EFF's response to social media companies' decisions to block Trump’s accounts
eff.org
eff.org
It's as neutral as can be.
If instead, the government had confiscated Parler's domains, or enjoined Apple, Google, and Amazon from booting them, I think EFF's response would (rightly/expectedly IMO) be very different.
As an EFF member I think they made the right call here.
For example, perhaps social networks can sort themselves into two types, public-square type and non-public-square type.
The networks which self-identify as public-square shall (1) employ a stronger set of freedom of speech protection rules, (2) be supervised by the government, an independent council, the media and the public, and (3) receive financial incentive, which could be a limited tax exempt status or governmental subsidy, depending on your preference.
They didn't. They chickened out. The ACLU was more vocal in its opposition to censorship. That should show how cowardly the EFF is being right now.
You falsely made it seem like EFF only deals with or is concerned with government "suppression". That isn't true. Most of EFF dealings is with corporate "suppression".
Under normal circumstances, EFF would have been far more vocal. But since they are extremely biased in this case, they chose to be anti-free speech.
"The EFF was active in the United States presidential election 2016 because of online phishing related to the controversy over fabrication of election results. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at the University of Michigan, wrote an article that was published in Medium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation
Don't you think EFF's belief in 2016 election fraud had anything to do with their lukewarm defense of Trump's free speech here?
They have a long history of questioning voting results, but only when republicans win...
"The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the United States presidential election 2004."
I generally think EFF is a worthy enterprise, but it's obvious political bias is the reason for their pathetic "support" for free speech here.
My principles don't include "force tech companies to host content for terrorists trying to violently overthrow a democracy".
(ACLU, on the other hand, I expect to take the free-speech-absolutist stance...)
The implication being that everything the EFF has done against corporate control of the internet is only good as long as their criticism doesn't extend to corporate censorship?
I hope I'm misinterpreting this.
All I've seen are second-hand statements from senior counsel.
Very interesting times we live in now.
Ok... why not?
A government is an unavoidably violent institution, and what's more, one which assumes the right and responsibility to use violence. In a free nation, it derives that right through various rituals from the consent of the governed, but it remains a fact: if a governmental leader says, for example, "There's a curfew, stay home or be arrested", that's what's going to happen.
If I message someone else "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you", it's different, isn't it.
So I ask again: why should there be one set of rules for both?
As individuals acting on their own behalf, though, nobody should be considered above the norms of civil society. By definition - if it didn't work that way, society would not be civil.
(I'd highly recommend reading both A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick for two different but equally thoughtful treatments of this sort of thing.)
I'm inclined to agree with what you describe, but it worries me how many of them (us?) have come to feel that it doesn't work.
We have a growing left convinced that 'the government' is just a bunch of elites caring about maintaining their wealth, and a growing right that believes the same.
I feel both perspectives are at least not unreasonable. So as someone trying to be reasonable and in favor of maintaining some kind of order, where does that leave me? How do we maintain order without accepting a very small elite to maintain it's (corrupt) power? How do we talk to our 'constituents' about this?
I'm truly in favor of solutions that don't end up causing societal chaos and killing people, but I'm lost as to the how.
But, here's one thought: Texas state legislators are paid a salary of $7,200 per year. Not exactly a lot to live on. So they've clearly got to either be independently wealthy, or figure out some other source of income. "A well nourished Legislature, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to seek and receive graft shall not be infringed." Or something like that.
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
If north korea fires artillery shells at south korea because of its maritime border dispute should it be allowed to make a similar tweet?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
Can the US president make a tweet like that when he launches a criminal attack on another country?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
Some people hold the view (which you can disagree with, but regardless is a perfectly reasonable view for someone to hold even if you disagree with it) that crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity even when they are carried out by lawfully appointed officials.
For example, vigilante justice or mafia-led street enforcement activities can be considered criminal acts, even if it would come to the same results and verdicts as a law enforcement operation and/or judicial process.
I don't think anybody is proposing banning police officials because they lawfully "kidnapped and trafficked" someone by arresting them.
because in a well functioning Republic communication channels for the government are public, and private companies serve private customers.
The only reason we're having this discussion is because Donald Trump has intentionally conflated the private and public sphere by using his personal twitter account to conduct governmental affairs.
This is terrible because it is 1. insecure and intransparent, 2. there's no established procedures for anything, 3. it conflates his private interest with his public interest (i.e. his decisions in office can be influenced by his commercial interests on the platform).
There should be different rules for Trump when he acts as the president, and indeed he has established communication channels for that very purpose, but when he speaks as a private citizen on a private platform he ought to be treated like everyone else. That's the basis of any non-corrupt system. When Angela Merkel goes to the supermarket (which she in fact does herself) she stands in the queue like everyone else because the fact that she inhabits the office of the Chancellor does not give her superpowers when she enters an ALDI.
I mean really, so you know it was in the government's purview to hold Snowden, Manning and Assange accountable to what's within their rights too. Nice to see you sway with the wind there EFF.
Guess Biden can pick up the phone and tell them to let them hang out to dry because you know, the government has the right. Why, why bother contesting them, right?
I was the one thing. The one thing you had as a mission.
Hosting and publishing certain speech is a liability.
Why should the state dictate what a corporation must allow on their own servers facilitated by the services they created?
Should the state force YouTube to include videos no advertiser wants to be associated with?
EFF's statement is consistent with protecting digital rights.
This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino.
Below a poster liked a response by the ACLU which is a much better response to Freedom of Speech than that by the EFF. The EFF caved. They abandoned their one and only mission to promote freedom of speech.
In both cases the EFF sided with the company's ability to practice their free speech instead of the government compelling them to speak or not speak. Seems perfectly consistent.
EFF is HAPPY yes? That's what you're saying? I mean, in this hypothetical this would be what Tim/Apple wants...
It’s still the weekend. We’ll see.
That's freedom of association.
Except they're not.
I would love the perfection of that, but all they're getting is the same treatment on-line as if they did the same screaming at the other customers and urinating in the isles in a grocery store.
They are stinking up the place, not merely by existing, but specifically through their deeds, and so it is not merely allowed, but an obligation, to deal with them.
I am sorry that you have never met good people of a different political leaning in your life. Hope it gets better for you.
Decent #notallconservatives, if they actually were so, could and should have policed their own indecent cousins. If they didn't, then they are complicit.
Any decent #notallconservatives didn't get kicked off of any other platforms in the first place. They lost nothing.
There is no cruel unfair intolerance to cry over here, any more than my comment getting a downvote, which favor you will note I didn't return, as long as we're trying to talk about intolerance. ;)
You have made your point. Have a nice rest of the day.
The chief problem is that enforcement will always be unequal, especially when the majority of people in positions of authority come from one political culture. The EFF thinks it's just fine to deal with this retroactively, but basically, that's saying it's okay to sacrifice a few to save the many. I'm okay with saying that if you're okay with making the consequences for sacrificing those few huge. eg: If Facebook disables someones account because they misunderstood some context because they don't have people working there that can properly frame it, then Facebook owes them substantial damages.
Furthermore, freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences.
What if he suffers a stroke and suddenly becomes a religious nut, cool if he only allows promotion of his religion on his medium and bans all others?
Good god, we’re effed!
That is very nearly the opposite of what I said. Freedom of speech is not the freedom from consequences. It may be perfectly legal for Zuckerberg to do something like that, but it would most certainly not be cool. He'd rightfully be considered an asshole, and his advertising revenue would probably take a large hit as a result of everyone else exercising their own rights of free speech and free association. As well they should.
However, that hypothetical isn't a great analogy for the reality that we're talking about here. It's a decent enough parallel in a strictly legal sense. But let's keep it real: one isn't making nearly as much of an asshole of oneself by refusing to help someone undermine democracy. Nor is one making much of an asshole of oneself by refusing to support the activities of white supremacists.
This is a powerful idea.
Have you found legal protections in the United States for this principle? I can think of some limited examples (Miranda rights, for example), but I do not, off the top of my head, see the the U.S. Constitution as generally protecting this right broadly.
But it’s not Twitters speech. It’s Trumps.
Of course on the USSR you were free to rattle off “Lenin was a Traitor” in front of the Kremlin, but you had to face the consequences of that.
Clearly not comparable to being put in a jail, and losing a job as well as future access to some jobs.
But more broadly what is your position here? Are you saying companies and people that run any kind of forum are not allowed to moderate it? They must allow all posts? Or do they have to have approval from the government for their moderation? Or do you want all forums and social media to be nationalized run by the government and we can have a state social media?
Surely I’d think state media and state censorship is worse for everyone than private media and private censorship (which is something we have always had in the US). And surely forcing every website with a commenting system to post everything anyone wants to share is not fair on anyone either. The problem therefore is something other than these bans.
They may ban Luis CK for misogyny let's say, but they sure as hell would not ban all the Bros who use misogynistic language. Do you think we can't find twitter handles of cartelists making terroristic threats in Mexico or other places? Is that all gone now?
I have some thoughts but would like more perspective before fully forming an opinion.
(not arguing one way or the other below)
For example, I’d like to understand the defining characteristics of social media platforms that contrasts them from traditional public forums that have existed through history. And what about those characteristics would make one think that physically removing questionable speech would be effective in preventing the underlying event, crime, movement, or social change the speech was attempting to facilitate.
Comparing Twitter, say, to a literal town square — we don’t ask the air in the town square to stop transmitting the vibrations of someone who is speaking in a dangerous manner or trying to incite some action that might harm others or damage social structures. Instead we use normal human social interactions to mediate the speaker’s effect on listeners — countering their arguments, questioning their credibility or motives, telling others an opposing viewpoint, letting a person’s past speech affect their reputation, etc. We leverage our social nature and counter speech with more speech. (The prominent exception being threats of violence which are treated differently legally)
In all the years of human history before social media, there have been countless examples of insurrections, of hateful acts inspired by a few, of coups, of routine crimes, of widely believed mistruths, etc. So obviously individuals in those societies were able to communicate and organize without social media (and in many cases without any electronic communication at all). Which means that access to social media is not a necessary condition for bad events to happen or bad social phenomena to spread. And therefore these things will find a way to continue to happen even if all social media communication were terminated.
My naive assessment is that social media is different than a physical town square in: - Its anonymity / dehumanized nature - Its built-in amplification of controversial ideas (ie the algorithms of town square air does not carry further just because a statement raises eyebrows) - Its speed - … but there must be more?
Basically, why is making the “digital air” in the "digital town square" not vibrate better than utilizing (and perhaps reinforcing) the social structures that moderated public forums in the analog world?
They are privately held.
1. government censorship of a social media platform?
2. self-censorship on social media platform?
It is mostly people under a false/misunderstood "freedom of speech" pretense saying that Twitter/Facebook/etc should not be able to ban whomever they want.
Currently the platforms are private (as a peer comment points out). So right now there isn't technically a "freedom of speech" issue as it's a private matter and private entities in the USA don't need to respect the 1st amendment.
As a thought experiment -- suppose the social media platforms were turned into "utilities" and completely absolved of the responsibility (or even the authority) to "censor" speech. In the same way someone's phone doesn't turn off if they make a threatening phone call. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Would losing the ability for anyone to remove content be fundamentally bad? Given that we have social mechanisms that existed prior to digital communication for countering bad speech?
As to your question, the fact that some people do support the suspension by the platform controllers (currently private) of accounts that post inflammatory speech would suggest that yes, some folks do think that censorship is a good idea.
There’s nothing legally or ethically wrong with having something like Twitter that is more of a neutral communication channel. I’m sure it exists. It’s just that Twitter is popular. Regulations that make something like the-Twitter-we-actually-have illegal are a step in the wrong direction. Twitter was started by human beings with certain values and goals, like making it easier to tell your friends what you are up to, and making money. If they don’t want blood on their hands, that’s their choice.
If you post something to say, Twitter, that is now their content that you have given to them for their benefit with the sole purpose of extracting value from the attention the content you handed over to them brings through the sale of advertising. That sale of advertising is what keeps the servers up and the engineers keeping it glued together paid. The surplus is profit distributed to the shareholders. This is of course an exchange where the value you extract stems from having your content amplified or enhanced in some way by their service. If for any reason any actor’s interaction with the service is determined to lead to a net loss, the only appropriate course of action is to remove that actor from the system.
The real problem isn’t a free speech or censorship issue, it is an anti-trust issue where a single entity has such an overwhelming control of a particular stream of media that their actions have excessive impact on the business and social ecosystems. Whether it is an anti-trust issue can be determined on how difficult it is for a competitor to establish themselves profitably in the marketplace. What sort of moats would need to be overcome to properly compete with e.g. Twitter given the monumental first mover advantage of that particular media stream... the media stream they created and proved?
In simpler terms, whether Facebook / Google / etc banning something they deem detrimental to their financial success having potential egregious impact on culture, society... whatever, is more a sign that these products have established themselves into the market in a way that’s fundamentally problematic and needs examination and effort to alleviate.
Should they turn into a public utility would change the entire business model and power dynamic and is not really relevant to what’s happening here. If for example the United States nationalized AWS and provided it as a civic web services infrastructure, free speech laws would be understood under a very different power dynamic. Censorship issues would be brought up and likely dealt with systemically, like not allowing the people running it from looking at what you’re hosting (you can organize a terrorist attack on the United States over the US postal service, by consequence of its intentional design).
Unless the article shared here yesterday titled "you are wrong about section 230" is itself wrong... Then everything in this part seems to be wrong.
They’d become even deeper cesspools than current Twitter and decent folk would avoid them, moving to more “curated” private platforms.
Think of the graffiti you see in public restrooms: that’s unmoderated, unrestricted free speech. There’s a ton of jerks out there who love to ruin it for everybody.
I'll put out some ideas quickly. You can build on them. Please share back what you find.
Social media platforms, more or less:
* Tend to blur any one sense of place
* Offer geographically dispersed communication
* May deemphasize the overall humanity of participants
* Tend to accentuate particular aspects of people, such as photos or messages or resumes
* Offer asynchronous communication
* Allow for nearly zero-cost message sending and replication (i.e. retweeting)
* Unlimited person-to-person communication channels
Traditional town squares, more or less:
* Offer a tangible sense of place
* Offer a tangible connection to other people
* Are subject to public assembly laws.
* Only a limited number of people can fit.
* Public many-to-one communication is constrained by acoustics.
* So audio amplification is often needed.
* Private communications tend to be limited to short-range communication. In other words, you can't have N^2 two-person conversations.
Not to the same extent. (Your argument offers a false dichotomy.)
With terrorism, insurrections, and so on (coordinated crimes in general), being able to slow down, monitor, and respond to communication flows can make the difference between a tragedy and an intervention.
The idea of 'slowing things down' can also apply to any information source, such as business news or the political rumor-mill. Do you want recent, vetted, and contextualized information? In practice, pick two.
Facebook and Twitter are like giant newspaper companies that, unlike paper newspapers, which can get in trouble for reprinting someone’s illegal words, are free to distribute others’ words, moderated or unmoderated. No website that you post content to has to distribute that content for you if it doesn’t want to. Twitter is not air.
That said, I don’t know what Facebook and Twitter should do, if there is such a thing as that. I think Twitter could easily justify not blocking Trump, by making the argument that they are a communication service, and they don’t want to start editorializing, but clearly that is not their stance! Facebook curates and bumps content up and down by its very nature, so Lord knows what it “should” do with itself.
We probably just shouldn’t have these giant monoliths.
Censorship of social platforms is absolutely necessary and this is obvious if you think about the problem for long enough, and even more obvious if you try to run one. Spam is a form of speech. You will get DDOSed by bad faith actors selling viagra without censorship. Now of course that's not what people are discussing, but almost all moderation is censorship. Censorship is table stakes to even be able to have a public community beyond a certain size, an uncensored public community would just be static, noise.
If you look at the pure numbers only a small minority of (human) users actually get banned, and most of the censorship happens further down the moderation chain. What people are arguing over, in practice, is if maybe a fraction of a percent of users should be banned or not or should have their posts removed or not. Censorship is so pervasive it's not even recognized as such. The actual disagreement is over a very small fraction of users and rules that would in practice affect a fraction of a percent of users and perhaps spark a trend of self-censorship. Censorship of social media platforms is good, what's in question is if we're perhaps going too far, but the actual difference between peoples views when you look at things from far enough back is actually fairly narrow. Additionally trying to enable the average person to have "Freedom of expression" online while NOT engaging in censorship paradoxically isn't even possible.
The key then as I see it is to keep censorship as minimalistic as practicable, have the rules be well defined, and to empower user self-regulation. It's also a concern to avoid, as much as is practicable, creating community schisms where a group splits off and creates it's own filter bubble which I consider to be outright dangerous (A threat to safety, if you will). For this reason, but also for its own sake, I argue for making efforts to avoid tyrannies of the majority. Because of these priorities, I usually present myself as a free speech proponent since I always seem to be saying people shouldn't be banned or suppressed, but in reality I support broad and sweeping and even automated censorship.
I’m more concerned about parler being banned or that “hang pence” was trending, but banning the president - who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing.
I’m against all rioting (all year it feels like) and what happened Jan 6 was horrifying.
You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers.
banning / arresting / killing all the leaders and then banning their other platforms will make people scared and ready to fight.
this. this is why the deplatforming of a single political leader is confusing.
if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. gagging him from ever reaching that base is counter productive.
one day..we will all be looking back at these events and scratch our heads. this course of action makes no sense. its all very strange and surreal. irrational.
On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? And if he did have the motivation, on what basis do you think he would be successful?
You are aware he said for everyone to go home and he condemned the violence? https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-condemns-vio...
Trump has never given any indication that he would do this if he could. He's had plenty of opportunities to call out bad behavior and has been at best equivocal when's he's gestured in that direction.
You're right, that it is strange and surreal.
This is not all he said, nor does this capture the key context.
The argument is simple: the risk of allowing Trump to continue to have access to Facebook and Twitter outweighs the benefit.
I would like to point out that the president has an unmatched ability to put out information, independent of social media, including: whitehouse.gov, press releases, press briefings, and the major television networks.
It doesn't sound like the platforms that profit off of our collective division want to do anything to defuse tension.
I'm baffled at how far these companies will go to keep people viewing ads.
Something needs to disempower the newsfeed-driven media companies before the violence snowballs.
Things will only get better when we start trying to find common ground. These media platforms are designed to ensure that doesn't happen.
Please explain what about Trump's history suggests that he will be convinced?
I understand a respect, even some degree of zeal, for principles such as freedom of speech. But these do not exist in a vacuum. And, practically, the degree of the president's ability to speak to an audience is unparalleled.
In short, there are larger concerns here besides the general principle of free speech in the abstract. We should be discussing the consequences of incitement, falsehood, provocation, threats, disinformation, insults, and so on.
Up until Trump, societal norms, by and large, kept presidential speech within sensible bounds. [1] Trump has ignored those norms.
[1] Of course, there was plenty of deceipt, lying, cover-ups, rhetoric, and so on. But by any measure, Trump has blown the door off civility and credibility.
He read that, in the usual monotone he reserves for words he doesn't believe for a second. Did you actually believe he was sincere?
Here's the idea to consider: Trump was sincere! Trump is basically always sincere. Even when he contradicts himself in a matter of minutes. He is a master bullshitter who grew up going to Normal Vincent Peale's church. His entire life is built on the idea that it's all a stage, all a game. The RESULT of that is: he's extremely practiced at coming up with stories and convincing himself. In other words, self-deception. He knows he's bullshitting, but he doesn't think a reality beyond bullshitting exists. He believes what he says all the time. That's why he doesn't give the normal tells that indicate shifty lying and deception. Unlike the other politicians who are obviously being calculating and withholding their real thoughts, Trump is transparent. He's saying exactly what he actually thinks, and even when it is complete oxymoronic, he experiences no cognitive dissonance. He's not really lying in the normal sense, he's delusional.
Check out https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91612...
Trump is the ultimate self-deceiver. That's why his followers find him so appealing. He's authentic in that you can tell he really does say what he thinks and doesn't hold back. It's just that his mind is so constantly focused on whatever will get people to like him and otherwise what serves his interest, the content of his beliefs is similar to what it would be if he were consciously being deceptive. But if he were concerned about his stories being consistent and believable in content, he'd get all nervous and seem more like a liar. He's able to talk with sincerity because he doesn't care if his stories make sense, even as bullshit he still believes them for himself, at least enough to say the things in earnest.
Of course, I don't really know, but this would explain part of how it's possible for so many people to have still seen him as honest despite the plainly factually wrong things that come out of him.
“we”?
He also called the insurrectionists “patriots”, and said that he “loved them”, while they were holding the capital building, looting, causing damage, and parading confederate flags through the halls. Just FYI. As like another thing to consider.
It’s sort of surprising how you didn’t mention that yourself. It was literally in the same tweet. I guess it must have slipped your mind.
Besides that, the people responsible for violent crimes will very likely be prosecuted and harshly punished. The message "go home peacefully" is irrelevant for those people and is probably intended for everyone else. Looting is bad, but it's "jail time" bad and not "undying hatred" bad. It's okay to show some compassion to looters while telling them to change their behavior.
Standard practice[1]:
1. Actively Listen
2. Build Empathy & Rapport (recognize each others mindset)
3. Exert Influence & Change
It's also likely, he wasn't 100% aware of the circumstances.
Coming out and saying, "I abandon you, you traitors" wouldn't help. Imagine if there were hostages or more bombs! Saying it in a nice way could defuse the situation. Damning it while they are still at or in the building is not a good idea.
In a later video Trump said "they'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" and "we need Law and Order". So, I don't think it's a fair characterization given the context.
[1] https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/how-to-negotiate-usin...
The leave in peace video clearly had a subtext (he mentioned the election being stolen no less than 3 times in the video) and was not aimed at subduing the crowd at all. Furthermore, the later video where he said that the trespassers would be prosecuted is clearly scripted/edited (from the monotone and cuts in the filming), and likely happened because of some strong-arming (how else did he go from "we will never concede" to admitting defeat in a single day?)
My best guess as to what happened there was that Mitch McConnell (or someone else) figured that he could whip enough votes to impeach & convict if need be and Trump, facing potential consequences, reluctantly decided to play ball.
This is how you become irrelevant as an activist organisation, what sane person would donate to them now?
Rational people can see this surreal juvenile drama..this theatre..for what it is..and they are also watching and noticing the cognitive dissonance that has gripped our country.
After Jan 20, the real damage would be the aftermath of tech industry’s blitzkrieg. There is a silent majority that is watching and wondering. And shaking our heads.
My fear is darker. Are they acting on their own/in tandem or are they acting upon orders? If so, from who?
These are not irrational people. These are the best run corporate behemoths and such decisions are not made by one person. And it’s too swift to be made via consensus or analysis. None of this makes sense.
There are going to be questions after the dust settles.
I am not sure that you are in silent majority. Most people agree that Twitter should have banned Trump long time ago and are relieved that they finally did that. Since the majority do believe Trump incites violence, Twitter and Facebook etc. felt okay going ahead with banning him.
I still haven't heard a rational argument against banning Trump on Twitter. All free speech bullshit, which has been explained (why it is nonsense) for many years.
You said it. You are not sure.
Look. I speak for myself. And people I know. And the majority of people in MY circle are silent and confused and scratching our heads.
There is literally no evidence that ‘most people agree that Twitter should have banned Trump long time ago’. Are you speaking for ‘most people you know’ or ‘most people in the world’?
I am going to assume it’s the former. Point taken. Thanks for engaging.
However, they can’t take the pro free speech stance here because most of their donors are generally leftists who absolutely despise Trump. So the only move is to put the mission on the back burner and kowtow to the zeitgeist.
https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-... :
[..]A legislative counsel member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned Friday that the suspension of President Donald Trump's social media accounts wielded "unchecked power," by Twitter and Facebook.
Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU said in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.[..]
Everyone knows what's going on, the nature of the blatant double standards and bias that have gone on for years now (with eg left wing celebrities openly, routinely calling for violence with zero consequences). The Republicans were dumb enough to not do anything about these speech-controlling monopoly platforms while they had a chance. Now we've got big tech CCP censorship rolling through the virtual streets.
quoting balajis
[..]How would countries build sovereign apps?
1) Clone the features of WeChat, FB, or Twitter, which is much easier than developing from scratch
2) Encourage or requirr citizens to sign up, which is much easier if you’re a state
That’s product and distribution respectively.[..]
essentially..decentralised web.
jack was vacationing on an island in the french polynesia while he and his executives made the decision. maybe it's a time zone thing? because the timeline doesnt make sense to me. after the temporary ban, what happened that it became a permanent ban? what did the potus say that violence was glorified?
> “that last tweet was the call to violently disrupt the inauguration in POTUS’ absence”
What you are saying is not the last tweet from Trump I saw.
I don’t see what you are reading from it. Do you want to translate?
They'd still have to do their normal legal thing they do, while also having to manage a hosting service.
Yeah, you generally have to put in some efforts to realize your beliefs.
EFF supporting corporate personhood and private censorship?
It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
> It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication ...
My response is: yes, innovation can be good, exciting, powerful. But never forget to assess how human nature will respond.
> ... with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
Perhaps this will arrive, but I doubt it. Governments have many levers to influence behavior. Unless you are an anarchist, I suspect you support some role for goverment.
Even if a new communication form arises that cannot be policed -- be careful what you hope for. Free speech is not a panacea.
> "These are traitors," Cranley said, mentioning a pro-Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, a California resident who was shot and killed by Capitol police and a history of supporting unfounded conspiracy theories. "Traitors get shot. That's what happened." [0]
Is that the sort of inciting violence that should get you banned on Twitter?
[0]: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/08/as-co...
The ideological goals don't need compromise -- but the practical reality is that our society _needs_ an organization like EFF to be at the forefront on these topics -- advocating for better abstractions to help shape how we as a society should think and deal with these complex issues. EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. This article to me felt like the right wing response to gun violence events "we send our thoughts and prayers but let's not politicize this tragedy".
In particular -- there are simple ways to avoid worry over the "slippery slope" associated with defining policies that apply different rules to different users -- you can espouse policy frameworks that are explicitly parameterized by impact (impact is a bit fuzzy to capture in truth but conceptually clear -- and simple proxies suffice to communicate the concept -- in most cases the number of followers is a reasonably close conceptual proxy for a social network).
If you have 70 million followers and you say "let's punish immigrants" it's just simply a different thing than if you say the same thing and you have 10 followers -- pretending there "must not exist" a different framework for responding to events that occur on such vastly different scales is not practical and it's actually a failure to provide good advice here on an ideological level -- because we _know_ that these events are different and project meaningfully different risk profiles onto the world.
There is not a clear ideological reason to falsely pretend that "the same thing" is happening when two users with such vastly different impact publish the exact same sequence of words ... The threat model for "danger of communication" is based on impact and so should be the policy frameworks aimed at managing these risks.
I don't follow how this is tantamount to silencing itself. Would you explain?
The eff response to these actions is to emphasize that such blocking should be allowed so long as a consistent set of rules is used to perform blocking for this reason across a whole network. And they suggest the communication scale of the actor being blocked should not be a factor in the management criteria applied to the speech flowing across a given channel.
That's a principled position but it's also ludicrous - and it's impossible to take advice from that position which can then be applied to the real world. It's as tho they've said "yes, we acknowledge that free speech faces limits -- such as no yelling fire in a crowded theater -- but we do not acknowledge the existence of crowded theaters". What kind of advice are we left to take from such philosophizing?
Text sent over the largest of megaphones is just not the same thing as text sent over the much smaller megaphones available to most social media users.
Taking the EFF position espoused here to an extreme for illustration -- suppose Alice decides to use the emergency broadcast system as her personal twitter account for a day. With her every message all the cell phones in the country buzz an emergency broadcast alert letting us know what Alice wants to say. She exercises her right to political speech to let us all know that she thinks birth control pills are evil -- and in so doing she consumes some seconds of attention from 300 million people. At the same time -- she cross-posts to her twitter where she is followed by 50 people.
The EFF are more or less suggesting that the same principles and rules should apply to her twitter posts and her emergency broadcast system posts.
But in reality -- do we consider these information publishing channels directly comparable? Are we forced to accept that because these are both information publishing channels -- the set of things Alice is allowed to say on both channels must be the same?
Obviously we are not forced to take this position. And obviously this is a bit of a silly example since we all already know that different rules apply to the emergency broadcasting network -- yet we don't use the word "censor" to describe the set of things we don't want Alice to send out over the emergency broadcast network -- and why is that?
Going back to my claim that they are silencing themselves -- I think the EFF position in this article is basically abstract philosophy and that they are going out of their way to avoid addressing any of the specifics required to guide action in the real world. They had an opportunity to say something useful -- instead they said nothing in more words.
I am tentatively willing to accept that these are simply applications of free speech and section 230, provided that the EFF prompt governments to write legal frameworks for what these platforms can and cannot do.
It is not acceptable to have companies this large, and this influential, 100% unaccountable to democracy.
Perhaps I'm not understanding you, but as written, this is not true.
First, Congress can pass laws. Second, outside of legislation, there are democratic-capitalistic feedback mechanisms as well: people can 'vote with their feet'; decide what services to use, recommend, and criticize.
So I think you meant something else?
To be clear, I'm not defending these companies, and I do support intelligent (as opposed to reactionary), targeted (as opposed to blunt), principled (as opposed to arbitrary), and simple (as opposed to byzantine, inscrutable) regulations.
The First Amendment begins with:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The First Amendment is about what Congress cannot do. One has to look elsewhere to understand free speech protections (if any) in other contexts.
[1] I have not reviewed the EFF's complete history regarding free speech on social media. Of course, the EFF tends to opposes censorship, but I would also expect they have a history of taking more nuanced and calibrated stances on free speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.
However, that major platform companies are working on behalf of a (still) opposition party to obstruct and suppress a (still) sitting president with some 10 days left in his term, could have unforeseen legal consequences. It will be a very interesting week.
The problem is that if well meaning people break the rules, there is no reason for less well meaning ones not to ignore them.
Of course, communication companies banning their heads of state is probably normal, unless we'd like to sealion this thread?
Telling me to google a single word is not an argument or a citation. If you have an argument to make or a source to cite, go for it. Otherwise you are just making stuff up.