Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power? We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor and censor a sitting President. Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified. But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments, not businesses.
As someone who works in “big tech”, I don’t think we should have this power, especially when so selectively and reactively applied. We’ve all already heard all of the debates and I don’t wish to rehash it all. I’ve heard a lot of great arguments on all sides of the issue (and there are more than two), but the purpose of my comment is just to say that opinions within our community are not uniform. Not many of us speak our minds about it, unless we agree with the mainstream perspective of “this is fine ”.
I’d like to see more of a constitutional framework establishing some type of due process and equal access, personally.
We’re currently the sole arbitrators of who is allowed to speak to the world and who is not. And for all those who say “they’re welcome to go use a different platform”, well they did, and look what happens. Apple, Google, and Amazon can simply destroy a community within minutes, and we all applaud because we detest this particular community.
In a way it does bother me. To be honest, it’s often lost on me. I get caught up in the day to day aspects of work, and only when things like this pop up do I really think about the societal implications. But I do truly care about these larger societal issues that my industry and company are at the center of. I’m not a decision maker on what gets deplatformed and what doesn’t of course, but since I care, I guess I am glad to be here where I can potentially influence things in a good direction.
> As someone who works in “big tech”, I don’t think we should have this power, especially when so selectively and reactively applied. We’ve all already heard all of the debates and I don’t wish to rehash it all. I’ve heard a lot of great arguments on all sides of the issue (and there are more than two), but the purpose of my comment is just to say that opinions within our community are not uniform. Not many of us speak our minds about it, unless we agree with the mainstream perspective of “this is fine ”.
I'm not a Trump supporter but all this ban wave seems very selective.
Specially since I've seen so many things considered as "hate speech" on these platforms that were not filtered.
Even in the 'best' of times, YT's banning and strikes system is pretty awful. It'll ban channels for playing random static noise in the background while letting children see some very adult content. And that's considered 'normal' for YT. HN is filled with such stories and data. Honestly, at the scale YT operates, I'd imagine it should be worse that it already is.
Obviously, YT's ban on Donny is not random or capricious, it's very intentional.
But the larger issue remains that YT is a bad host to begin with and has been for nearly a decade. Maybe the larger YT community, including advertisers, needs a better choice than what it currently uses. Or a better legal framework in which to operate as YT.
I'm not a Trump supporter but all this ban wave seems very selective.
I just don't see how to make it less selective. The problems here are categories like "inciting violence" which are just not clear-cut. It's not like a copyright protection case, where it's usually very clear that someone uploaded a copy of Pulp Fiction, and you can set strict rules for the edge cases by saying "fifteen second clips of videos are fine, sixteen second clips are banned, yeah it's arbitrary but it has to be and now we'll apply that fairly."
For "inciting violence" the problems will be like, someone says "Hey everyone get ready to take action on X date. Be prepared! Be at location X! You know what to do! Tell all your friends! Remember your second amendment rights!" And none of those statements are inherently violent themselves, they are all compatible with the sort of peaceful protest that we want to encourage. But the emergent behavior of a whole lot of communication like this can be, well someone is using messages that are individually innocent to organize violent activity, and in many cases they just totally know what they're doing.
In a court this ends up getting decided by a jury, "beyond reasonable doubt", there are rights for the accused, and so on. But nobody has the resources to start a court case over every tweet that says "Bring your guns to the protest tomorrow, I'm bringing mine!"
Hate speech is like inciting violence but even more subjective.
Personally I think we will have an "archipelago" where there are many different online communities with different censorship rules, each somewhat arbitrary. I think the current situation with Trump is a pretty extreme one, and I doubt we will see a similar situation to Parler for quite some time.
Congress banning some type of speech is specifically what the First Amendment prevents. This is allowed because YouTube's decision is the decision of a private actor. I'm not saying I like YouTube being the arbiter here, I just think the first amendment has done well by us, and letting Congress make some speech illegal would be worse.
I think a better statement would be if you want to syndicate the POTUS or VPOTUS or SCOTUS justices then like any broadcaster (who, let's be honest, is profiting from ads on top of what they are selling as a partial public service.) They should be bound by a contract subject to some form of arbitration. At this point those platforms have become the defacto public square imho. They can't lash out on a banning spree and subject public political figures to the memoryhole without some form of legitimate debate.
Again, Facebook has carried multiple live streams of shootings- YouTube has carried plenty of abusive videos and videos supporting violence and terrorism.
From a political perspective they are setting themselves up for attack with this response. Like, still waiting on details but Ron Paul got kicked off of Facebook. How in the heck did that goofy little ol dude incite this?
I also am beginning to notice that with every major act of terrorism in the past couple of years, may God help you if the lunitics used your platform and you were not Google/Facebook/Twitter. If you were one of those three you will just claim oopsie and move on. If you were a small platform then the entire weight of the corporate oligarchy will come down on you while never picking up a mirror.
I also think Fox news and CNN should be held accountable for their radicalization of both sides- hear me out. You have one half of this country that is convinced Trump was literally Hitler, not only that he also was elected by election manipulation via Russia. You have the other half of the country, that lives in a reality where the election has been stolen from them and they're being censored on all major forms of media. They believe the election was stolen by the Chinese.
At some point the media has to be held accountable. Fear porn may sell, but it has a damned high cost.
Please understand I love this community, hacker news is one of the few places I can make a statement like this and expect reasonable and civil responses. And a no way should anyone take what I'm saying personally, I feel the system is broken- I don't think we can survive as a nation with a fractured worldview perpetuated by a 24/7 news cycle amplified by short-sighted memes and microblogs.
Thanks. This is what I was getting at. Free speech might be protected by the First Amendment. Congress should have say before platforms can unilaterally toss out someone. One could argue the "my platform, my rules" argument, but dismissing Trump and letting other radical creators roost is just them profiting from this madness.
I’m not sure that would be a solution. And frankly, if we did that, I’m sure the majority of people would want to quickly ban the things they don’t like. And that’s certainly not what I want to do (the deplatforming), so I don’t see it as a solution. I imagine my views are probably in the minority, though we do have a lot of free expression (the concept, not just the amendment) proponents in our industry as well.
> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor
Highly problematic.
> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon censor a sitting President
What are you talking about? He's the president. If he has something to say, there are a million ways for him to get the message out.
> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments
A government compelling a person (or a private company) to publish something is in violation of the law in many countries, often a constitutional law (Example: That violates the first amendment quite clearly, in the USA). I also think most folks would find that highly suspect.
Bigger companies shutting out smaller ones is highly problematic, but then laws do exist to stop this (anti-trust laws). These probably need an update. Whatever update they get, if they prevent Parler's shutdown they went too far. I'm pretty sure that shutdown wasn't about 'eliminating' a competitor at all.
The American obsession with the rights of private companies needs to end, especially when those companies serve the common good. I personally see open communication as a common good, and companies that we rely on to provide it should be expected to do so.
No. What it needs to end is the American obsession with the rights of people to say whatever they want in any context and expecting no consequences whatsoever.
I think we would also be hard pressed to find a political campaign succeed without the use of Twitter, Facebook, AWS and others. To claim that someone can successfully reach the masses without those tools is - an interesting proposition I personally don't think is possible.
That dramatically overstates the importance of Twitter, Facebook, AWS, and technology on political campaigns. Technology matters at the national level, any maybe even at the Senate level, but below that it's a nice-to-have and definitely is not an essential.
And Georgia demonstrates that technology matters very little even in high-stakes races. One In-person contact and live phone calls (meaning that the person from the campaign is an actual person, not a recorded message) matters more than a thousand tweets, more than a thousand Facebook posts.
AWS makes it easier not to use hardware, sure, but many campaign websites are just customized Wordpress. You can run that on any webhost, or even an old laptop in the back of the campaign office.
There is merit to both sides of this story. Businesspeople should be able to cultivate whatever sort of community they like, do business with whatever sort of people they like, and certainly - as a matter of conscience - shouldn't be required to support causes they find objectionable. On the other hand, people should be able to publish whatever opinions they like without being ejected from what is the de facto public square.
Determining appropriate limits for free speech is appropriately the job of high level legal philosophers, perhaps a statesman or two - it certainly seems above the paygrade of those who have simply competed as businessmen to create and build and maintain that public square.
When we faced this issue with the civil rights movement, we decided the citizens had the better claim than the businesses. This time around we seem to be leaning the other way.
I don't think the answer is obvious. I think it would take an ethereal genius to come up with an answer we all broadly considered fair and right, and all we seem to have is hacks playing for partisan advantage.
Rights of private companies allows media like newspapers to publish content critical of the government, protects those companies from illegal search and seizure in govt retaliation, and a host of other rights that enable a free and democratic country.
Open communication is good, but not when taken to absolute extremes. Blocking content designed to radicalize people is not communication that should be broadcast indiscriminately. And no provider should be forced to host any and all content any user can think up - a balance between these extremes is demonstrably better for society as a whole.
The analogy I've been using amongst friends/family, is that "big tech" has gone nuclear. The Bomb has gone from being a hypothetical to a reality. And no matter how much we do or don't agree with this particular target/application, we have to be aware that there's no putting this genie back in the bottle, and this is going to be an option in all future "wars".
It's a tortured and over-dramatic analogy, but I find it the easiest way to communicate the divide between not particularly wanting to defend this particular target, but still being uneasy that The Bomb even exists.
Maybe we should think about this in the opposite way - when a person tries overthrow the government they should be arrested. The problem isn't that people on twitter are getting banned from twitter from advocating/planning the murder of members of congress. It's that they're not getting arrested.
If we actually had functioning law enforcement for this stuff then we could actually have a proper discussion about what legal content what should be moderated and how.
The law moves slowly. Angry mobs move quickly. Give it time. Just because the angry mob got there first, doesn't mean that the law isn't functional. I fully believe that people who broke the law will be tried, eventually.
..and [one would hope] carefully and [one would hope] according to well-understood rules.
"She said something that really offends me" probably won't get you arrested, and almost certainly won't get you convicted; under the current climate it might well get you kicked off social media.
If you only provide a forum, and give moderation power to users (block other users, select what they want), then let whatever speech happens there to happen.
However, if you (as a forum provider, social network, whatever) select the content to be viewed and promoted (either using a proprietary algorithm or human discretion), or you are optimizing for engagement, then you are responsible for moderation failures and suspensions.
Well, if Twitter shows a curated selection of tweets to all users, yes, they should have not selected Trump in it years ago. But if somebody wants to follow him privately, I don't see why he should be banned.
This is what I want. A more advanced feature would be: Pick your own moderator. The system could essentially figure this out for you based on upvotes / downvotes, but a shortcut would be that if I "follow" someone, it means I generally want to see things that they like as well.
Another feature: let me bang on the downvote or upvote button multiple times to tell the system how much I like or dislike something. Show me more or less or none at all of that topic/user/etc based on that.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, I'd like to see comments and topics sorted by how much my own personal network of influencers rated them. I don't care that 100,000 idiots liked American Idol. I care how much the 100 people I followed hated it (so don't show it to me, ever).
Some people don't like my idea because they say it will create an echo chamber. To them I say that it more closely models real life. In real life, I generally don't hang around with people who I disagree with all the time. My ideal system would insulate people from me if they disagree with me and me from them. Twitter must have a different goal.
You seem to be making an argument to nationalise these companies? Or are you making an argument that private companies shouldn't be able to decide who they provide services to?
There are thousands of better examples of Google etc having too much power than their eventual refusal to deal with the most famous and powerful man in the world, a man who can 100% rely on his every move being publicised in minute detail. It's a strange time for people to start caring about this stuff.
> You seem to be making an argument to nationalise these companies
That's what I'm afraid is going to end up happening. When I was a kid, Reagan would occasionally "pre-empt" normal prime-time TV to talk about whatever the hell was on his mind. It drove me crazy: he would suddenly be on every station and there was nothing else to watch. I asked my parents why he was allowed to do that and they'd say, "TV operates on public airwaves and the government owns the public airwaves". Well, as annoying as Reagan pre-empting the Cosby Show was back then, the "public airwaves" argument was used to justify a whole heck of a lot of worse government overreach that I really, really don't want to see come to the internet.
There's no requirement for the over-the-air television networks to air Presidential addresses. They usually do, but there have been some notable cases where they have declined. I think FOX (not Fox News, FOX the broadcast channel) skipped out on at least one George W. Bush address and one Obama address.
I think there can be a middle ground. One approach would be, if a company claims section 230 protections, it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator.
No one claims section 230 protections. It applies to everyone and every service on the internet in the US.
You can't "lose" those protections, they're just the law.
And that law states (paraphrasing):
You can't sue me for something a third person says.
That's essentially it. You can't "qualify" for or "lose" that protection.
And it applies to you and me and HackerNews and Facebook and Twitter and your github repo and your favorite recipe site and every other web site and Mastodon instance and Discord channel and mailing list and IRC channel and porn site and anywhere else that allows more than one person to share their thoughts.
>it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator.
That's not part of the law either. And a good thing too.
Section 230 (yes, I'm saying it again) says (paraphrasing):
You can't be sued for something another person says. Full stop. No fairness is required, no balance, no transparency, none of that.
Should the big social networking sites be regulated and reined in? Absolutely! But changing/repealing Section 230 won't do that. In fact, it would hurt everyone and the deep pocketed social media companies would be just about the only ones who could afford to fight all the lawsuits.
I know, I just wanted to outline what a possible solution could look like without nationalising companies. It would be to offer 230-like protections only under certain conditions.
>I know, I just wanted to outline what a possible solution could look like without nationalising companies. It would be to offer 230-like protections only under certain conditions.
Fair enough. It's an interesting thought. Personally, I think we should both think bigger and look to regulation and market-based solutions[0].
That said, I went on at some length because so many folks around here don't seem to know what the law is and make lots of ridiculous claims about it.
I am troubled by it, but has anything really changed? There have been mass purges of users before spam bots, accounts liked to the Islamic state, etc. Multiple hosting providers terminated Gab's services.
Usually large companies don't take action like this until they are under public scrutiny and have something to loose.
The mess the US is in right now can in some ways blamed on the way way it's democracy works: candidates can win elections with a plurality of the vote. This incentivizes highly partisan activities like gerrymandering and makes it more difficult for 3rd party to gain traction.
Most states and localities have closed primaries, meaning you need to be registered with a party to vote for a candidate. This takes power away from the people and puts it in the hands of the parties.
If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it.
>If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it.
That's slowly changing ~15 states have non/bi-partisan redistricting commissions. A dozen or so states and localities have implemented Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Is it enough? No. And it never will be unless people all over the country stand up and demand it.
It's not as hard as it sounds. Election laws are made by the states and election systems are run by each county.
26 states have ballot initiaves/referenda. All you need are enough signatures to get changes on the ballot.
How many people voted for your state assembly person in 2018? For your state senator? You can go look it up. I'll wait.
Not very many, right? Those are the people who make the election laws for the state.
And how many people voted for your council member in your city/town/county? For your mayor/county executive? They set the rules for your local elections (sometimes the state has a say too, but not always).
But in order to make changes like non-partisan redistricting and RCV and open primaries (although those aren't always so fabulous either, cf. California) and term limits and public funding of elections, etc. you need to pound on your elected representatives.
And if even a few hundred people pester your state assembly person or city council member, it's likely you can get some movement on these initiatives.
> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments, not businesses.
I fully agree. And let's not ignore that leaders of the free world are pretty shocked by what's happening.
- German canceler, Angela Merkel: “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-...
- French minister, Bruno Le Maire: "Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary." https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-...
- Mexico president, Manuel Lopez Obrador: "‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse on the subject. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”"https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-lea...
Should a president be allowed greater freedom of speech than a normal person?
These companies have been censoring certain groups for ages. One of my exes who self-identifies as an anarcho-Communist has been angry with what she sees a Facebook’s anti-left political censorship for at least seven years; and if you see her censorship as justified given her politics, there’s also stuff like this: https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3936987.html
People have been begging for these companies to censor threats of violence for ages (meme is something like “Twitter: What changes would you like? Users: Remove the Nazis; Twitter: Timeline now scrolls sideways, likes are now called florps”)
The consensus response until now has been that corporations are private and have the right to kick off whoever they want. When I have suggested that their power to do so needed to be constrained the way governments are and for similar reasons, I got a lot of flack for it.
That said, I don’t have the American attitude to freedom of speech as an end in itself, rather I value it as an instrumental goal, so I’m a lot more comfortable with some censorship than many people on Hacker News, even though I still want as little as possible. As little as possible just isn’t “none” in my opinion.
It's a scary power for sure, given how centralized around a few services to have a voice that the Internet has become. Of course, there are more resilient solutions like Mastodon or even Darknet but they are geek solutions that the public are not aware of or care for. The discoverability of those from the websites Google Search, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok is basically zero.
I think one problem for those services is that if they'd allow this until explicit government action, they'd risk being completely overrun by very vocal antidemocratic crowds of people. Twitter recently banned 70,000 QAnon accounts besides Trump and then they couldn't do that either. Hell, Twitter already struggles and the atmosphere over there right now, despite all this, is really not all that great. Going by Twitter, you'd sometimes think that extremist groups had like 30% of the public vote...
> Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power?
Yes, absolutely. An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services, and now he's not president they're finally getting around to enforcing those contracts.
Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe.
I don’t support trump in any shape or form, but if this mass de-platforming doesn’t make you the slightest bit uncomfortable, that in itself should make you a bit uncomfortable.
People seem intent on reliving the mistakes of the twentieth century. At this point, it’s become so blatant, I’m starting to doubt that it’s just out of ignorance.
There is a saying that democracy has to reconfirm itself each generation.
Both the left and the right hate democracy now. On college campuses, the idea gets increasingly popular that free speech is a harmful concept. This is not just an empty phrase. This generation is graduating and will one day hold the keys to power. Let alone the dystopian gang ruled crime infested places that they built during the BLM riots. On the right side of the political spectrum, you have the Capitol trespassers, pipe bomb layers, cop killers. I'm worried.
> Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe.
Honest question: when was this ever not the case for mass media?
He's the President of the United States. He's free to speak to every media outlet in the world every day in the Press Room if he wants. He just chooses not to as that would make him accountable and it's easier to rant on Twitter instead of doing his job. The Gulag Archipelago is as much about the unchallenged silencing of free media outlets, opposition parties and growth of tyranny ("Yes communists have some fringe ideas but they won't really be that bad when they come to power"). FB, Twitter, YT have been banning all sorts of groups over the years, in Palestine for example - it's just more people are noticing it now.
Jesus, enough with the Gulag Archipelago references.
Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. “Conservatives” were not. You are still free to engage in all manner of conservative speech on Twitter that does not call for violence against your ideological opponents.
It's not so much that he has intentionally incited violence - I don't actually think that's the case. It's that he's been engaging in political brinkmanship for some time now, and in the process become a spiritual leader to an extremist faction which caused violence.
To allow him to continue to engage in that same brinkmanship after violence has already occurred is allowing him to continue inciting violence, unintentional as it may be.
He was banned from everything from Shopify to Spotify. This was a weaponised, coordinated deplatforming. People have been banned on Twitter before, and in fact other state leaders tweet significantly worse: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784?s...
This is about a small group of people coming together whilst collectively possessing significant power on the fabric of society and choosing to erase an individual.
It’s a large group of people. A large group of people all made the business decision that it’s better not to associate with Parler/Trump. That’s not coordinated deplatforming, that’s just a society making a decision.
It is true that Trump shouldn't have relied on social media that much, and used official channels for communication.
But on the other hand, you can't deny that a few services became indispensable to get any kind of reach... So if we accept that those companies decide what content gets in or not, we accept that they control what content gets to be shown publicly or not.
Exactly. Maybe he could have used the telex and fax machines, as that is the category where 'websites' 'blogs' and 'mailing lists' have been relegated to for a while now.
I'm not a fan of the man but in practice nearly all non media framed public discourse happens on FB, YT, Twitter and a few tier 2 services. If the social media conglomerate decides to nix you, you are done with reaching the broad public directly.
It's not just big tech. It's pretty much every company that has any sort of business ties with the movement. It's really a bad example to point out because this isn't a few monopolistic companies cutting off his voice. It's practically every company in existence.
> It's not just big tech. It's pretty much every company that has any sort of business ties with the movement. [...] It's practically every company in existence.
If all the courts (including your own judges) are silencing "your movement", your own AG is silencing you, the guy in charge of election security is silencing you, "all" media is silencing you, experts, fact checkers, law scholars, now most of your party, and not just big tec, but "practically every company in existence", etc etc, maybe you're not being silenced, but are simply full of [expletive] and everyone's fed up with that and you should stop spewing it and solve the problem for everyone.
I agree with cutting off his voice. I never said they shouldn't. You seem to have agreed with everything I typed here. But it's nice to see tribalistic downvotes because of a perception of my "side" rather than based upon what I actually said.
You're part of the problem. But I guess politics is the new religion.
Shouldn't you be realising that saying that someone is "cutting off the voice" of the president of the United States by banning him from a website is more than a little bit ridiculous?
There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him.
> There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him.
Nobody has a meaningful voice unless it is amplified by mass media. That includes the President. Television and radio have increasingly (since at least the Bush years, got much worse with Obama, and continued with Trump) chosen to ignore Presidential press conferences and addresses they didn't feel like covering, or heavily edited them, provided them only with their commentary, etc.
That's one reason why politicians have increasingly turned to social media!
How do you propose countering Trump's power to whip up anger and hate on the far right with his lies?
COVID has taught me that single-minded commitment to human freedom is harmful in the long run, and that the curtailment of freedoms and exercise of power -- even absolute power -- is necessary to preserve the public good in certain situations. A dangerous demagogue like Trump, allowed to run loose on private platforms, presents a huge risk to those platforms and the nation itself.
> Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified
Not justified at all. Nothing can justify censoring a sitting President and destroying a small competitor. America is on the wrong path. This I say as a observer of American politics. Big Tech has too much power in its hands now.
I mean sure, from the standpoint of he can still speak. But like I have mentioned elsewhere- I would like to see someone successfully get elected without a social media presence. Especially with COVID the town square is digital- I dont know that I can mentally treat twitter and others like little upstarts with no power. Remember when accounts were hacked and asked for payment in bitcoin?
What would happen if those accounts were hacked and someone talked about launching nukes?
You have to start asking if what happens on those platforms -REALLY- has no effect on the physical world. I would argue that their moderation actions can non-person a politician and ruin their career with little or no public input.
I dont know what the solution is- but I dont feel confident in a democracy where six media companies and about four tech companies control all that I can see, hear and read. That does not make me feel confident in the fourth estate.
Outside of tech, most people don't care about Twitter. If you were to ask a million people what their local Congressperson or Senator said on twitter, 999,999 of them wouldn't know that their legislator had a twitter account or the handle was.
Twitter and Facebook's bans of Trump are only news because Trump relied on them so heavily. They're not the primary means of communication for politicians, nor have they ever been.
Working with political groups for social media I have to disagree with you. Obama actually was a turning point where everyone basically agreed that social media is the one true way to keep your base engaged.
Your average person may not be on twitter I give you that- your activist however. They are very likely to be on twitter if not another emerging platform at this point. And the media is much easier to reach with Twitter. Just try getting organic traction on a press release with traditional media without social media. Its painful to think about honestly.
Having worked with the CA and OH Democratic Committees the past 3 election cycles (including both Obama elections), and having dozens of friends who worked in Georgia during the runoff, I can say that social media absolutely...did not budge the needle one bit.
It all came down to in-person contacts. The Black vote didn't turn out because they saw a tweet, they came out because people knocked on their door and talked to them and convinced them to brave the cold and vote.
And just as crucially: the Republican vote didn't come out despite all of Trump's tweets, and Cruz's tweets, and all the other GOPers posting on social media. The Republican voters stayed home despite all the social media begging them to vote because the GOP didn't have the same level of in-person events for the runoff as they did for the general election.
But is it censoring though, vs just not letting them use their services?
I don't visit facebook or twitter or apple sites at all, but I still see a lot of what Trump says in the news (e.g. BBC et al).
Have Facebook/Twitter/Apple censored Trump when I still hear his views all the time? Have Facebook et al got a lot of "power" here when really they have changed nothing for people like me?
Disclosure: I don't have any strong opinions on Trump or American politics in general.
I am not from USA, and not a trump supporter, still been trying to figure out what is going on, and noticed some patterns.
1. Media loves taking stuff out of context, not just with Trump mind you.
2. Not only big tech is censoring Trump, but normal media too, for example more than once channels refused to air live presidential addresses, sometimes they aired but with comments, or they waited for a while and then aired it edited.
I saw other day here in HN people saying BigTech kicking Trump off their platform was fine because he wouldn't be silenced, since he has the Whitehouse official system of contacting with the press... thing is, the press is now delibetarely ignoring him too, so you have a situation where both BigTech and Press is not letting his words through, isn't that censorship?
So your argument is that private companies should be forced to amplify a person's speech?
The genius of the first amendment is that yes you can spout whatever vile garbage you want but no one is forced to listen to you. It is also a form of speech to not reproduce someone else's speech.
I am not from USA so not talking in the legal sense of things.
Still I must ask, alright, nobody is obliged to listen to someone, but what about the rights of those that WANT to listen? 70+ million people voted for Trump after all, is it right to prevent them from hearing Trump? He was also banned from e-mail plataforms too, so basically all his channels to talk with his voters are down, except normal mail, that was crippled a long time ago by the congress (normal mail has an absurd law where all new hires must have their pension pre-funded 50 years in advance... this is what caused all the mailing woes in US lately, wasn't necessarily Trump's fault as many claimed)
No, it’s not censorship. Donald Trump has ample opportunities to communicate his message. What he no longer has is his preferred communication method.
He is not entitled to use his preferred communication method because he’s abused it to to the degree that he’s created reputational risks for the platforms that carry it. That’s on him and his message.
I’m under no delusion that these platforms are acting nobly. I think they’re acting in shareholder’s interests by moving to mitigate a risk to themselves.
The fact of the matter is that Trump enjoyed tremendous leeway to violate the TOS of the platforms because of his position. Anyone else can and has been turfed out for much less than what he did.
I think it's a little more nuanced. Parler had some users who broke Parler's own TOS, and Parler was slow to react (problems of scale? victim of own success? Willfully slow to enforce? We don't know). Amazon acted swiftly, in light of a loosely connected civil disturbance (although Amazon's actions were not expressly a result of the riot, the timing is relevant).
Frankly I'd go further and say that not even Twitter and Parler were competitors.
Wasn't Parler a glorified WordPress comments section? That's all fine and well, but if I started a website and broke the TOS I doubt anybody would have wept for my losses in the same way.
It's really odd seeing people conflate, or even manufacture, predominant socio-political ideologies for companies and then labelling them competitors when those made-up ideologies differ.
I would take Parler as a test case off the table, as per their CEO even their bank and payment providers, and law firms, and mail and text providers all cancelled on them. Are you going to turn into a cash business?
It does seem like supporting the actions of a man deliberately provoking violence to overthrow a democratic result in a extra legal fashion should face consequences.
If Twitter and Google are now governments in their own right though I must have missed it. Just because the US is a dysfunctional plutocracy doesn't mean a few billionaires should have such control over what are modern day phone networks. Everything old is new again!
Big tech would be wise to bring down the walled gardens and implement federated protocols where possible not just where is necessary. Otherwise the world has new governments to interact with. I wonder how long that state I'd affairs can stand.
>It does seem like supporting the actions of a man deliberately provoking violence to overthrow a democratic result in a extra legal fashion should face consequences.
And when we have banned the accounts of all people that have supported the riots and the violence in the summer I could probably agree. But in my opinion there were minor to none punishments for condoning the violent, not only the non violent protests.
Please don't take HN into nationalistic flamewar, the last thing we need to pour on top of the hellfire that has engulfed HN (and everywhere else) in recent weeks.
I am not from US, Trump is not my leader and I have no dog in this fight. Trump has not attacked my democratic institutions and has not caused any deaths in my country. So this is totally not the discussion I need to face. And neither of the two teams support the extremely wealthy in my country - putin does it.
But if we talk about stuff requiring fixing - your attitude towards strangers on the internet could probably use some. The overzealousness spills in the real world. Keep it in check.
And yes - I was attacking the idea that we should write our angry/scolding/righteous response before we even get the basic situation correctly. If you are right now, you will be right in 15 seconds or one question down the line. But you may not be.
Trump may be the craziest motherfucker there is (although from a far he is just a hapless president that couldn't or wouldn't do anything people were assuming he was willing to do), but the cyberpunkeque reality we are sliding into is crazier. And we all push. Because we all get our little fix of being on the right side of history (or least of the more vocal mob). We the culture warriors are zealots. And it will get a lot worse, before it gets better.
Maybe this is a ploy, maybe the tech companies want to be publishers and 230 to be changed. They have already invested the huge sums to set up a moderation infrastructure.
Then they won't have to worry about up-starts because they will first have to deal with the huge burden of creating a expensive content moderation system.
VC decks will have a section on content moderation plan. How they will solve this.
To me this seems like the tech companies are lobbying for regulation.
IANAL but in my understanding 230 is based on providers being proactive themselves and taking reasonable steps. They have very clear ToS laid out, and they are expected by same 230 to act on them. And bear with me, if they consider somebody does call for rioting using their platform, why's so unexpected from them to enforce said ToS? You could argue if you want to whether there was a call for riots or not, but if for the sake of argument we can pretend there was, they had to react precisely like this.
All ToS have a power imbalance, they are updated often without the ability to decline. But let's think about governments for a bit, they are in their very nature violent forces. Not too long ago Trump was treating to bring death and destruction on north Korea and they ended up as friends and "fell in love".
People need to express themselves.
Is the act of calling for violence the crime or is it measured against the impact. Because calling for violence, or at least encouraging protests that often end in violence is something that the American left has been doing since June.
In my country you can't discriminate based on political opinions, all ToS need to be equally enforced or you have a human rights case on your hands.
> Because calling for violence, or at least encouraging protests that often end in violence is something that the American left has been doing since June.
Accounts that were calling for violence were closed regularly, especially during protests. Both twitter and on youtube. I am not aware of left wing equivalent of Parler that would emerge as results, the mainstream left seemed to be ok with those missing, through some grumbled a bit and called it unfair.
Note that encouraging protests was not censored, but the fact is it is not censored for right wing either.
If this is their ploy it's a bad one. The US is currently a convenient place to base tech companies, but if the law makes it too difficult then people will just start tech companies outside of the US and block US users if necessary.
The EU has the GDPR, which protects consumer's privacy. And, yes, some tech services don't serve EU citizens.
Repealing 230 would have a similar effect, but with the focus on protecting people from corporate censorship. If this means Facebook/Twitter/TikTok et. al. become unprofitable, I'd consider that a double win.
What I find funny is that something like Apple News that does have moderation in place (seasoned editors manually curating cross-sections of news sources)—you can actively read whatever Trump says there as his press releases will be widely covered by all forms of media from every corner of the political spectrum.
Not to say I think there's any ploy.
But I find it just a little funny that there seems to be a great deal of overlap of those who are decrying what they call censorship by online chat platforms—who they previously praised as the new alternative to "censorship" traditional media (who haven't "censored" anything).
The carrot is "we might ban your opponents" and the stick is "or we might ban you".
In addition to outright ban, consider other things in the "shadowban" category the tech companies might just as easily do to a politician they don't like. A little tweak of the algorithm, and positive mentions of you in web search or social networks start disappearing, and negative mentions become frontpage...
I wish that would happen but I'm not as optimistic as you are on that. That should have happened a long time ago for Google, and Facebook shouldn't have been allowed to buy all these companies. But here we are.
Personally I have less problem with individual platforms deciding what they want to ban, if there are a variety of options available. The issue to me is the clear coordination between Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. If these four companies decide to kick you off, you’ve just lost ~75% of the Internet.
Breaking them all up into smaller companies with more independent management would alleviate this issue, IMO.
Would you want to be forced to do business with someone you didn't want to work with? Why try to force a tech company to do it then?
Tech companies are private enterprises just like a bar. And just like a bar can refuse service to anyone outside of a small set of protected classes. If you get kicked out of one bar, just go to another or start your own.
This reasoning strikes me as very similar to what is called out as perceiving oneself to be a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" in the context of poor people voting against taxes and redistribution. I for my part do not feel the sort of empathy for Google that this argument seems to be predicated on me feeling, and I can't imagine this changing even if I were to operate my own bar. My bar would not be a temporarily embarrassed Google, so to speak.
> start your own
...and start your own DDoS protection, DNS hierarchy, payment processor etc. as well? In the context of bars, I have not heard of beer companies, kitchen equipment suppliers, map makers or PoS terminal providers demand that the bar ban a particular customer on threat of refusing to service them, either, so that proposal seems rather more realistic than the one we are actually talking about here.
> I have not heard of beer companies, kitchen equipment suppliers, map makers or PoS terminal providers demand that the bar ban a particular customer on threat of refusing to service them, either, so that proposal seems rather more realistic than the one we are actually talking about here.
It absolutely happens in beer companies, kitchen equipment suppliers, etc.
Ex: I doubt you would find a high end distiller advertising that they're sold, especially without a distribution deal, in Mick's Souse Hole, North Etobicoke.
There is all kinds of heavily established strata and bartering lines in all manner of business. That's nothing new at all.
If a given business or client establishes itself as an unworthy partner, no deals are made or existing deals are broken—at least to the limits of the moral stand on either side. In all industries.
It just happens, some businesses, or industries in general, care less to establish moral boundaries than others. But in any industry: "bad for business" is "bad for business"; and "bad for business" is avoided.
I suppose my point beyond talking about beer companies is: this is nothing unique to Twitter et al. Twitter [et al] is just highly visible.
I don't think Jim from Etobicoke, Canada, one eye closed and slobbering, has a case for arguing he should be represented on the Pernod label just because he wants to be. I doubt most people do. But most people don't care what Jim or Pernod do.
That's when the digital world becomes infrastucture and now finally people and politics start to see what infrastructure in just private hands mean. They have no rights at all. Even the president from US can easely banned just as we saw.
Yes and no. Social media is for politics maybe a bit like infrastructure. But also if nobody wanna host your server (like Parler/AWS) then you just loose everything.
It is now the first time it hit a president from a large country. But its not really different from no bank wanna do business with for ex. the porn industry.
So you are fine with a restaurant or a convenience store refusing to do business with people of color or LGBT supporters? What if it was the only viable place in town? What about cable companies refusing to provide internet connection to them?
While I do not support Trump, I think such segregation (based on race, gender, political views, etc.) is a very dangerous phenomena in the mid/long-term.
A) I think internet providers should be regulated as utilities which would prevent them from arbitrarily refusing service
B) It is illegal to refuse service on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability. It is legal to refuse service on the basis of ‘I don’t like your opinion’.
If I start a bar, I can’t ban people because they’re of a race, from a country, etc. but if there’s a group supporting the overthrow of our government, I absolutely can (and probably would).
You really need to read the comments before replying..
Something needs to be done, certainly. But status quo is not the answer.
Out of all of this, I do have to give Twitter some credit for having/working on a policy to deal with world leaders usage of the platform, even if it's been rough both the last few years and last week or so.
"Small and protected class" has nothing to do with the message of the comment to which I have replied. Read it again carefully, "like a bar" means that it's nothing more than an example. In the comment a clear opinion has been voiced: private enterprises have right to refuse to do business with anyone whom they don't like.
trump being kicked off Twitter et al is not because of his personal beliefs, sexual orientation, or race. He is being kicked of for inciting violence. Something that he agreed not to do when he signed up for the service.
This isn't the same thing as a convenience store where they're refusing to sell to someone. This is more like a network refusing to display an ad for someone. In that Trump is displaying his own content on their platform.
This doesn't bother me, it's well within their right not to be associated with this man. The bigger concern is that we've become so consumed with privately owned social media in the first place
This was essentially the same issue with the gay wedding cake.
For the betterment of society, I think we might need an amendment that prevents discrimination based on political opinions. Otherwise, two parallel societies of echo chambers will form, and that is not a good thing.
In a way it's similar, because people with different viewpoints have to live together, and therefore any economic supply chain has to go through ideological boundaries multiple times.
If people go full on economic sanctions war, trying to not sell or to not buy from people with wrong ideologies, everyone can become worse off.
So not allowing economic warfare is a useful guideline for societies who want to resolve their fights in a civilized manner.
Maybe it should be something like: if you are required to do additional custom work specifically for each customer, then you can choose which work to do. But if you are providing the same service to everyone, and you have to do additional work to filter out some types of customers, then you are doing something harmful to society.
Maybe it should be something like: if you are required to do additional custom work specifically for each customer, then you can choose which work to do. But if you are providing the same service to everyone, and you have to do additional work to filter out some types of customers, then you are doing something harmful to society.
I came to a similar conclusion myself. I think that’s probably the way to go. You don’t want to force anyone to do something against their beliefs, but you also want to ensure that society and the market are unified.
The cake case found that it was not discrimination [1]. This was supported by many LGB+ activists since it would have implied that gay bakeries would then be required to make Nazi cakes.
> “The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.”
He would not have made that cake for anyone. Twitter on the other hand has no problem carrying much more egregious messages than Trumps, just not for Trump. So not really comparable.
I think we can all agree that shouting into an empty field in Nebraska is quite different than grabbing a bullhorn in front of a crowd and encouraging them to attack people.
Twitter is no different.
Or if you like the fire analogy, shouting fire while you are by yourself is quite a bit different than doing it in a movie theater.
The example used was a bar. For many people, saying “Just go to a different bakery that will bake you a gay wedding cake” was an unacceptable solution. Many of those people, I might add, are now using the same argument themselves.
The sooner people realise this the better. Social networks and Big Tech publishers have became the de facto communication standard, but still want the perks of being a private company. This is just another example of "privatise the gains, socialise the loses". And yet people are somehow blind to it because their least favorite politician is being targeted.
If google decides to not list your company in their search, where will you be found by people you are trying to reach? If no datacenter will host your server because they don't want to stop appearing in search, where will you host?
That's a pretty dangerous attitude in my opinion and if you spin it further, it can quickly lead to a divided society: A bar decides that it doesn't serve Biden supporters. Would you say: No problem, go to another? What if this other bar decides it doesn't serve men in general? Such rules, perceived as unfair, would quickly lead to resentment and hatred among the affected groups and a feeling of not being part of society.
If people are excluded from services, there should be rational reasons for it and these reasons should be social consensus.
YouTube is a monopoly and it'd be near-impossible to break that up, so the "bar" comparison really doesn't hold. Google can, singlehandedly decide to withdraw the right to publish video in any meaningful way to the internet from an individual.
There's also the question of whether Trump is really just being banned for his political opinion, which is precisely one of those protected groups you mentioned (dunno if according to US law, but certainly according to the UDHR)
So, here we have some idiots effective freedom of expression taken away for his political opinions. I'd say that's a pretty obvious human rights violation.
That's not an accurate analogy. These platforms were happy to cater to Trump over the course of his presidency because he enriched them, this is not some moral stance they're taking now, it's the output of a cost-benefit analysis.
Social media is now the public square, and these tech giants have incredible power to promote or suppress opinions. This isn't analogous to a bar admitting or rejecting clients, that's similar to likening the national debt to household debt; it masks a much more complex and consequential discussion.
I missed the part where private social media networks should be nationalised and the government should infringe on _their_ free speech rights.
If I'm the CEO of Twitter and I want to ban everyone who I don't politically agree with, I should have the sole and absolute right to do so (subject to the board), the same way if I own a bookshop, I get to choose what books I stock.
> Social media is now the public square, and these tech giants have incredible power to promote or suppress opinions.
Very well said. I’m sure the nuances of this will be missed on most, and if we dared say this at work, we’d probably be assumed to be Trump supporters and fired. I’m so worried about where this is going :(
Seems less than coincidental they banned him until the inauguration. I would really like to hear what specifically in the videos he posted caused them to ban him - or whether they just viewed it as an obvious route for him to repeat what he had done on twitter, and chose not to let it get to that level.
Well twitter banned him, among other reasons, because his tweet “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” "may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending." [1]
Which seems to be somewhat scraping the bottom of the barrel of credibility, as is some of the other reasoning. Some other gems:
- "The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol."
- "The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election."
I think they kinda fucked up letting him back on in the first place and are now left nit picking two mostly benign tweets because they don't know what else to do. The most egregious tweets were not the two they cite.
I still believe the solution is to handle social media like email. Have a common protocol that all providers use, have multiple providers, allow providers to remove abusers, and give users the ability to block.
That's my problem with this type of censorship - now I want to know what was so bad YouTube felt the need to remove it. If it's that bad and was said by the President, it seems like it may be something I should know, but now I can't easily know. Why do tech companies get to decide what information the average person can or can't easily see? Part of the blame is on Trump for posting all this stuff on these websites instead of somewhere like whitehouse.gov.
Let's say he hypothetically called on his supporters to commit a terrorist attack at the inauguration. Now Youtube is putting anyone who attends the inauguration in danger, because they are withholding information from them.
I was able to find the video which triggered the suspension. Google didn't help me find it, by the way. Strictly speaking, he doesn't call for violence but instead tells people to go home in peace.
What he does say is that the election was fraudulent. This seems to be the illegal utterance. And by "legal", I mean a rule laid down by the relevant authority.
Free speech in the constitution applies to the government, it has absolutely nothing to do with tech companies managing their own products. No one is delegating anything.
Free speech is a natural born right of all people. This is recognized in the first amendment to the US constitution, where it specifies that as a human right the government cannot regulate it. As the "public square" moves from physical locations to virtual ones, the responsibility to defend those natural rights moves from one host(US Government) to another(large online media companies). While the US government is not officially delegating the defense of these rights, defense of these rights must be maintained and it is the responsibility of the host platform to do so.
I feel like Donald Trump is not the good example to argue against the power to deplatform. He is an internet troll who calls for violent action to overthrow the elected government. You can't be tolerant of that kind of intolerance, or your democracy will not survive it.
In general though, I feel like deplatforming someone is something you should be able to challenge in front of a judge, just like being refused entry to a public business is something you can challenge in front of a judge. For healthy online debate, you need to have the ability to remove trolls from a platform, but the standard of who is or is not a troll cannot be set by the platform itself.
TV News channels kept on aggressively fact checking Trump, I just don't know if it had any impact on the real danger of people believing his lies.
These moves would eventually lower trust in Big Tech among conservatives to a point that more conspiracy theories will rise.
This makes methink we are about to see a Golden Age of conspiracy theories. Something that makes 'Q Annon' stuff look like peer reviewed paper in science.
If you take conspiracy theories and remove the thin thread of logic, you’re just left with propaganda... so it seems like we’re already starting to see what you’re predicting.
Where’s the line? Do I need to think about unplugging my Google Home Mini? For the record, when I said I’d kill for some sushi, I didn’t mean it literally.
Why would you even have one of those? You could not pay me to have a device in my home always listening, logging my conversation, fights, signing, jokes, story telling.
Speech pattern, volume, frequency at home, how often you have visitors, what I watch online without speakers.
Either I'm a privacy activist or just old fashion. But I really can't get my head around people wanting these device in their homes.
Can you share why the trade off is worth it for you?
If you use one of those devices you have to accept what happenes within the limits of the law. I need to carry a phone but would never buy one those listening devices.
Well there’s a difference to using a well known idiom within the privacy of your own home, and inciting a crowd of thousands of fired up supporters to storm a government building in an attempt to disrupt the democratic process.
But regardless you probably should unplug your google home or whatever other smart devices that listen all the time if you are concerned about privacy
Your question sounded rhetorical and implied there was a giant fuzzy area between talking to yourself and openly inciting an uprising. It appeared that you were sympathetic to Trump and wanted to suggest his ban was ridiculous - if this part is not true, I apologise. In reality for most purposes it's probably not quite so ambiguous. However, Google is well known on HN for yanking your account and various connected services from under your feet, being a giant black box and offering little recourse or support. So the only possible response is what I originally said: if you're concerned at all you should unplug your device.
Unplugged. I feel like I still haven’t gotten a clear answer on whether there should be a limit on Google’s ability to control information on its platform and what that limit should be. Can Google route emails from its competitor’s recruiters to my spam folder? Can they choose not to do business with me if I contact their employees? What if I email the wrong politicians?
Have we really reached the point where asking where the line is after the president is banned is seen as rhetorical? How can we make good decisions if we can’t have these discussions? It feels like we are working off a “common sense” that is shared only by those who consume political theater. I’m not sympathetic—-I don’t even know the story—-but I see what I perceive to be a lack of deliberation.
Should there be a limit? Probably. What should that limit be? Well that's where I'm afraid nobody can provide you the definitive answer you are looking for. Not least me, I've enough on my plate at the moment and it deserves more time than I can give to it.
As for the second point - you can surely see how your original comment could be interpreted how it was. Nobody replying wanted to shut down a discussion on the nuances of whether tech giants should restrict expression or activities on their platforms. However your comment was (inadvertently it seems) similar in flavour to an argument many of us have seen over and over from the far-right - holding up a very uncontroversial everyday thing and a very divisive hot-button issue and demanding to know how they are different. In that circumstance - and I am speaking from experience here - normally nothing good comes from engaging.
I decided a few years ago that my line would be banning a sitting president. I don’t consume political theater and don’t know what’s happening, but I’m going to stick to my principles. If what he’s done is so bad, there are ways to kick him out of office. I’m curious whether others have a line.
The problem for me is ignoring the idea of debating with the intent to find the middle ground for common good.
Populism is not invented by Trump or the radical right. Populism is an instrument for ignoring the debate by giving an "accessible storyline" to the people.
You can exercise your critical thinking by listening to these two gentlemen.
Commenting on previous videos that were not in violation of terms of service have been disabled “indefinitely”. Same situation with Facebook/Instagram, but I’m not aware if there was a term of service violation there.
Is this censoring Donald Trump, his supporters, bots, or his opposers?
Consider that Jake and Logan Paul’s channels are still up despite repeat offenses including the Japan suicide forest video.
Seeing how the guy's prime motivator is flattering his own ego, no matter the cost to others, or the country as a whole, being cut off from all those multipliers must be painful for him. I can't shed a tear for that, but what I'm really uneasy with is that the decisions to ban him are not controlled by a democratic process. Where will that modus operandi lead us?
In my opinion tech companies are not just shutting Trump down because he inspired his followers to enter the Capitol, they are shutting him down because he has become an actual threat to their operation. It's easy to see the consequences of a coup for social media companies like Twitter that had been partially shutting down Trump for months, not to mention how devastating it would be for the country's economy.
So in a way social media companies are setting a precedent to ban politicians and organization leaders that they deem a threat to them or to "democracy". Hopefully it won't become a trump card to ban innocent users.
Many of these companies have held terms of conduct which condone enabling violence on their platforms. While they have failed to moderate the entirety of their platform, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t de-platform the cause of the coup attempt.
Trump has many avenues to address the nation, of which he had no hesitation to use when he made claims that the election was stolen - how many of you stayed up election night to watch this?
Not to mention as I write this Republicans are saying we shouldn’t impeach Trump because of “peace and unity” after a Munich Putsch-like attempt. Just now I read an article that panic buttons were disabled during the coup attempt, and some of the participators were given a full tour on Jan 5th to prepare.
Reach on these platforms indoctrinates people into an extremist movement. These companies do not need to serve individuals if it violates their terms of conduct. It is not unconstitutional for them to do so. This is the responsibility they hold given the impact of their platforms.
Biden does appear to be the rightful victor, but it was a highly unusual and uniquely sketchy election, and, given the recent pattern of protests and riots cheered on by politicians (blm/antifa trashing cities, mobs outside the White House and in the Capitol buildings for Supreme Court hearings), I’m only surprised that we’re not seeing worse. As the media hyperventilates to an ever greater pitch (“it was a coup!”), allowing all sorts of political opportunism, I’m starting to notice a chilling effect even in HN comments, with dissenters quieter than usual, opinion more lopsided. Some might think that we will now revert to a saner political climate, but I fear that they are mistaken. The logic of leftism (constant redistribution of power in the name of addressing ‘unfairness’) may yet see us spiral into the abyss.
> but it was a highly unusual and uniquely sketchy election
No, it really wasn't.
> with dissenters quieter than usual, opinion more lopsided.
BS vs Non-BS should be lopsided.
The problem with media the last decade hasn't been lies or omissions, but the fixation that truth somehow also needed a rebuttal, as if there's legitimacy in calling a duck a dog
Your attitude is a deep part of the problem. Reporting should be objective and even handed. The media immolated their credibility by constant editorialising and selective reporting, and now (absurdly) try to blame the resulting crisis of confidence on peripheral nonsense like QAnon .
No. The crisis of confidence is because certain folks claimed for months before the election (without any evidence) that it would be rigged.
And then when those same folks didn't get the result they wanted, they screamed "See! I told you it was rigged!" for another two months, again without presenting any evidence at all.
They those very same folks turn around and say "people are concerned that the election was rigged? How could that be unless there are questions that need to be answered!"
Widespread fraud in US elections is damn near impossible. Each county runs their own elections, all 3,143 of them.
And each of those 3,143 counties have their own election boards, election commissioners (of both major parties), poll workers, polling/canvassing observers (for each candidate from every party on each of 3,143 different ballots).
There are tens of thousands of people involved with interested observers from all sides watching the voting and the counting.
As such, some sort of widespread conspiracy makes no sense. As Ben Franklin is purported to have said, "three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Thousands? I think not.
What's more, more than 60 lawsuits (heard by judges of all political stripes, many of whom were appointed by Trump himself) in seven states showed no evidence of voting irregularities that could have affected the outcome.
Note that I said "irregularities" and not "fraud" or "cheating." Because except for those whack jobs Powell and Lin, who were laughed out of court for, not lack of evidence, but no evidence at all, none of the other lawsuits even alleged, let alone provided any evidence of fraud.
It was a prime example of The Big Lie[0]. And it worked.
We don’t need reporters to adjudicate truth for us. Saying “___ claimed ___” is objective, and can be easily followed up with “this appears to conflict with ____” or “____ (an expert, authority or opponent) denies this.” When reporters start writing things like “___ falsely claims”, they are venturing into subjective territory, and when they don’t present information that both sides may be relying on, they lose the trust of the readers who are looking for a comprehensive report that will help them understand the story.
I agree with you on the phrasing, which is usually the case with all media I consume, but if it's "conflicts with experts, law scholars, appointed officials, ..." there's extremely rarely a need for "both sides", and can instead be detrimental to discourse, as proven by recent events.
A clear lie? For a start, the poll question is extremely broad, I doubt anyone believes there was “zero” fraud. Secondly, this is a complex issue, with many possible definitions and magnitudes of fraud, you can’t neatly square it away as “a clear lie.” Thirdly, as I said, the election was notably unusual and sketchy, so expecting that everyone should agree as if it’s a simple, clear-as-day matter is ridiculous. “If the media is not more one sided, we will continue to see differences of opinion on these very complex and unusual issues!”
> A clear lie? For a start, the poll question is extremely broad, I doubt anyone believes there was “zero” fraud. Secondly, this is a complex issue, with many possible definitions and magnitudes of fraud, you can’t neatly square it away as “a clear lie.”
The answer selected by 81% was "Enough to influence the outcome". That is not broad, and the answer avoided was "Not enough to influence the outcome", which would encompass potentially thousands of cases of fraud.
It's entirely within the scope of "clear lie".
> Thirdly, as I said, the election was notably unusual and sketchy, so expecting that everyone should agree as if it’s a simple, clear-as-day matter is ridiculous.
And as I said, it wasn't, and the onus is on you to provide any support for your assertion.
I'm not expecting everyone to agree, I'm saying media should not care if everyone agrees and report the facts regardless of hurt feelings and stop catering to audiences.
I misread the link you posted. Still, “affect the outcome” is very broad - the White House winner? some EC votes? a House seat? So is “voter fraud” - presence of fake ballots? demoralisation/suppression caused by the likelihood of fraud?
The election was highly unusual in that it was conducted with a much higher fraction of postal voting (obviously a less secure method, and accompanied by rule changes), and highly sketchy in the way that vote counting took so long to complete and even paused unexpectedly in the key swing states at a point where it looked like the outcome would be different. These things alone ensure that outcome would be hotly disputed.
Telling both sides of the story is the mechanism by which court rooms reach a verdict. Failing to do so is counterproductive, it simply breeds distrust of journalism and makes the selectively reported side appear weaker.
> The election was highly unusual in that it was conducted with a much higher fraction of postal voting (obviously a less secure method
If it was less secure enough to be relevant, we would have heard of cases (or thousands) where voters show up only to have their vote already registered. We haven't. It's still one registered voter - one vote.
> and accompanied by rule changes)
This was the case in many more states, including Texas itself and other disgruntled states. What rule changes do you take issue with and why?
> and highly sketchy in the way that vote counting took so long to complete
That's because states election officials have decided when you can start counting votes. In some states when they come in, in others not before election day. Not allowing early counting has generally been a GOP decision, if that's relevant.
> and even paused unexpectedly in the key swing states at a point where it looked like the outcome would be different.
That's because each county in the country counts independently, and have wildly uneven demographics (thanks gerrymandering...)
> These things alone ensure that outcome would be hotly disputed.
Nothing quite so democratic as deplatforming people. The Ancient Greeks would be proud of our new developments. I'm sure Plato's Republic simply overlooked the shortcut where the easiest way to win debates is to simply prevent your opponent from speaking.
The problem is that these people relied on this infrastructure in the first place. A president has the necessary means for an official communications channel, I can't quite figure out why he chose Twitter, a service provided by a private company and not the government, instead.
At the same time I must say, I personally don't use this type of social media anyway because I think there is a conflict of interest. I use Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma, etc. No company gets to regulate my social activity on these.
I don't think that this is censorship though, as it is not the government deplatforming these people and groups. It was clear from the start that private companies could do that and that it is well within their rights, the problem is that we rely on private companies for social media when we really don't have to.
> The Ancient Greeks would be proud of our new developments
I don't mean to be rude but that's not the best ideal: they had Socrates killed for "corrupting the youth" among many many other things nobody would consider democratic. Plato's Republic is also not very democratic to say the least.
"winning debates by preventing your opponent from speaking" is an interesting way to spin "choosing not to actively host the messages of the leader of a terrorist organisation who is actively encouraging bombings and murders"
Donald Trump is now one of the most dangerous terrorists on Earth. No private enterprise SHOULD have any dealings with him. They especially shouldn't be hosting his violent and dangerous messaging.
The underlying idea here is that people can't be trusted to consume any information and must be shepherded towards more specific content.
This is what bothers me with much of the discussion surrounding Parler or any attempt to "subvert democracy". It ironically exposes the fact that most people are more interested in technocracy but label it as democracy and don't even see the irony.
It is sad to say, especially since BBC is mostly an accurate source of information, but this time title is a fake news. As well as the title here. Because the account was not suspended. Uploading videos and comments is suspended, to be precise and actually the article contains information about it.
Just a note for hot heads: it is only an editorial comment with no strings attached.
I don’t want to add credence to such a poorly worded and misguided comment, but 230 is referring to Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. No-scoped refers to killing something so quickly with a sniper rifle so fast you don’t even take the time to look through your scope (in first person shooter video games).
They were trying to say that they expect congress to amend or repeal Section 230, which protects content hosts from legal liability for content created by someone else.
No-scope is a gaming term for sniping someone from a sniper rifle without zooming in using the scope. Very difficult to do, and this is a weird application of the phrase. 230 about to be “nuked” would probably be more applicable. It implies destroyed by pushing a button. No effort involved and immediate annihilation.
230 is getting no scoped, meaning no one will care about reforming it or even repealing it.
Section 230 is an internet legislation that gives social media companies a pass on their users actions. E.g. if CNN/Fox/BBC publishes something fake on their website, as a publisher they will be legally liable to what they publish. If a user on facebook posts something similar then facebook wont get in trouble because they are not regarded as the publishers. It was created to help boost social media site momentum during the Obama administration.
Now recently since facebook/twitter have been moving into becoming the arbiters of what is true and not which makes them publishers.
From a fairness point of view, why should these social media sites benefit from section 230 while traditional media doesn't?
I don’t understand this new fascination with gutting 230. 230 protects the speech of the users, since the platform isn’t held responsible for what they say. Make YouTube liable for its users content, and now the whole system is moderated to remove any polarizing content. This means politicians like Trump will NEVER have a platform for their message. Why would they intentionally vote to de-amplify their own voices?
Section 230 means that you can't be sued for something I say.
But it doesn't just apply to FB and Twitter. It applies to HN. It applies to Github repos and Discord channels and every person and device connected to the Internet in the US.
Get rid of Section 230 and then you can be sued for what other people say.
Which would pretty much kill all but the biggest platforms, because only they could afford the liability.
Section 230 has been protecting free speech on the Internet for 25 years. We should keep doing that.
See here[0] for more details. The title is snarky, but it has lots of good information.
