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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Readit News
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
If not, then we will have some ‘promoting’ big accounts instead of twitter or facebook, we will be back to square one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
So why wasn't he removed earlier?
> now he's not president
I don't know US system that well, but from what I heard he is still president and will step down in a week or two.
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.
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.
There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him.
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.
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.
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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?
Parler and Amazon are not, and never have been competitors.
Amazon does a lot of different things, but running a social media site isn't one of them.
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.
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.
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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.
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Let's say he was calling for violence.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-tell-supporters-stor...
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.
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.
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).
They will trade favors.
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...
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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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/10/uk-supreme-c...
If people are excluded from services, there should be rational reasons for it and these reasons should be social consensus.
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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.
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.
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.
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 :(
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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.
[1]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...