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Comment by root_axis | Hacker News Reader

Never. World leaders don't have to use twitter, they could host their own platform or use one of the other platforms. Twitter should not be obligated to host anyone's content. It doesn't matter how popular twitter is, it's just a website.

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Pretty sure if Twitter decided to allow one candidate to post on its platform but denied another one access, there would be a strong case that Twitter is making an in-kind campaign contribution to the first candidate.

The service is provided to every candidate at the same price as is it to the rest of the planet... how is that a campaign contribution?

If a free platform of mass media is not provided to every candidate but is provided to some candidates while others are banned, then that's effectively advertising for some candidates.

If it wasn't free (say $0.01 per tweet or whatever) would that be different?

No, they'd still have to offer it at that price (the same price) to all candidates equally - that's basically a way to avoid having to decide whether the offered price is fair or artificial; you can assert that an hour of ads for your cable network costs $0.01, but that's the amount you'll get not only for your favored candidate but also for the same ads for his opponent.

Are you saying political candidacy is now a (potentially even stricter) version of a protected class? It seems very tough-to-swallow to me that someone can make themselves be entitled to the services of any vendor in the nation by mere virtue of running for office. Wouldn't that make it a get-out-of-jail-free card for being a complete jerk to people? Usually, if you do that, people can refuse to associate or do business with you personally, whereas here it seems you're saying they can't, even if the reason is entirely unrelated to their candidacy.

I'm saying that political advertising is highly regulated in many countries.

You're not entitled to the services of any vendor, however, in pre-election period media outlets are (in some countries) prohibited to have any political ads (including pseudo-ads like "accidental talk show interviews with the candidate we like") unless multiple specific conditions are met, one of which is equal access to all parties/candidates. Even if you hate them. If you don't like these conditions, you can refuse to participate in political ads at all, which most media companies won't do because it's a decent source of revenue.

One way how this is soemtimes implemented is that before the pre-election period, you have to submit a public offer for what conditions and prices political adds will be available to any and all candidates; you can refuse to make such a public offer because you hate some of these candidates, but then you're not allowed to place advertisements from the candidates you like as well. Or if you're a foreign company (like Facebook) that doesn't care about some elections at all and does not submit such an offer, then all candidates are prohibited to buy political ads from you.

If your media company wants to support a particular candidate, then the only legal way is to donate money (which gets appropriately reported) and the candidates can (within specific campaign funding limits!) buy ads on equal conditions at equal prices. There's no "corporate money is free speech" assumption like it seems to be in USA, doing "free ad publicity" for candidates is a violation of campaign finance laws and would incur significant fines (IIRC double or triple the market value of that publicity).

> The service is provided to every candidate

No, it isn't; that's the point of the hypothetical. We're talking about Twitter banning certain candidates. If they're not banning any candidates, then there's no issue and nothing to discuss here.

You misread the sentence. The meaning of "every" in that sentence was the same was the meaning of "every" in the sentence, "My barber cuts every CEO's hair the same way he cuts my hair." The point of the statement is not to imply every CEO necessarily gets their haircut or is even welcome to do so in that barbershop.

> The meaning of "every" in that sentence was the same was the meaning of "every" in the sentence, "My barber cuts every CEO's hair the same way he cuts my hair." The point of the statement is not to imply every CEO necessarily gets their haircut or is even welcome to do so in that barbershop.

Sorry, not buying your use of the Humpty Dumpty principle here. Providing the service to some candidates at the same price as the rest of the planet, but not providing it to other candidates at all, does equate to a campaign contribution. Twisting the meaning of "every" doesn't change that.

You are wrong.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/filing-re...

> An in-kind contribution is a non-monetary contribution. Goods or services offered free or at less than the usual charge result in an in-kind contribution.

They're banning violations of their ToS. As long as that is performed equitably, Twitter is in the right to police their private platform using pre-disclosed rules.

>>>They're banning violations of their ToS. As long as that is performed equitably

Except it isn't, as Tim Pool demonstrated on the Joe Rogan Podcast when he ripped Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde a new one, with examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ

The assumption that all users are treated equally is debatable for reasons others have discussed, but what is missing here is the consideration for Twitter's algorithm sort and their continual efforts to force this on users. Even if we assert that all politicians have equal access to the platform and exist under the same ruleset, Twitter modifying the tweet sort order using their own custom brand of black magic and routinely resetting user's feeds to this default sort is very problematic. In this case Twitter is very blatantly modifying what users see and we can't know how this sort is determined. Wouldn't this qualify as meddling with political messages?

Does the differ from for example a news network that are staunchly aligned with one political party over another and thus painting a very one sided view?

Yes because news networks are publishers. Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the silicon valley social media gang are quick to remind you that they are platforms and not publishers [0].

[0] https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-1588...

The platform/publisher paradigm is a false dichotomy because of section 230, as your article points out. The idea that section 230 hinges on some notion of political neutrality is an editorialized opinion by the author, not a statement based on the law. In reality, efforts to legislate political neutrality are not only impossible to enforce, but they would likely be challenged on a 1st amendment basis (i.e. forcing a private entity to broadcast political messages they disagree with on their own dime).

There's an established way to deal with monopolies: https://www.thenation.com/article/elizabeth-warrens-big-figh...

But the big media giants squish out third parties all the time. When was the last time we saw three candidates in an American presidential debate? Ross Perot?

By that logic wouldn't Fox News be the subject of a campaign finance investigation?

I think they're not because of free speech. The question is whether banning people from your platform counts as speech. Which it probably does.

Pretty sure cable news is legally designated as "entertainment".

The damage is real.

Nope. Fox News, and all news orgs are publishers, Twitter, Facebook and co are platforms. Fox News and CNN are responsible for anything published on their website. Twitter, fb, etc are not.

Why does that distinction matter? Is there language in campaign finance law that says news orgs are exempt from certain restrictions?

Thanks for asking this question. I hadn't actually looked into the legal precedents until now.

This is a decent article on the subject: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1804a02d-a015...

tl;dr: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 states, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

The courts have upheld on multiple occasions (Pennie v. Twitter, Inc.; Fields v. Twitter, Inc.; Murphy v Twitter, Inc.) that Twitter is a provider of an interactive computer service.

The benefits to Twitter from showing bias in this way would be more than offset by the risk of backlash.

It would not be a strong case. An in-kind contribution is when a party provides a political campaign with a product or service for a reduced cost compared to what it normally charges. Since twitter offers its service for free to everyone, removing access does not constitute an in-kind contribution.

Are you asserting Twitter can't influence elections?

He's saying they _can_. If you can make the case that foreign countries can influence elections via social media platforms, how much more then do the platforms themselves have influence?

>>[question] At what point does Twitter restricting world leader tweets become election interference and foreign policy interference

>[answer] Never.

While I agree with your logic, it doesn't seem like the person I was replying to does.

Not by restricting the posts of world leaders. Twitter is a private company offering a free service that comes without guarantees, even for world leaders.

That's a non-sequitur. The fact their service comes with no guarantees makes no difference whatsoever to the fact that they are in a position, by virtue of the size of their audience, to influence any subject anywhere in the world.

Maybe it's a non-sequitur if we're discussing your personal feelings, but the fact that twitter is a free service offered by a private company without guarantees means that twitter has no obligation to provide service. Just because some group of people decided to congregate on twitter doesn't mean that the fundemebtal nature of twitter transforms into something owned by the commons. If it was twitter's desire to ban all conservatives from the platform that would be their right, twitter owes nothing to the users, the amount of users on twitter is completely irrelevant (and an arbitrary statistic)

>Maybe it's a non-sequitur if we're discussing your personal feelings, but the fact that twitter is a free service offered by a private company without guarantees means that twitter has no obligation to provide service.

This is bizarre, another non-sequitur.

Just repeating "non-sequitur" is not an argument. If you have nothing else to add I'll just reiterate what I wrote above. It doesn't matter how popular twitter is, you don't have to use twitter and twitter isn't obligated to provide service for free.

Popularity matters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusal_to_deal

> Though in general, each business may decide with whom they wish to deal, there are some situations when a refusal to deal may be considered an unlawful anti-competitive practice, if it prevents or reduces competition in a market.

So based on your own link, "refusal to deal" has nothing to do with this situation since stifiling the posts of world leaders is not anti-competitive, in fact, it creates a competitive opportunity for platforms that might offer better service to those users.

Then we shouldn’t fret about Russians manipulating it.

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