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Comment by squidfish | Hacker News Reader

Your premise is wrong. Twitter's actions weren't as a result of something it disagreed with. Your comment/thought illustrates one of the REAL root problems ... and that is we are living in a state of two apparent states of "factual reality". Unfortunately this is not possible. There is only one set of facts. Until we can return to that, we will be repeating similar scenarios.

In other words, there is nothing inappropriate about Twitter putting disclaimers on objectively factually incorrect statements.

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I am strongly anti-Trump and pro truth and reasonably pro Jack Dorsey and don’t disagree with anything you say except — I’m not sure why Jack Dorsey should get to decide what’s true just because he invented a social media platform

Jack didn’t decide what’s true, in fact lies are posted to Twitter by users everyday.

He just decided that these particular lies are too unreasonable for him to help spread them.

"Jack didn’t decide what’s true"

It's a little bit naive to think that the truth is easily discerned by any individual, it's always a matter of shades.

'Stole the Election' can mean many different things in many different contexts, not literally election fraud.

I detest Donald Trump and don't much like Jack Dorsey, but he should not be in a position to arbiter the truth.

I'm very thankful he censored Trump on the eve of the election, not thankful he banned the Post, and very worried about the future.

We probably need regulations over this.

The free speech people have to come to terms with the fact that the big mediums have always been filtered, and it only takes one insane president to start a civil war, that the truth among the plebes is 'Whatever their Ideologue Says' and so there needs to be credibility in the system.

The anti-Trump crowd who are happy with the censoring need to realize how dangerous of a game this is.

Twitter and FB need to set up a completely independent public board, with established guidelines and public oversight to manage these things..

He's not deciding. Just observing and reacting.

I would expect them to have a team actually doing this in a more principled fashion, instead of Jack Dorsey calling the shot from his ivory tower.

At some point you're gonna have to trust an authoritative source. Whether that is APNews or NYT or straight from the government website.

The question of "Who gets to decide the truth" is extremely tiring to refute - someone has always had the authoritative voice is determining what's true and what's not. You're shifting the burden of truth from one source to the other until there is no one you can trust.

Statement: Foo is Bar. [1]

[1] Source Baz.

You then need to argue, why does Baz gets to decide what's true or not? This goes on ad-infinitum.

By asking "Who gets to decide the truth", you're essentially saying "Why should I trust anyone?" and by that logic "I cannot trust anyone, so everything must be false." The society's fabric is based on trust in institutions. Whether it is government, an independent news source or whatever.

How about I get to decide who to trust instead of Twitter, Reddit, etc censoring people and deciding for me?

Perhaps you'll go to another source, say ABC news? You can ask them the same thing "Hey ABC news, why are you guys deciding the truth for me?".

Literally every source you will use, your own argument will falsify it.

Okay, so are you supportive of Twitter censoring political speech? Or should we be given the opportunity to view information and decide for ourselves what is bullshit and what isn’t? Anyone who believes everything they see on Twitter is beyond being helped by Jack’s censorship.

I didn't say that. "Decide for ourselves" - oh boy, good luck in the era of deep fakes, lies and misinformation.

I do agree with you on one thing - I don't think we should blindly trust Twitter. I am arguing that before censorship, they need to provide a solid source of truth.

A journalistic establishment with clear editorial control and clear liability for libel, etc. is not the same thing as a publishing platform.

Fair point, how do you think we need to control rampant misinformation?

I don't feel the need to control others' speech.

As far as better information, diversity in viewpoint in journalistic within organizations will help. News that starts within a bubble is probably more distorted.

The social media problem is harder, but giving users ultimate control on how to filter fake news is important. Otherwise, social media companies should express editorial positions and advertise editorial services as a core part of their offerings, then consumers and content creators would have clear signals about biases in how information is curated on their platforms.

The difference though is that society is largely aware that newspaper editors have opinions and biases and act as gatekeepers and the editors themselves largely acknowledge their roles as gatekeepers. In tech we still try pretend that these companies aren't gatekeepers and the CEOs adamantly insist that they're largely neutral platforms. That's why it's hard to trust tech as an authoritative source.

I would be fine with Twitter censoring but providing an authoritative source (such as APNews) that justifies their censorship. Transparency is better.

I guess I am more concerned about people harping on "Well, I don't trust APNews, why do they get to decide on truth." One can go down a conspiratorial path pretty quickly when theyve already made up their mind to not trust anyone or trust their favorite source that supports their arguments and emotional state.

When you click the blue warning on the tweet, it does exactly that...?

I didn't know. Not on twitter as much, I'll inquire further.

Just go on Donald Trump's Twitter feed, and click on all the various warnings...(also note that none were "censored"--some just have a warning appended, and others were hidden by default with a warning, and you have to click it to see the tweet.)

That's actually pretty funny, I did click on that warning on some voter fraud allegations and here is what it said:

    What you need to know
    - Voter fraud of any type is incredibly rare in the US, according to The Associated Press and Reuters
    - US officials say the 2020 US election will be more secure than the 2016 US presidential election
    - US officials confirm that foreign governments are trying to influence the US election, but that foreign governments' interference is mostly relegated to launching misinformation campaigns
    - Experts say US elections are 'resilient'

And then it lists some articles, that just like the tl;dr version above, did not disprove anything that was actually being said in tweets labeled with these warnings.

It's really bad. Laughably bad. It might only confirms your biases if you already believe that the allegations are false, but if you haven't formed an opinion yet - I assure you, no one is ever going to be convinced by this. A lot of people are now treating those factcheckers as a complete joke that cannot be taken seriously. But I don't know, this is just what I noticed by observing this entire thing, make of it what you will.

It's high time we stopped pretending that and understood that even neutrality is, itself, a stance (i.e. there are criteria determining what is "neutral," and those criteria are chosen by the platform).

> At some point you're gonna have to trust an authoritative source. Whether that is APNews or NYT or straight from the government website.

Would you really teach your children "trust the New York Times and whatever the government says"? When both said Iraq had WMDs, did you believe them? In a perfect world we could all look at the source material (photos, videos, data, etc.) ourselves to figure out reality and there would be uncensorable platforms for individuals to call out corruption and reach the masses. This was the original promise of the internet and social media! Sadly the authoritarian left is insistent on defining "reality" and relishes censoring dissenting facts or opinions. Facebook and Twitter wields their "fact checking" and censorship on a might-is-right basis, which disenfranchises 50% of the population and is seriously incendiary to civil discourse.

I am talking about authoritative source of truth. Not arguing which specific source.

Right. But evidence is more trustworthy than authority.

I am terrified of the idea that the common public of 70 million people that voted for Trump did not have the basic skills to determine what's true and what's not from the evidence. They've been constantly fed lies - as we speak about election fraud. They're provided with plenty of evidence, they choose to not believe.

If you think about the world where 80% of the people are religious, who throw away evidence in favor of faith; you're in for a dark future.

Pompous comments like this only drive people further away. Evidence being presented by a biased media is not evidence to be trusted. MSM “science” and “facts” are just as much a religion as Catholicism.

If I’m presented evidence from someone that has routinely lied to me, called me names, destroyed my career, and shipped my job prospects overseas, I’m not believing a single word they say.

I am saying I don't believe in authoritative sources of truth. All the "wrong" people out there don't enter into it when I am reading news. I look for facts that can be and have been validated.

And it's important to have humility about being right about everything. You don't have to go back far to find folks on the left excited about the prospects for Venezuela. Now, it's possible to find scapegoats, but it does explain some of the right-wing perspective on fake news. If the left and the media had to see a country basically collapse to call the Venezuelan government problematic, what do you call the reporting and debate points before that? "Factual" doesn't cut it.

The fact that you're getting downvoted on such a simple, objectively true statement shows the blatant bias of the HN crowd.

What’s the distinction between evidence and authority in practical sense?

Vaccine efficacy according to FDA says it’s 90%. ~~~~> Authority.

Paper published by FDA shows data ~~~~> Evidence.

Right?

Who wrote the paper and who collected the data? Some authority.

> When both said Iraq had WMDs, did you believe them?

Biden voted for the Iraq War and 70 million people just installed him as President so we can go back to the glorious way things were before. Certainly the billionaire elites, deep state, globalists, big tech, pro war Democrats and Republicans, big business (which loves infinite cheap labor), China - they're all thrilled with where this goes next.

I wonder if all the people cheering for Biden (including the Europeans) will be offering apologies when Biden & Co. start the next round of wars, as we return to the ways things were pre-Trump. Biden's brain is jello, so somebody else is going to be steering the ship the next few years until he steps down for health reasons to set up Harris to run for re-election in 2024 running as the incumbent. Zero chance Biden's health holds up against the rigors of the job given how much he has collapsed mentally in the past four years (the stress of the job will make it that much worse).

As an American, I'm increasingly interested in leaving the country. Not specifically because of Trump or Biden, but because of everything, the general direction of the country, the imploding culture, the partisan venom, the fiscal disaster, the superpower globalism (including the war machine), the disastrous immigration policies. The US is fundamentally broken and will not be repaired, it's only going to get worse as real authoritarianism rises on both sides (socialism and fascism, both of which require extreme political violence, a small taste of which we've just recently been getting). The future of the US is Brazil, with more money. Canada is looking very nice (sane immigration policies, national selfishness regarding their priorities, no war machine, spending allocated effectively (the US spends more of its economy on its mediocre welfare state than Canada does and gets a lot less for it), a stable culture, and national civility).

Why would you say that anyone else should decide what's true on his platform? Twitter isn't even so popular that you can say it has a monopoly of any sort. There are plenty of alternative services, and no significant barriers to starting a new one. I guarantee that if the president of the United States was to say "From now on I'm only posting on my blog" then that blog would become very popular.

I don't think it's as black and white as you say. "I won the presidency" could, in theory, be a true statement, even if it comes before the counting is complete and we haven't yet determined its veracity. "There was fraud" could, in fact, be true, even if the evidence to prove it is not forthcoming.

Ultimately, Twitter censors things it doesn't think are healthy for its platform. I think that's within its rights, but I don't think it's by any means objective.

Twitter doesn't point out what's true. They point out what's under dispute.

> I’m not sure why Jack Dorsey should get to decide what’s true just because he invented a social media platform

That's the fundamental misalignment of understanding in this era: he doesn't. He gets to decide what his platform hosts and how he spins it. The determiner of truth is, as it has always been, the audience.

> I’m not sure why Jack Dorsey should get to decide what’s true just because he invented a social media platform

A social media platform is a publisher, if it encourages news to be disseminated through its networks then it should be held to the same scrutiny.

Some might cry - well this is impossible! I can tweet anything and a stranger can share it, how can I cope with that volume etc... well, then you have to choose:

if you want to be a broadcaster, then you must obey the law and not broadcast propaganda or blatant falsehoods.

If you do not want to censor or edit, then you must stop being a broadcaster, that is you must limit the reach of that material, so that a person may only communicate it to their friend and not further in the same way as an ordinary conversation in person, by telephone, or text message would work.

> There is only one set of facts.

But what is that set of facts?

Twitter felt no need to censor the Steele dossier for years despite it being a politically-funded piece of nonsense.

I wonder how you'll feel when they do this to you or someone you care about.

I don't quite understand the epistemic certainty people have that such weapons will never be turned against them, especially when history so dramatically demonstrates the opposite.

The entire Twitter platform seems totalitarian and a societal bad. Why would you ever want a billboard for your passing thoughts that literally not only can be read by a huge audience but will be read by a huge audience? Oh sure it’s great if you’re promoting something. But there’s clearly a reason beyond basic privacy to want your messages only readable by select few.

I’ve been out of social media for years and never quite ‘got’ twitter. From the outside, it seems like it’s having a totalitarian effect on society. What you say will be widely viewed - and “judged.”

On that my friend we 100% agree. Widening the window of discussion, I would view it as a 100x societal good for Twitter itself and anything that pretends to it, to disappear.

Echo chambers, algorithmic recommendations, and powerful filters all but guarantee multiple realities for different people. If all you see are facts X, Y, and Z, then those facts are as real and true as someone else's facts A, B, and C. I have family members and friends who live in seemingly totally alternate universes, dominated by what I see as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and a cultural persecution complex. But as they describe it: it's I who live in a media-manufactured alternate reality characterized by trust in institutions, corruption, and a false belief in science and data.

What everyone is missing is: both universes might as well be correct, to the observer. It's like measuring what speed someone is going in two different relativistic frames of reference. You can both be right and come up with different numbers. It's a tough problem to solve. We can't solve it by just pointing at the out-groups and saying "ha-ha how stupid are they for believing in rubbish!" They are just not going to be convinced by someone who believe a totally different set of facts.

I’m sorry but how do you reconcile your second paragraph’s criticism of the coexistence of two factual realities and your last paragraph in which you simply pick the one you happen to personally favor?

Data supports one of those two realities. Joe Biden is President-Elect.

The reality is that he's not. Not yet, since the Electors haven't gone to the Electoral College and still won't for a long time. In between now and then there will be court challenges.

Will those challenges change the ultimate outcome? Almost certainly not. But it's still a fact that Biden is not the President-Elect.

Should Twitter fact check people calling him the President-Elect? IMO, probably but only to look unbiased. Will they? No, because they don't care about looking biased despite 70M+ Americans siding with Trump.

It's not "biased" and never has been to project a winner based on statistical data. But if we're sticking to a statistical conclusion, how do you think Biden should be described at this point?

There is essentially no basis in history or law to believe that Biden will not take office, unless he dies before inauguration. There are no credible legal theories by which he will not be elected.

I don't think it's biased either. That's why I didn't say they should do it to be unbiased, but to look unbiased.

People are really not taking the loss of faith of 70M Americans as seriously as they aught to.

What should "people" do? The loss of faith is driven by four years of the President lying day in, day out. There have been plenty of voices throughout speaking up for truth and institutional respect, but they're baselessly attacked at the highest levels.

Because the question was not in good faith in the first place because the exact opposite is actually true: Twitter has bent the rules to no end in an effort to keep from banning Trump despite his constant breaking of the their rules.

I think you misunderstand. Its the co-existance of two claimed factual realities. You simply pick the one which is the factual reality, which relies on looking at facts.

If someone says 'the election is rigged', the least they have to do is produce evidence. In the absence of that evidence, that's not a factual statement.

What about Twitter/Facebook disclaimers on Palestinian speech? Where do you draw the line?

If Twitter could make money in China would flagging Human Rights Campaign be okay?

You're arguing from a presumption that truth doesn't exist or doesn't/won't matter, and a lot of us disagree with that notion.

I disagree with deploying tools of autocrats to control speech. How incredibly lame.

I do not accept Twitter as my authority on what is objectively factual correct.

Do you?

Twitter made plenty of controversial decisions during these days https://twitter.com/DavidShafer/status/1324537971215863808

> In other words, there is nothing inappropriate about Twitter putting disclaimers on objectively factually incorrect statements.

Not necessarily inappropriate, but it might be ineffective. I don't know if this has already occurred but I'd bet a great deal of money that those click-through warnings about blatant or dangerous falsehoods will become a badge of honor among twitter conservatives, if they haven't already.

Who will watch the watchers?

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