspiracy circles, organized religion.
|
| I'm not saying that 'cancel culture' is something else,
| because it isn't anything at all. What people refer to
| when they say 'cancel culture' is the normal functioning
| of society and/or the market in response to events, just
| in response to events they don't have a problem with.
| Then they paint it as a 'woke conspiracy' to silence free
| speech.
|
| If someone loses their job for harassment or espousing
| problematic views, that's a workplace doing its job.
|
| If a popular figure loses fans or affiliations because of
| their past actions, that's public opinion at work.
|
| If a company chooses not to publish a book, or a group of
| people boycott a brand, that's just the free market at
| work.
|
| The only instances I see where certain people cry 'cancel
| culture, boooo' is when someone faces consequences for
| doing something the overall public finds shitty (like
| being openly racist or a sexual abuser), but the group
| crying 'cancel culture' does not particularly care. You
| don't see the same people complaining that Kaepernick was
| 'cancelled'. He similarly faced consequences for what he
| did, but no such outcry. I wonder why, maybe perhaps
| because it is just one of many alt-right forms of
| newspeak used to manipulate its followers and stir up
| fearmongering, hatred, and division? No, that would be
| far too logical. Ditto for 'wokeism'.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"faces consequences for doing something the overall
| public finds shitty"
|
| That's the thing, a lot of people have 'faced
| consequences' for things that aren't particularly
| egregious. And, what is euphemistically called
| 'consequences' often destroys people's lives and there's
| virtually no recourse for them. It's 100% punishment and
| 0% rehabilitation.
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| In overwhelmingly most of the cases where someone has
| been 'cancelled', their career has not noticeably
| suffered even one bit. Just look at Mel Gibson, dude has
| been unapologetically spouting wild shit at every
| possible marginalized group for decades and he's still
| got a bustling career as both actor and director.
|
| If anything, this is the biggest argument of all against
| the existence of 'cancel culture', cause so far I can't
| find even one example of someone who's truly been
| cancelled, and furthermore, for something completely
| innocent and meaningless.
|
| If people were actually being sent to gulags for saying
| something the government or general public simply didn't
| like, you cancel culture warriors would have a point.
| But... that's not the case, and that's not where this is
| going. Believing as much is an extremely tenuous slippery
| slope argument and just delusional levels of
| fearmongering.
|
| There is absolutely nothing new going on, except the fact
| that more people these days are intolerant of bigotry and
| other vile behavior, and are better able to voice their
| concerns via the internet.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"In overwhelmingly most of the cases where someone has
| been 'cancelled', their career has not noticeably
| suffered even one bit."
|
| I know we aren't going to ever agree, but this beyond
| hyperbolic. To even say that _most_ canceled people 's
| careers have not suffered one bit is just astounding.
| People get fired over tweets that aren't even that
| controversial. Mel Gibson got off the hook, whatever. But
| Average Joe's and Average Jane's also fall victim to
| 'cancel culture' too.
|
| "Shor tweeted out an academic study by Princeton
| political scientist Omar Wasow that demonstrates how
| during the 1960s, while honest-to-God riots resulted in a
| decrease in the vote share for Democratic candidates in
| the following election, non-violent protests actually
| increased it. An uproar ensued, with liberal critics
| alleging that Shor was indifferent or even hostile to
| today's racial justice protests. Two weeks later, he was
| out of his job at Civis Analytics, the left-aligned data
| science firm where he worked as an analyst" (https://www.
| politico.com/news/magazine/2021/06/05/cancel-cul...)
|
| This person was fired, for tweeting out a study, and
| nothing they did was egregious.
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| Company (likely using at-will employment) fires employee
| after he (intentionally or inadvertently, irrelevant)
| starts a massive PR scandal. Wow, this must be that
| cancel culture everyone's been talking about, better get
| your pitchforks! These cultural marxists are getting out
| of control!
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Wow, this must be that cancel culture everyone's been
| talking about, better get your pitchforks! These cultural
| marxists are getting out of control!"
|
| I don't think we're going to have a mature and productive
| discussion about this. But you can be worried about
| online outrage and it's impact on society regardless of
| political affiliation.
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| Except the only people worried about it are conservatives
| who are being manipulated by all the usual right-wing
| fearmongerers. Please go read some neutral articles about
| the realities of 'cancel culture' instead of just
| swallowing Tucker Carlson's take on it.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I have never once watched Tucker Carlson's show in my
| life. Nor do I watch Fox News. Why must you assume
| everyone who does not agree with you is right wing?
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| Sorry for assuming someone who fearmongers and parrots
| right-wing talking points to be right-wing. Ye olde
| 'enlightened centrist both sides are bad' position is
| problematic due to false equivalence- by saying both
| sides are equally bad and misguided, in actuality you
| align yourself closer toward the side that is objectively
| worse (and if I have to explain to you which is
| objectively worse and why, well then I'm not sure there
| really is any point at all to continuing this
| conversation).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I know you're being provocative and I shouldn't take the
| bait but I just can't help myself.
|
| >"by saying both sides are equally bad and misguided..."
|
| I never actually said that. I said that people can be
| concerned "regardless of political affiliation."
|
| >"someone who fearmongers"
|
| Yep. You got me. I'm concerned about something and I
| think other people should be too.
|
| All I can say is that you should be less combative and
| you shouldn't snap to assuming hostile intent. Quite
| frankly it's off-putting and anti-persuasive. You would
| not enjoy someone arguing with you in the same way you
| argue with them. But I suppose if you enjoy interacting
| with others in this way there's no stopping you.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| What are you ranting on about? "this website" was, and is, very
| divided on the deplatforming of former president Trump and
| other right wing pundits. Look at comments decrying "cancel
| culture" any time this type of topic comes up.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| History has never been kind to institutions when those
| institutions attempted to influence the distribution of
| information. It just shows how fragile and desperate those
| institutions are.
| grumblenum wrote:
| Egyptian scribes, the Oracles of Delphi, the Medieval Catholic
| Church and journalists and of today all seem to be treated
| kindly enough. The "intelligentsia" exists to serve the
| prevailing regime (they cannot exist without patrons).
| Sometimes those regimes last centuries. I would tend to agree,
| however, that hysteria among the intelligentsia is an indicator
| of the feelings of insecurity among their patrons. Hysteria
| probably sums up the last 5 years to my recollection.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| >Humanity has never been served well by institutions when
| those institutions attempted to influence the distribution of
| information. It just shows how fragile and desperate those
| institutions are.
|
| Fixed it.
| eplanit wrote:
| Was banning (acting in coordination with Facebook) the NY Post
| for publishing reports about Hunter Biden due to government
| demands, or just the request of DNC operatives?
| Camillo wrote:
| A "man bites dog" story.
| justshowpost wrote:
| I don't see any problem here, Twitter was removing news outlets'
| content on their own [1] (and possible by undisclosed requests of
| their shareholders, you know who). Now they have to do just the
| same in the more transparent manner on behalf of public service.
|
| [1] https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/06/21/twitter-censors-
| co...
| robgibbons wrote:
| Thought experiment: a US government-hosted social network.
|
| Because the government is the host, they can't censor anything on
| the platform, unlike private social networks. The moderation
| policy would effectively be the content of the first amendment,
| barring actual illegal content.
|
| Call it publicsquare.gov
| michaelmrose wrote:
| They are probably utterly incapable of doing so effectively. In
| truth they would probably have to contract out to another
| player to effectively provide a government sponsored Facebook
| at a cost of billions of dollars per year.
|
| Anything you posted on facebook.gov would be instantly
| available to advertisers AND the government so a huge segment
| of the population would refuse to use it especially young
| people. It would probably end up with a mixture of a minority
| of socially minded people and people so odious they would be
| censored anywhere else. See the kind of folks you have on the
| conservative reddit clone. As soon as people conspiring on
| facebook.gov are guilty of something really terrible like say a
| mass shooting there will be calls to implement some sort of
| additional content controls and we now have 2 facebooks one
| paid for by ads another by our tax money.
| yibg wrote:
| That'll just be a social network full of spam and trolls.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That seems fine, as long as I can just not subscribe to them.
| mattcwilson wrote:
| Honest question: what keeps the present private-for-profit
| social media platforms from falling in the same pit?
| dntrkv wrote:
| Those profits incentivize them to keep spam off their
| networks. The only incentive US Gov entities have is
| keeping their contracts alive and the money flowing in
| without ever needing to turn a profit.
| munk-a wrote:
| Don't they? FB is full of anti-vaxxer and foreign
| propoganda as it is and trolling is legion. The only reason
| spam is partially dealt with (commercial spam at least) is
| because FB (and similar networks) don't want spammers to
| shoulder in on their profit center.
| rainsil wrote:
| It's not clear that the government is legally able to
| censor all types of spam. If the spam is commercial, the
| Central Hudson four-pronged test on commercial speech
| restrictions applies,[1] which requires, among other
| things, that the restrictions be "no more extensive than
| necessary to serve [the government's] interest". Non-
| commercial forms of spam would probably be protected from
| removal by the First Amendment, unless, perhaps, they
| overloaded the government's servers.
|
| Trolling categorised as "obscene" would be removable, but
| otherwise may be protected by the First Amendment. Also,
| the fact that every content moderation decision may be
| subject to litigation would make it extremely difficult for
| the government to meaningfully moderate content.
|
| Private platforms, not bound by the First Amendment, and
| allowed to moderate without assuming liability by Section
| 230, wouldn't suffer these problems
|
| [1]: Via White Buffalo v. UT Austin
| BizarroLand wrote:
| The difference is they could require proof of identity
| and American citizenship to be able to access the site,
| and the site itself could have rules that are enforceable
| to limit human generated spam without violating the first
| amendment. They would not be helpless to moderate the
| site just because of the first amendment, they would just
| need to pass moderation clauses for the site before going
| live with it.
|
| In a similar vein with the fact that it's illegal to yell
| out "FIRE!" in a crowded theater unless there is actually
| a fire, they could make it illegal to advertise private
| businesses and make posters directly legally responsible
| for what they post.
|
| If this does come about though, I hope they prohibit
| businesses and "Media Groups" or whatever from creating
| accounts or at least lock them into a walled garden that
| you have to voluntarily enter, segregating them from the
| general populace.
| glial wrote:
| So, a lot like our existing national conversation?
| pentae wrote:
| Imagine how many billions they'd waste on building that for it
| to get hacked 15 seconds after its launched
| visualradio wrote:
| Well this already happened and we're still using it, but it's
| called ARPAnet.
|
| Instead of building a hypertext website they could finance an
| ARPA-E program to develop new federated content publishing
| protocols. Then have the Department of Energy build out and
| maintain the initial cloud infrastructure as a public
| utility.
|
| Any user files stored on network slices have the same legal
| and privacy protections as mail held at the United States
| Post Office, and people are free to store encrypted files
| using whatever encryption scheme they want in the same way
| that they are free to send pages of gibberish through the
| mail.
|
| If DoE builds out a cloud network then DoD could also lease a
| portion of the infrastructure for JEDI.
| k33n wrote:
| Real journalism barely exists anymore. All independent
| journalists who aren't parroting the anti-freedom, pro-communist
| talking points are facing very real persecution -- if they
| haven't been silenced completely.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| This should be seen also in the context of the recent relevations
| by the Guardian and Sophie Zhang. Social media has created the
| machine for mass manipulation that authoritarians have been
| waiting for
| forz877 wrote:
| Freedom of speech is certainly under attack and has been under
| attack by the previous administration more blatantly than ever.
| And of course, as is typical with the US, once one administration
| gets away with something, the future ones do, as well.
| juanani wrote:
| Or we shouldn't label state funded media as 'journalism'. But how
| will our propaganda mouthpieces spread freedom in our interest?
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| People arguing about Twitter being a private company with the
| freedom to censor content are missing the point. Yes - that's
| true, but the disturbing thing here is the fact that
| _governments_ are increasingly pressuring them to do it (and that
| carries a lot of weight, with or without legal force).
|
| The real problem is that governments think this kind of behavior
| is okay, and continue to do it. I don't care if a company decides
| to censor content on its platform, but if my government is
| telling them (and other platforms) what can and can't be said, I
| consider that a clear violation of free speech. This is a failure
| of government, not Twitter (or not _only_ Twitter).
|
| Twitter needs to publish a list of exactly who in the government
| is doing this, and we should hold those people responsible and
| replace them. The government works for us, remember?
| hooplah wrote:
| Yes, the government can't delegate it's dirty work to private
| companies. The SC has been very clear on that.
| as300 wrote:
| There is one reason Twitter is not doing this, and one reason
| the governments _can_ do this in the first place, and that is
| _money_. Twitter makes money off of users in other countries
| (its stock performance is tied to % increase of DAU). Twitter
| knows its service is pretty easy to replicate and is thus
| willing to play by these government 's rules. If Twitter _doesn
| 't_ play by the rules, there are plenty of local players who
| would be very happy about that.
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| It sounds like you're conflating market incentives with
| government misconduct.
|
| Governments "can do this" because we're letting them get away
| with it. Plain and simple. The money is mostly irrelevant in
| the matter.
|
| The fact that Twitter has an incentive to follow the law and
| preserve its own existence is beside the point.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/mKOSJ
| herpderperator wrote:
| > In its transparency report published on Wednesday
|
| Although easy to find on Google[0], does anyone else find it
| frustrating that the sentence in the article isn't cited?
|
| [0] https://transparency.twitter.com/
| josh_today wrote:
| Boris Johnson's recent comments after England's Euro 2020 loss
| highlight this challenge the best.
|
| Government officials are pressuring social media corporations to
| define and continually refine their content policies.
|
| Simultaneously governments are requesting content removal from
| the corporations.
|
| It's a back and forth where the users and general population are
| ignored. Our elected officials should be structuring new
| frameworks for social media companies to operate within. We're
| entering a new era with outdated laws.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Really what we need is to stop part one period. That is abuse
| of power and should be seen just as unacceptable as a governor
| demanding favorable election coverage from reporters.
| josh_today wrote:
| Agreed. That's the low hanging fruit. Question is where we go
| from there:
|
| Allowing for content moderation opens the door to selective
| bias. On the other hand, a "hands off" approach can lead to
| its own form of content extremism.
|
| The ability to post anonymously (at least anonymously to
| other users) will come into the conversation as well.
| MrPatan wrote:
| A refreshing change of pace to twitter journalists demanding the
| removal of anybody else's content
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-14 23:02 UTC)