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Comment by justapassenger | Hacker News Reader

Free press is surprisingly supportive of an idea of a private corporations policing and setting standards of content and political discussions.

I hate how discussions look online about politics, but I worry that instead of pushing for accountability of public figures, through democratic tools and institutions, articles like that focus on trying to get a private police up and going.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc censoring more and more content from public figures won’t change the fact that USA have a racist president and that tons of people support him.

And while I think it’s a valid question how much of their racist and discriminatory content they should be allowed to say before they’re thrown out of office, it shouldn’t be decided by Silicon Valley.

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The "free press" doesn't have a "get out of jail free" card of being able to claim that they are just a "platform" and be able to dodge all responsibility for what they print like Facebook does.

If the press writes something objectively false about someone, they are starting at a defamation lawsuit. If they write something that gets someone killed, they will be staring at possible criminal liability. If they print, I dunno, a picture of a child having sex, there'll be hellfire and brimstone (both legal and social).

And no, saying "ha ha, it was just an opinion column" doesn't save them.

"Press" has perks but also has responsibilities. The free press is "ok" with these rules because they've had to follow them for decades. What they want is a level playing field.

Publishing a story by a reporter, even best one with all the Pulitzer’s isn’t at all comparable to statements of president elected by tens millions of votes, who controls the most powerful military force in the world.

The same press will report on those racist tweets, run stories whole week where they dissect that, opinions, angry letters, etc. Should press stop running stories about racist behavior of the president? How is running story about what president said, different in terms of impact on spreading those views? Would Trump be where he’s right now if press wouldn’t pay attention to his crazy tweets before and fuel his popularity?

Free press is surprisingly supportive of an idea of a private corporations policing and setting standards of content and political discussions.

Yes, and it's a worry. Twitter and Facebook are entitled to label or comment on inflammatory posts, but if you're willing to post non-anonymously, what you put up should stay up. High volume trolling by anons, though, needs to be detected and stopped. That's bulk spam, not discourse.

As a kid, I used to walk past the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, a house in a residential neighborhood in Arlington, VA. They had a big sign: "White Man Fight - Smash the Black Revolution Now". They were a local joke. We survived that.

I personally think that having 3 tier policy is reasonable. Anonymous - anything can be removed. If you attach your name to it - internet companies should still be able to remove really bad content, as in the end they’re private business. But for highly ranked elected politicians, especially president, bar for removal should be really really really high.

But at the same time, adding context and flagging demonstrably false statements is no brainier that companies are falling behind on

> We survived that.

Just because we survived something doesn't mean we weren't affected by it. I'm not saying this is what you're doing here, but this argument -- I survived this, so you can too -- is often deployed by abusers to justify perpetuating a cycle of abuse. I think in general it's better to ask whether or not something is actually good rather than whether or not we are able to survive it.

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