President of Mexico warns about Silicon Valley censorship | Hacker News Reader

President of Mexico warns about Silicon Valley censorship

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Multiple heads of states across the world are sharing the same message, see for example Germany and France :

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-se...

> Rights like the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision."

It takes balls to say that as the prime minister of Germany, probably the western country that limits speech the most.

They are disturbed by the fact that this speech limitation is decided single-handedly by the management of private companies, not by the speech limitation in itself.

These private companies didn’t come out of nowhere. They were able to exist because people were educated in a certain fashion that allowed large central attention grabbers to have a large impact on people. And this came largely as a consequence of political decisions.

The procedure should be: Parlaments make law, public/private agents file a complaint, judges decide if that applies, then the legal system shuts down content. NEVER EVER private parties, nor goverments, should be allowed to silence the free speech on their own criteria. As far as I know, that's how things work in Germany.

What are platforms supposed to do when the speech is illegal, or inciting violence or just against their terms of service or code of conduct?

You seem to be saying no online platform can have any sort of moderation of posted messages unless it's backed up by a court order, which seems crazy.

It's not any more crazy than people committing actual violence in real life, like murdering someone, and only getting properly arrested months later after an investigation has taken place.

Somehow we've managed to survive with that system for hundreds of years, why is it any different for online posts?

Due process is not a concept internet communities have really ever understood, outrage and reaction rules the internet, not calm, dispassionate logic or process

Spam.

Edit: here is Russ Allbery's legendary rant from 22 years ago on the subject. He is effectively arguing with himself in the preface, saying he doesn't want anyone banned from USENET, but I agree with the ranting Russ in the body.

In real world, privately owned public places like mall have their own rules and security (often with lethal weapons). They reserve the right to kick you out, use force if believe you are a present threat, and may block you from coming back in future.

If the speech is illegal then they can moderate it. Who defined it as illegal? The elected Government of the people right? No one voted for Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg. People voted for their own elected representatives who make the laws.

Private companies must follow what is in the law. If hate speech doesn't exist in the law people should lobby their elected representatives to enact laws governing hate speech which is then enforced by private companies. If private companies start making their own rules and regulations that go against freedom of speech (again don't bring in the first amendment as it applies only to US Citizens. Free speech in my country is not the same as Free speech as defined in first amendment) then it becomes problematic. Who is the final arbiter of free speech? It is the Government, the Court or the private company? If private companies start deciding what is illegal and what is not illegal then why the heck should I elect a Government? Just let private companies handle everything and let's dissolve the Government.

At the end of the day it should be the law of the land which decides what/which content is illegal and which is not. It should never be in the hands of private companies to decide. They have Section 230 precisely for that reason. They aren't liable for anything that happens on their platform except for what is defined as illegal in the Constitution. If there is something that is unsavoury and there isn't a law for it yet, the companies aren't held liable for it. When a law is passed deeming that unsavoury thing illegal then and only then will private companies be liable if they do not censor it. You get what I am trying to say? Laws should be implemented by the legislature. Period. Private companies can decide whatever rules they want to set for their employees. I am a user of the public platform they provide. Not their employee. They cannot regulate my speech unless it is required by law to censor anything illegal I say.

> illegal, incites violence

Who decides what these terms mean? At present its a small group of left-leaning corporate executives.

At the moment it just seems like people doing their own interpretation of what someone's inner motives are, because I really can't see a clear cut example of incitement of violence from any of this. This to me is a perfect example of the term "thought police" - we are guessing what your thinking.

E.g. Steve Bannon putting "heads on pikes" is clearly a common figure of speech and simply an emotive expression of anger. I'm sure you can find many politicians expressing similar things..."let's punch nazis" etc. Sounds like it can't cause harm...but what if you are called a Nazi and you are not? Every single atrocity in history comes from a group of people being portrayed as something they are not and then dehumanized because of it.

"Trump supporters" are incredibly dehumanized at present. They are nazis, racists, etc. It's okay to mistreat them because they are really bad people.

70mm people voted for Trump, and would probably disagree with the interpretations of the free speech violations. Do we actually believe a democratic process would result in a decision to permanently censor? No way.

All you have to do is imagine the reverse situation by swapping the two sides and imagining how you would feel.

Would you ever be okay having your speech taken away from you from a side that you disagree with? You might say "but I would never incite hatred", but what if they say you do?

And they did not just removed content, they decided to shut down the account of a head of state (and obviously not any country but the USA themselves).

I think that's key because that really sends the message that the FAANG have power over governments and that they can and will decide which politicians/governments to let communicate, which obviously raises many questions.

This is too public, FAANG should've stuck with backroom deals heh

Surely as the operator as a private service, you should have absolute control over what your service is used for?

Unless we want to start seeing things like Facebook and AWS as accountable public utilities.

If ICANN started blocking domains, then this would be a free speech issue.

What about is verisign or Dohnuts or one of the other big registry "private companies" start blocking domains?

I dont think that has happened yet, but I am sure it is just a matter of time, I see no logical or legal reason they would not face the same public pressure that AWS did for hosting Parlar as an example, what is stopping Verisign from delisting Parlar.com from the global .com registar

> Surely as the operator as a private service, you should have absolute control over what your service is used for?

This fails to acknowledge that Twitter and Facebook are not just private services, they are de-facto global standards of communication, included for governments.

This is great for Twitter and Facebook as long as they keep a neutral stance. When they stop being neutral then governments start to reflect on their power and indeed whether they should be regulated as utilities or ditched (hence e.g. the market's reaction as seen on Twitter's stock price).

I believe that both have TOS that will get you booted out of the platform if you breach them.

This is not a free-speech issue but a de-platforming issue, it's subtle difference that seems to be lost to many people.

> I believe that both have TOS that will get you booted out of the platform if you breach them.

TOS written by Twitter and enforced by Twitter exactly the way Twitter decides, including against governments and heads of state? Right, exactly the point of my previous comment.

I think this is a watershed moment because "de-platforming" Trump while he is still President will be seen as a step too far that will have consequences for these platforms. Not least because they are already very much on the radar of governments.

What about VISA?

I don't know of any European country, Germany included, where companies are unable to exercise editorial control over what they distribute, unless they fall in very narrow categories (e.g. phone networks, mail carriers).

EDIT: That does not mean I don't have sympathy for the thought that we do need a debate over what level of freedom sufficiently dominant social media platforms should have to ban people. At the same time it's noteworthy just how much we hear from the people who insist they're being censored - most of them have platforms far in excess of most people even after these bans. What they're complaining about is being stripped of a level of amplification that previously didn't exist.

Germany has some of harshest anti free speech law, where you can go to prison for denying Holocaust

a law which was democratically approved, with public oversight, a mechanism for undoing it and not at the whim of private shareholders.

Personally I think such massive changes in society should not be down to either private company tyranny nor tyranny of the majority in a "democratically approved" why, i.e 50.000009% "ruling" over 49.999991% of the people.

In the US to undue the 1st amendment it would take not only a super majority of both houses congress, but then it would take 3/4 of all state legislatures to ratify the change. This is far more stringent of a requirement than is simply majority.

Republican forms of government, ones with lots distributed power, are far far far better than democracies

Exactly right. There are already properly defined rules and regulations in the Constitution of every country. These rules and regulations have been implemented by elected representatives of the people of those countries. If there is anything lacking it should be done through legislation legally. Not through private companies deciding on their own whims and fancies.

Which is why GDPR exists isn't it? Every country can frame it's own rules. Private companies must abide by those rules. Neither should they be allowed to create rules for their platforms beyond what is defined in the Constitution of the countries they operate in. Restricting speech by private companies must be made illegal. If someone says or does something wrong on social media there is recourse for it already defined by the law. Any content removal should be in the hands of the users of the platform (similar to GDPR) or the elected Government. Private companies must only be allowed to remove content that has been explicitly defined as illegal in the constitution of the particular country.

For everything else they can enjoy immunity from being liable for whatever is posted on their platform. Liability is always with the end user of their services. That way, there won't be any extra burden on these private companies to moderate content.

Law apply to everybody on the territory relevant for its jurisdiction. Regardless of whether you use public services and benefit from its administration, you are expected to obey to it. If you don’t use a private service, you don’t have obey to their term of service, and law might even grants you ability to forbid private companies to exploit data related to you in their services.

The real problem here is not some private services chose what is or what is not available in their services. The core issue is their monopolistic position on information infrastructure. To some degree, people are responsible for not using decentralizing services, and for that, shame on people. On the other hand, when people are not educated to actively defend themselves against mass manipulation, it’s no wonder they end up trapped in that kind of "free" services. Of course, any form of political power that is not based on maximizing people auto-determination will precisely want easily manipulable people.

Neither these private companies nor political parties that now fake to be outraged by censure of opinion want auto-determined people able to share anything that might look like a menace to the centralized institutions they have in their hands.

That was my point. Free speech is not absolute. It has limitations everywhere. I think people have conflated three problems - 1) Tech monopoly on the internet and 2) Whether free speech is absolute and 3) Does free speech apply to tech companies. In a vacuum, there are different solutions for each. For example, you would break up tech monopoly, but that has nothing to do with free speech. But rather because it prevents competition. For free speech and its applicability, it is ok to legislate and define what it is, like Germany does. But I don't really hear a call for that

You aren't getting it. Free speech and subsequent limitations of such free speech must and must be decided by elected representatives. Not by private companies.

In this case Germany has every damn right to frame such laws. They are a Sovereign Nation. The people of Germany have empowered their Government through their constitution.

Twitter/Facebook/Google et all are not Sovereign States. They haven't been elected by anyone. Their rules cannot override the laws of the State. They cannot frame rules that go against the laws of the State. They have to work within the ambit of the laws defined by the State. The power to frame such laws is in the hands of the legislature given by the people of the State. I never gave any powers to Facebook/Twitter/Google et all to regulate my speech as guaranteed by my Constitution (which is the Constitution of India). They cannot bring in First Amendment arguments of the United States to counter the Free Speech as defined in the Indian Constitution. It simply does not work that way.

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Rate limited so replying to qwytw as s/he raises a very important point:

> I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from, for example, requiring newspapers to publish every letter their receive irregardless of their editorial stance.

You are talking about curation not about banning/removal. Billions of tweets are sent to Twitter every day. But only few make it to the top of the trends. No one has a problem with curation. We have a problem with banning of our content just because Twitter feels it is problematic. Not because it is explicitly defined in the Constitution as being problematic.

Let us assume that you send a letter to a Newspaper to publish in editorial and you include swear words in it (Let us assume "orange haired buffoon" is a swear word. Because you are upset with Trump you call him an "orange haired buffoon" in your letter). The Newspaper won't publish it. That is perfectly fine. They won't punish you for it. Probably will make a paper rocket out of your letter and throw it around in the office. But if you send a violent threat in the letter (calling for assassination of Trump), they'll contact Police/FBI/CIA and hand them over your letter. Easy to grok?

Now let us compare that to Twitter. Twitter will read your tweet with swear words in it (Trump is a orange haired buffoon). It will immediately remove it and warn you of consequences of tweeting something like that again else face a 7 day suspension (with a subsequent warning of 30 day, 1 year and permanent suspension if you repeat it again and again). Already there is a big difference between how the Newspaper company handled your letter vs how Twitter handled your tweet.

Twitter is regulating speech here. It has decided that "orange haired buffoon" constitutes a violation of someone else's rights. You might have said "orange haired buffoon" in jest. The person receiving your tweet might also have gotten a good chuckle out of it. But Twitter decides nope. You do not have the right to use "orange haired buffoon" on our platform else you'll be kicked out. Even if you and your friend whom you are tweeting at swear at each other in real life, you can't do that on Twitter. Do you see how quickly this degenerates to suspending/banning for ridiculous things?

Which is why content removal/moderation must be only for those things that are clearly defined as illegal by the State. For everything else, the platform already has Section 230. They can enjoy not being liable for anything that is posted on their platforms. If I am a social media platform, why would I go out of my way to provide an imperfect implementation of speech regulation and waste my time on that aspect when I already have safeguards of Section 230? Wouldn't it be better if this is legally defined in the Constitution of the country where the user is from? That way there is consistency between platforms.

If I go to Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Google or any other platform I will be following the same rules (as defined by law) instead of reading the fine print of every service to see if I am in violation of any of their ridiculous rules/regulations.

> Twitter/Facebook/Google et all are not Sovereign States.

In the cyberpunk future, megacorps are sovereign. If the next wave of demonstrations was aimed at the HQs of these corporations instead of US govt buildings, the corporations might feel a need to start building their own security forces, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation

"Megacorps are so powerful that they can ignore the law, possess their own heavily armed (often military-sized) private armies, be the operator of a privatized police force, hold "sovereign" territory, and even act as outright governments."

So you're basically implying that private companies shouldn't have a right to moderate content or ban users on their websites without a court order? I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from, for example, requiring newspapers to publish every letter their receive irregardless of their editorial stance.

The real problem is that the market is dominated by a couple of huge companies that have disproportionate power and can pretty much do whatever they want without the risk of losing significant numbers of users. I don't see how legally requiring them to be content neutral can fix that, even if Twitter can't just remove your posts or ban you I'm sure they'll manage to find legal ways to make your content virtually invisible if they want to without directly removing it.

Replying to the edit:

"Which is why content removal/moderation must be only for those things that are clearly defined as illegal by the State"

Twitter can't decide what is illegal only a court can do that. Irregardless of how clear the law is, there will have to be an appeal process and anyone unhappy with Twitter's moderation decisions will be be able to sue them. So in practice content moderation will have to be handled by a government agency. IMHO that would be much worse than the current situation because (besides being huge waste of resources) now when you're unhappy with what Twitter is doing you can still (at least theoretically) move to a different platform.

"Wouldn't it be better if this is legally defined in the Constitution of the country where the user is from"

So if someone in (for example) Thailand posts something negative about Thailand's king Twitter would be required to remove that post, while if someone in the US does that they would take no action. Do you really think this is a good idea?

> So if someone in (for example) Thailand posts something negative about Thailand's king Twitter would be required to remove that post, while if someone in the US does that they would take no action. Do you really think this is a good idea?

It already is happening that way. What is GDPR then? As a European citizen you can ask for removal of content about you while a US Citizen or an Indian Citizen doesn't have that right (not yet atleast). Another example: I am from India. Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. Now in Google Maps you'll see it as part of India if you are in India. But the moment you travel out of India, Jammu and Kashmir is shown as disputed territory between India, Pakistan and China. If you land in China a portion of Ladakh is shown as part of China (Aksai Chin). If you land in Pakistan a portion of Kashmir is shown as part of Pakistan. This is because all 3 countries claim the territory to be theirs. So if you display the territory as disputed in India you are in violation of our Constitution and will attract huge fines and can even be barred from setting up a company in India ever again.

These peculiarities always existed from many years. It is not new for social media platforms to regulate such things. They have already been doing it. It is far easier to regulate these small issues than regulate the entire social network. When you do the latter scope for getting it wrong is way higher than scope for getting it right.

> Twitter can't decide what is illegal only a court can do that. Irregardless of how clear the law is, there will have to be an appeal process and anyone unhappy with Twitter's moderation...

Why can't Twitter decide? They can decide. They already do it for illegal content. If you upload child porn or threaten someone with murder it becomes illegal and Twitter will remove it either automatically or when reported. That won't change. You can drag Twitter to court but you will lose in the first hearing itself when evidence is presented. In fact you'll be setting yourself up for prison time by voluntarily implicating yourself. That is why having it codified as a Law is so much more effective. There is no scope for ambiguity. And it's not easy to file a court case. You have to pay lawyer fees, you'll have to pay court fees at the very minimum. No one in the right frame of mind will needlessly move court over a tweet they put out which even they know is illegal. In fact, Twitter can be dragged to court if what they banned wasn't illegal. That gives more power to users and counter balances the Section 230 power that social media companies enjoy.

It depends on where you draw the line. Sure if only things like child porn, threatening to murder someone etc. are illegal, then, I assume, this would work. But for example what about hate speech or holocaust denial? Neither is illegal in the US. Would Twitter be legally required to host content inciting racial hatred on their site even if they don't want to? Would it be illegal for Twitter to show any posts made by users in the United States to users who are in the UK or Germany (if the content is ambiguous I don't see how they could determine whether it's illegal in the target court without requesting it's courts to review it)?

I'm not even sure how this could work in countries where "hate speech" is illegal either. If the content is not explicit and open to interpretation can Twitter just declare that it's illegal and remove it? If so, then how is this any different from what they are doing currently? Or would they have to wait until the user is convicted by a court before removing it?

> But for example what about hate speech or holocaust denial? Neither is illegal in the US. Would Twitter be legally required to host content inciting racial hatred on their site even if they don't want to? Would it be illegal for Twitter to show any posts made by users in the United States to users who are in the UK or Germany (if the content is ambiguous I don't see how they could determine whether it's illegal in the target court without requesting it's courts to review it)?

Yes. If hate speech or holocaust denial is not illegal then Twitter is legally required to host such content. If you strongly feel this should not be the case then take the help of your representatives and codify it into law. Then Twitter will be forced to take it down.

Let me ask a counter question. There are countries where blasphemy is illegal and attracts a death sentence. In America you can get away with criticizing a religion. You can't do that in say Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Now, what should Twitter/Facebook do? Should it ban such content or keep such content? If you are a US citizen and indulge in blasphemy of a religion, will your post be shown to a Pakistani or should it not be shown?

> Would it be illegal for Twitter to show any posts made by users in the United States to users who are in the UK or Germany (if the content is ambiguous I don't see how they could determine whether it's illegal in the target court without requesting it's courts to review it)?

Yes it would be illegal for Twitter to show posts by users in US to users in UK and Germany if content is illegal. If content is ambiguous they can always decide to keep the content up and get a court review on the content. It isn't that hard to determine if content is illegal or not. They already have tools that flag such content. The only difference would be that they would first check if the content is actually violating any policies before removing it rather than just blanket removing it and making the user go through an appeals process. The worst part of the automated system that they have as of now removes a lot of false positive posts for hate speech while refusing to remove actual offending accounts. They are heavily reliant on algorithms that have a 40-50% success rate.

> If the content is not explicit and open to interpretation can Twitter just declare that it's illegal and remove it?

If content is not explicit and open to interpretation Twitter can decide not to do anything with it until a court order is produced to take it down. Section 230 and similar regulations give Twitter that protection from being liable. Twitter is not a judge. It can always ask you to get a court order for removal of that offending content and Twitter will happily remove it.

In fact this is not something alien to Big Tech. Do you know that you can request removal of content from Google SERPs indexed by other websites? Google asks for a court order for the same. If it is your content Google will happily remove it. For removing another user's content a court order is required if the content is open to interpretation and Google cannot decide if it is illegal or not.

Google form to legally remove content from Google Search Index that you don't own: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905#ts=9...

Let me ask you another question:

Can we have a court system which only looks at issues related to social media and fast track such cases (like in Poland where you get a verdict in 7 days time)? Every country can have one. Just like we have international laws that every country ratifies, we can have countries ratify a court system that only fast tracks cases pertaining to online abuse/hate speech/violations etc. The court in each country is setup according to the Constitution of that country.

All social media companies forward complaints to that court through an API. The court is the final arbiter. If it is a criminal case the court forwards it to a criminal court. If it is a civil case the court forwards it to a civil court. If it feels it can resolve the case on their own they'll resolve it. Any verdict is passed back to the social media companies through an API call as well. That way all social media companies don't have to rely on creating their own rules and regulations and setting up support teams to handle such cases and instead offload that job to this special court system. Users are happy too as they won't be confused about conflicting rules and regulations. A user will know his own country's laws better than rules and regulations of a tech site online. It makes matters worse if he is signed up with dozens of services (which is the norm today) and has to remember rules in all services. It is too much to ask for from a user. Every citizen of every country has sworn allegiance to his/her own Constitution. Following the rules/regulations laid down in that Constitution is more than sufficient. Why should citizens be expected to learn rules set by private companies that are by themselves ephemeral?

The point is that the legislature/sovereign should be the sole arbiter not a private company especially not under their jurisdiction.

Germany also limits free speech under other provisions such as incitement and slander under criminal law, and subsequent compensation for libel under civil law. For all I know, the US also has strong legislation against complicit behavior for harboring acts of terrorism and/or treachery.

Its a bit ironic, China didn't want to be beholden to anyone and buggered off and built their own...

meanwhile, the rest of the world whines - but doesn't seem to be interested in building anything similar for national infrastructure.

If you consider social media to so critical, shouldn't you have internal infrastructure? These services are hardly rocket science now - we have over a decade experience building and scaling them. If you're really so concerned about it, it would seem prudent to build something under public perview?

ps - this stuff really annoys me, as I generally don't 'like' megacorps, and really dislike feeling I'm 'supporting' them :-/

> Its a bit ironic, China didn't want to be beholden to anyone and buggered off and built their own... meanwhile, the rest of the world whines - but doesn't seem to be interested in building anything similar for national infrastructure.

Maybe the alphabets, the culture, the political regime and the available funds make it possibly successful for China.

Most of the time, the “there can be only one” rule seems to apply. We may live to see the day where the giant US proprietary networks morph into some kind of federated “national” networks, with different set of legal rules. Somehow reminiscent of email, dns, xmpp...

There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix or alternatives to Twitter or Facebook.

>>Most of the time, the “there can be only one” rule seems to apply.

I don't think thats an issue given we have FB, Twitter, Insta, Snapchat, Reddit, etc etc. I think even myspace is still around..

>>giant US proprietary networks morph into some kind of federated “national” networks, with different set of legal rules.

I just don't think US _companies_ should morph into 'national' anything.. If you feel freedom of opinion/speech is so important, and you're counting on private companies in foreign countries to provide it - you've failed your citizens. Germany has its own armed forces, because they consider that key to the peace and sovereignty of their nation. Wouldn't a similar approach to digital infrastructure be prudent?

> I just don't think US _companies_ should morph into 'national' anything..

My wording wasn’t clear sorry. I was imagining the whole system morphing, not the company being themselves morphed in public services.

Facebook could be the pRivately owned US social network and the hypothetical Francebook a public service, both exchanging in a federated fashion over some kind of agreed upon protocol.

yeah - that really would be challenging...the data streams would have to be checked for compliance with local law in both directions, in real time?

Of course, that's assuming they could ever agree on a protocol. :-P

Comparable to the efforts spent for the international stock and trade markets I guess. Standards, treaties, taxes, lots of quirks and paperwork.

Maybe because real political independence of European and similar countries is too small? This leads to military, technological, and ecnomicall dependence as well. Until recently, this dependence was not a big problem, but as situation in the US started to slowly deteriorate it started to show more and more drawbacks.

The other country in addition to China with a certain level of political independence is Russia and it's also quite sensitive about nurturing its national infrastructure. It got certain level of success here, though due to its economic capabilities and population size, it's far from China's level (e.g. they don't have viable YouTube and Twitter competitiors). The other country which could fit here is India, but I am not familiar enough with its national IT infrastructure.

I would have thought the smaller countries would have an easier time of it - they don't have to build as big. Sorta like how Scandinavia got high speed internet rolled out much faster then more populous countries.

Don't forget about network effects. Assuming we are talking about centralized solutions, value of social networks (and of similar services) rises super-linearly compared to its total number of users. So it's another factor why it's much easier for big countries to build their independent infrastructure compared to a smaller ones.

>>Don't forget about network effects.

Hyper-localized services are also popular - 'neighborhood' and local shopping, etc. I really don't see making services for say, 35ish million population like Canada, has being difficult compared to making services for 320ish million like the US has. There are a number of social media,etc. that get 50M MAUs, so its not a 'google scale' problem by any means.

edit: grammar

Social media platforms are powerful, not critical. If all the platforms disappeared tomorrow, our lives would not be disrupted (personally I think we’d be even healthier, but that’s a personal view). This doesn’t change the fact that these networks can reach and move the masses. I also don’t believe that these problems would be solved by creating alternative national platforms controlled by governments: why should users migrate from fb/twitter/...? Governments wouldn’t spend huge sums on engineering engagement and addiction (as they shouldn’t).

It’s going to be great as Facebook and Twitter try to silence heads of state of other countries.

Small inaccuracy by Bloomberg: Merkel was speaking of freedom of opinion(Meinungsfreiheit) and not freedom of speech(Redefreiheit), the latter doesn’t exist as such in Germany.

> freedom of speech(Redefreiheit), the latter doesn’t exist as such in Germany.

yes it does! article 5 of the constitution

http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_5.html

Well, that’s freedom of expression. Not quite the same, but I will concede your point :)

These governments should build their own media platforms that allow their politicians to tweet.

And only have it that it's mirrored on services like twitter

The government already puts stuff out on websites, right? People just don't go there, the audience is on FB, Twitter, etc.

But my guess is Trump will be the first guy to set up his own network, looks like he needs it, plus he has enough of a following that people will install an app just to hear his content.

On what platform will his app appear? Apple and Google will ban any app associated with Trump.

He can make his own website, surely? It just needs to be a forum site, much like any old hobby might have. If he wants an app he can offer an APK for Android. Not sure the bulk of Trump supporters can figure out TestFlight, but someone could put up detailed instructions. In any case you don't really need the app, you can have a browser link.

Twitter should build its own global internet infrastructure

Is that just a press release? Trump is free to do as many of those as he wants.

Media platforms should train their own engineers from an early age with their own money instead of hiring them "for free" after the public has paid their school education.

That's your style of argumentation and I doubt it brings us far.

This really has the potential for regulatory retribution towards Twitter from governments around the world.

What's to stop the tech platforms censoring the next person who the Trump supporters follow which is almost half the voting pop in US.

What is weirdest about this whole thing is that Trump remains one of the most speech empowered people in the world; he can get up at any point and have a press conference, he can plaster messages all over the whitehouse web page etc. So in that light whether or not any specific company chooses to give him even more speech rights -it seems completely discretionary and companies can and should decide what is in their business interests.

I'm also prompted to tell these politicians - well how about you support open platforms and mediums rather than buying into proprietary walled gardens in the first place? It's not like these things don't exist.

>What is weirdest about this whole thing is that Trump remains one of the most speech empowered people in the world

Most people I know don't like Trump at all but are deeply concerned with the coordinated censorship and narrative campaign being waged by the tech monopolies, banks, payment processors and other corporations. Thoughtful people understand that this incredible, unaccountable power to erase people from society is incredibly dangerous in a democracy, even if there are many, less intelligent people, who are okay with it because right now they perceive this awesome power as being used against their perceived political.

All Big Tech censorship related posts have been pushed to the 4th page on Hacker News. Even if it has more upvotes than many items on the front page. Even Hacker News is in on this censorship.

Isn't it kind of funny how they're all worried now? It's not like the big platforms didn't ban people before Trump.

But they were small fries, who cares, right?

Wait until they hear about doctor appointment waiting times for normal people and how they can't get proper care. Now that would be a shock.

well, there is a big difference between a democratically elected politician and some random troll.

There's plenty of people who didn't do anything wrong getting demonetized and deplatformed.

Could be someone else (who's more "important") didn't like them or just an algorithm problem.

They often have no recourse, and the government tells them "well, it's a private platform, we can't do anything".

Extra rights for politicians should not be a principle in a democratic society.

Silencing politicians is the same as silencing their constituents

I agree with this. That's how representative democracy works.

I completely agree with you on this point, however the alternative should not be 'everyone is at the mercy of the management of private companies'.

There should be a due process (and recourse) at the very least for public figures, and this should not be held privately by corporations but in front of a court.

Not any more there isn't.

I am all for censoring fascists

I declare you to be a fascist and ban you.

You may protest at spam@hedberg10.com

I completely support your right to deem people fascist at a whim and ban them from your web properties.

And what about when those web properties are monopolies? What about when those monopolies regularly collude in broad daylight so as to lock out persons and companies from being able to host products in marketplaces, infrastructure, and even process payments or access banking?

The situation is considerably more complex with Amazon. For one, hedberg10 stands to gain little from terminating business relationships with political opponents of the incoming administration. Amazon does. I’m not sure my right to be able to buy eBooks from a variety of suppliers in a competitive market is being given due protection.

If I have done activity that deems I am a fascist based on a corporations policy, that's totally fine. Don't see a problem with that. Unless you think ISIS should also exist on Twitter promoting their beheading video series

“ First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me”

Who's the they in this poem? The Nazis, right? If only somebody had "come for" the Nazis before millions of people got killed. You can't cite Niemoller in the defence of fascists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

The poem literally speaks against their kind and a quick google search could save you the embarrassment.

If you believe Mark Zuckerberg is a saint.

Problem is, no-one came for the Nazis, and nobody "blocked" their propaganda

You’ll get buried with a low-effort comment like this, but one thing to think about: this is the exact position fascists take.

Give it a good thought: fascists wouldn’t label themselves as such. They will of course call themselves decent democratic socialists, and do it in the name of decent socialist values.

So to even try and make your point you’d need to back it up with: how would you ensure wolfs-in-sheep’s-clothing or the-well-intentioned-but-overreactive don’t use your “censor fascists” support to back door their way into the only world superpower with strong free speech laws and, well, end those?

And when a couple social networks have a vast majority of the users (social networks are literally network-effects) how is censorship on them not akin to a massive balance of power disparity that would reinforce itself? By the same logic of supporting banning voices from then you must admit they embody incredible power, even if they are private companies.

Ya, we know. It's just that the people capable of extrapolating understand that those in charge of this "fascist" label are exactly the people least interested in its usage in good faith.

Free speech isn't a utopian ideal; most liberal ideals aren't. It is a principle that understands that the bad that comes from freedom of speech is completely outclassed by the bad that comes from opening up the capability to restrict it.

This is the exact thing a fascist would say. A liberal would never say this. If you want to censor someone's speech just because you don't agree with them, congratulations you are already a fascist.

The President of Mexico has higher priority problems to work on and he is using this as a distraction for those problems.

AMLO should man up and do something about the illicit domestic activity.

For example, make use of the air force and facilitate self-defense across Mexico.

Not sure if it's a good idea that you're inciting violence on a privately-owned public forum.

It seems like the poster was encouraging the Mexican head of state to deal with the drug cartel problem there; I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing people would usually describe as "inciting violence".

How do you self-defend without violence?

Not only illicit substances but also fuel theft, extortion, kidnappings, etc.

Many forms of crime going on there and the rate at which crimes get resolved by low enforcement is low.

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