I’d like to see more of a constitutional framework establishing some type of due process and equal access, personally.
We’re currently the sole arbitrators of who is allowed to speak to the world and who is not. And for all those who say “they’re welcome to go use a different platform”, well they did, and look what happens. Apple, Google, and Amazon can simply destroy a community within minutes, and we all applaud because we detest this particular community.
I'm not a Trump supporter but all this ban wave seems very selective.
Specially since I've seen so many things considered as "hate speech" on these platforms that were not filtered.
Obviously, YT's ban on Donny is not random or capricious, it's very intentional.
But the larger issue remains that YT is a bad host to begin with and has been for nearly a decade. Maybe the larger YT community, including advertisers, needs a better choice than what it currently uses. Or a better legal framework in which to operate as YT.
I just don't see how to make it less selective. The problems here are categories like "inciting violence" which are just not clear-cut. It's not like a copyright protection case, where it's usually very clear that someone uploaded a copy of Pulp Fiction, and you can set strict rules for the edge cases by saying "fifteen second clips of videos are fine, sixteen second clips are banned, yeah it's arbitrary but it has to be and now we'll apply that fairly."
For "inciting violence" the problems will be like, someone says "Hey everyone get ready to take action on X date. Be prepared! Be at location X! You know what to do! Tell all your friends! Remember your second amendment rights!" And none of those statements are inherently violent themselves, they are all compatible with the sort of peaceful protest that we want to encourage. But the emergent behavior of a whole lot of communication like this can be, well someone is using messages that are individually innocent to organize violent activity, and in many cases they just totally know what they're doing.
In a court this ends up getting decided by a jury, "beyond reasonable doubt", there are rights for the accused, and so on. But nobody has the resources to start a court case over every tweet that says "Bring your guns to the protest tomorrow, I'm bringing mine!"
Hate speech is like inciting violence but even more subjective.
Personally I think we will have an "archipelago" where there are many different online communities with different censorship rules, each somewhat arbitrary. I think the current situation with Trump is a pretty extreme one, and I doubt we will see a similar situation to Parler for quite some time.
If such a ban were to have been placed on Trump, it should have come through at least Congressional vote. Not by unilateral BigTech action.
Again, Facebook has carried multiple live streams of shootings- YouTube has carried plenty of abusive videos and videos supporting violence and terrorism.
From a political perspective they are setting themselves up for attack with this response. Like, still waiting on details but Ron Paul got kicked off of Facebook. How in the heck did that goofy little ol dude incite this?
I also am beginning to notice that with every major act of terrorism in the past couple of years, may God help you if the lunitics used your platform and you were not Google/Facebook/Twitter. If you were one of those three you will just claim oopsie and move on. If you were a small platform then the entire weight of the corporate oligarchy will come down on you while never picking up a mirror.
I also think Fox news and CNN should be held accountable for their radicalization of both sides- hear me out. You have one half of this country that is convinced Trump was literally Hitler, not only that he also was elected by election manipulation via Russia. You have the other half of the country, that lives in a reality where the election has been stolen from them and they're being censored on all major forms of media. They believe the election was stolen by the Chinese.
At some point the media has to be held accountable. Fear porn may sell, but it has a damned high cost.
Please understand I love this community, hacker news is one of the few places I can make a statement like this and expect reasonable and civil responses. And a no way should anyone take what I'm saying personally, I feel the system is broken- I don't think we can survive as a nation with a fractured worldview perpetuated by a 24/7 news cycle amplified by short-sighted memes and microblogs.
Highly problematic.
> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon censor a sitting President
What are you talking about? He's the president. If he has something to say, there are a million ways for him to get the message out.
> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments
A government compelling a person (or a private company) to publish something is in violation of the law in many countries, often a constitutional law (Example: That violates the first amendment quite clearly, in the USA). I also think most folks would find that highly suspect.
Bigger companies shutting out smaller ones is highly problematic, but then laws do exist to stop this (anti-trust laws). These probably need an update. Whatever update they get, if they prevent Parler's shutdown they went too far. I'm pretty sure that shutdown wasn't about 'eliminating' a competitor at all.
20 years ago: The reach and minds share of Fox News and CNN are unparalleled
40 years ago: The reach and minds share of ABC and NBC are unparalleled
50 years ago: The reach and minds share of News Radio are unparalleled
70 years ago: The reach and minds share of New York Times and other papers are unparalleled
100 years ago: The reach and minds share of the town criers are unparalleled
And Georgia demonstrates that technology matters very little even in high-stakes races. One In-person contact and live phone calls (meaning that the person from the campaign is an actual person, not a recorded message) matters more than a thousand tweets, more than a thousand Facebook posts.
AWS makes it easier not to use hardware, sure, but many campaign websites are just customized Wordpress. You can run that on any webhost, or even an old laptop in the back of the campaign office.
Determining appropriate limits for free speech is appropriately the job of high level legal philosophers, perhaps a statesman or two - it certainly seems above the paygrade of those who have simply competed as businessmen to create and build and maintain that public square.
When we faced this issue with the civil rights movement, we decided the citizens had the better claim than the businesses. This time around we seem to be leaning the other way.
I don't think the answer is obvious. I think it would take an ethereal genius to come up with an answer we all broadly considered fair and right, and all we seem to have is hacks playing for partisan advantage.
Open communication is good, but not when taken to absolute extremes. Blocking content designed to radicalize people is not communication that should be broadcast indiscriminately. And no provider should be forced to host any and all content any user can think up - a balance between these extremes is demonstrably better for society as a whole.
The analogy I've been using amongst friends/family, is that "big tech" has gone nuclear. The Bomb has gone from being a hypothetical to a reality. And no matter how much we do or don't agree with this particular target/application, we have to be aware that there's no putting this genie back in the bottle, and this is going to be an option in all future "wars".
It's a tortured and over-dramatic analogy, but I find it the easiest way to communicate the divide between not particularly wanting to defend this particular target, but still being uneasy that The Bomb even exists.
If we actually had functioning law enforcement for this stuff then we could actually have a proper discussion about what legal content what should be moderated and how.
..and [one would hope] carefully and [one would hope] according to well-understood rules.
"She said something that really offends me" probably won't get you arrested, and almost certainly won't get you convicted; under the current climate it might well get you kicked off social media.
If you only provide a forum, and give moderation power to users (block other users, select what they want), then let whatever speech happens there to happen.
However, if you (as a forum provider, social network, whatever) select the content to be viewed and promoted (either using a proprietary algorithm or human discretion), or you are optimizing for engagement, then you are responsible for moderation failures and suspensions.
If not, then we will have some ‘promoting’ big accounts instead of twitter or facebook, we will be back to square one.
100%, yes. If someone posts something illegal and you retweet, you should be on the hook as well.
Another feature: let me bang on the downvote or upvote button multiple times to tell the system how much I like or dislike something. Show me more or less or none at all of that topic/user/etc based on that.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, I'd like to see comments and topics sorted by how much my own personal network of influencers rated them. I don't care that 100,000 idiots liked American Idol. I care how much the 100 people I followed hated it (so don't show it to me, ever).
Some people don't like my idea because they say it will create an echo chamber. To them I say that it more closely models real life. In real life, I generally don't hang around with people who I disagree with all the time. My ideal system would insulate people from me if they disagree with me and me from them. Twitter must have a different goal.
There are thousands of better examples of Google etc having too much power than their eventual refusal to deal with the most famous and powerful man in the world, a man who can 100% rely on his every move being publicised in minute detail. It's a strange time for people to start caring about this stuff.
That's what I'm afraid is going to end up happening. When I was a kid, Reagan would occasionally "pre-empt" normal prime-time TV to talk about whatever the hell was on his mind. It drove me crazy: he would suddenly be on every station and there was nothing else to watch. I asked my parents why he was allowed to do that and they'd say, "TV operates on public airwaves and the government owns the public airwaves". Well, as annoying as Reagan pre-empting the Cosby Show was back then, the "public airwaves" argument was used to justify a whole heck of a lot of worse government overreach that I really, really don't want to see come to the internet.
No one claims section 230 protections. It applies to everyone and every service on the internet in the US.
You can't "lose" those protections, they're just the law.
And that law states (paraphrasing): You can't sue me for something a third person says.
That's essentially it. You can't "qualify" for or "lose" that protection.
And it applies to you and me and HackerNews and Facebook and Twitter and your github repo and your favorite recipe site and every other web site and Mastodon instance and Discord channel and mailing list and IRC channel and porn site and anywhere else that allows more than one person to share their thoughts.
>it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator.
That's not part of the law either. And a good thing too.
Section 230 (yes, I'm saying it again) says (paraphrasing):
You can't be sued for something another person says. Full stop. No fairness is required, no balance, no transparency, none of that.
Should the big social networking sites be regulated and reined in? Absolutely! But changing/repealing Section 230 won't do that. In fact, it would hurt everyone and the deep pocketed social media companies would be just about the only ones who could afford to fight all the lawsuits.
We need to find a different way to fix this.
Fair enough. It's an interesting thought. Personally, I think we should both think bigger and look to regulation and market-based solutions[0].
That said, I went on at some length because so many folks around here don't seem to know what the law is and make lots of ridiculous claims about it.
Consider that my PSA for the day. :)
Usually large companies don't take action like this until they are under public scrutiny and have something to loose.
The mess the US is in right now can in some ways blamed on the way way it's democracy works: candidates can win elections with a plurality of the vote. This incentivizes highly partisan activities like gerrymandering and makes it more difficult for 3rd party to gain traction.
Most states and localities have closed primaries, meaning you need to be registered with a party to vote for a candidate. This takes power away from the people and puts it in the hands of the parties.
If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it.
That's slowly changing ~15 states have non/bi-partisan redistricting commissions. A dozen or so states and localities have implemented Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Is it enough? No. And it never will be unless people all over the country stand up and demand it.
It's not as hard as it sounds. Election laws are made by the states and election systems are run by each county.
26 states have ballot initiaves/referenda. All you need are enough signatures to get changes on the ballot.
How many people voted for your state assembly person in 2018? For your state senator? You can go look it up. I'll wait.
Not very many, right? Those are the people who make the election laws for the state.
And how many people voted for your council member in your city/town/county? For your mayor/county executive? They set the rules for your local elections (sometimes the state has a say too, but not always).
But in order to make changes like non-partisan redistricting and RCV and open primaries (although those aren't always so fabulous either, cf. California) and term limits and public funding of elections, etc. you need to pound on your elected representatives.
And if even a few hundred people pester your state assembly person or city council member, it's likely you can get some movement on these initiatives.
I fully agree. And let's not ignore that leaders of the free world are pretty shocked by what's happening.
- German canceler, Angela Merkel: “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-...
- French minister, Bruno Le Maire: "Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary." https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-...
- Mexico president, Manuel Lopez Obrador: "‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse on the subject. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”"https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-lea...
These companies have been censoring certain groups for ages. One of my exes who self-identifies as an anarcho-Communist has been angry with what she sees a Facebook’s anti-left political censorship for at least seven years; and if you see her censorship as justified given her politics, there’s also stuff like this: https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3936987.html
People have been begging for these companies to censor threats of violence for ages (meme is something like “Twitter: What changes would you like? Users: Remove the Nazis; Twitter: Timeline now scrolls sideways, likes are now called florps”)
The consensus response until now has been that corporations are private and have the right to kick off whoever they want. When I have suggested that their power to do so needed to be constrained the way governments are and for similar reasons, I got a lot of flack for it.
That said, I don’t have the American attitude to freedom of speech as an end in itself, rather I value it as an instrumental goal, so I’m a lot more comfortable with some censorship than many people on Hacker News, even though I still want as little as possible. As little as possible just isn’t “none” in my opinion.
I think one problem for those services is that if they'd allow this until explicit government action, they'd risk being completely overrun by very vocal antidemocratic crowds of people. Twitter recently banned 70,000 QAnon accounts besides Trump and then they couldn't do that either. Hell, Twitter already struggles and the atmosphere over there right now, despite all this, is really not all that great. Going by Twitter, you'd sometimes think that extremist groups had like 30% of the public vote...
Yes, absolutely. An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services, and now he's not president they're finally getting around to enforcing those contracts.
I don’t support trump in any shape or form, but if this mass de-platforming doesn’t make you the slightest bit uncomfortable, that in itself should make you a bit uncomfortable.
Both the left and the right hate democracy now. On college campuses, the idea gets increasingly popular that free speech is a harmful concept. This is not just an empty phrase. This generation is graduating and will one day hold the keys to power. Let alone the dystopian gang ruled crime infested places that they built during the BLM riots. On the right side of the political spectrum, you have the Capitol trespassers, pipe bomb layers, cop killers. I'm worried.
Honest question: when was this ever not the case for mass media?
Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. “Conservatives” were not. You are still free to engage in all manner of conservative speech on Twitter that does not call for violence against your ideological opponents.
I don't follow twitter, but it would be good to have some evidence.
To allow him to continue to engage in that same brinkmanship after violence has already occurred is allowing him to continue inciting violence, unintentional as it may be.
This is about a small group of people coming together whilst collectively possessing significant power on the fabric of society and choosing to erase an individual.
So why wasn't he removed earlier?
> now he's not president
I don't know US system that well, but from what I heard he is still president and will step down in a week or two.
In the absence of hate speech laws and some guidance to regulate social media to prevent mass psychosis, this kind of thing is expected.
But on the other hand, you can't deny that a few services became indispensable to get any kind of reach... So if we accept that those companies decide what content gets in or not, we accept that they control what content gets to be shown publicly or not.
I'm not a fan of the man but in practice nearly all non media framed public discourse happens on FB, YT, Twitter and a few tier 2 services. If the social media conglomerate decides to nix you, you are done with reaching the broad public directly.
If all the courts (including your own judges) are silencing "your movement", your own AG is silencing you, the guy in charge of election security is silencing you, "all" media is silencing you, experts, fact checkers, law scholars, now most of your party, and not just big tec, but "practically every company in existence", etc etc, maybe you're not being silenced, but are simply full of [expletive] and everyone's fed up with that and you should stop spewing it and solve the problem for everyone.
You're part of the problem. But I guess politics is the new religion.
There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him.
Nobody has a meaningful voice unless it is amplified by mass media. That includes the President. Television and radio have increasingly (since at least the Bush years, got much worse with Obama, and continued with Trump) chosen to ignore Presidential press conferences and addresses they didn't feel like covering, or heavily edited them, provided them only with their commentary, etc.
That's one reason why politicians have increasingly turned to social media!
COVID has taught me that single-minded commitment to human freedom is harmful in the long run, and that the curtailment of freedoms and exercise of power -- even absolute power -- is necessary to preserve the public good in certain situations. A dangerous demagogue like Trump, allowed to run loose on private platforms, presents a huge risk to those platforms and the nation itself.
Not justified at all. Nothing can justify censoring a sitting President and destroying a small competitor. America is on the wrong path. This I say as a observer of American politics. Big Tech has too much power in its hands now.
What would happen if those accounts were hacked and someone talked about launching nukes?
You have to start asking if what happens on those platforms -REALLY- has no effect on the physical world. I would argue that their moderation actions can non-person a politician and ruin their career with little or no public input.
I dont know what the solution is- but I dont feel confident in a democracy where six media companies and about four tech companies control all that I can see, hear and read. That does not make me feel confident in the fourth estate.
Twitter and Facebook's bans of Trump are only news because Trump relied on them so heavily. They're not the primary means of communication for politicians, nor have they ever been.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_social_media#S...
Your average person may not be on twitter I give you that- your activist however. They are very likely to be on twitter if not another emerging platform at this point. And the media is much easier to reach with Twitter. Just try getting organic traction on a press release with traditional media without social media. Its painful to think about honestly.
It all came down to in-person contacts. The Black vote didn't turn out because they saw a tweet, they came out because people knocked on their door and talked to them and convinced them to brave the cold and vote.
And just as crucially: the Republican vote didn't come out despite all of Trump's tweets, and Cruz's tweets, and all the other GOPers posting on social media. The Republican voters stayed home despite all the social media begging them to vote because the GOP didn't have the same level of in-person events for the runoff as they did for the general election.
I don't visit facebook or twitter or apple sites at all, but I still see a lot of what Trump says in the news (e.g. BBC et al).
Have Facebook/Twitter/Apple censored Trump when I still hear his views all the time? Have Facebook et al got a lot of "power" here when really they have changed nothing for people like me?
Disclosure: I don't have any strong opinions on Trump or American politics in general.
I am not from USA, and not a trump supporter, still been trying to figure out what is going on, and noticed some patterns.
1. Media loves taking stuff out of context, not just with Trump mind you.
2. Not only big tech is censoring Trump, but normal media too, for example more than once channels refused to air live presidential addresses, sometimes they aired but with comments, or they waited for a while and then aired it edited.
I saw other day here in HN people saying BigTech kicking Trump off their platform was fine because he wouldn't be silenced, since he has the Whitehouse official system of contacting with the press... thing is, the press is now delibetarely ignoring him too, so you have a situation where both BigTech and Press is not letting his words through, isn't that censorship?
The genius of the first amendment is that yes you can spout whatever vile garbage you want but no one is forced to listen to you. It is also a form of speech to not reproduce someone else's speech.
Still I must ask, alright, nobody is obliged to listen to someone, but what about the rights of those that WANT to listen? 70+ million people voted for Trump after all, is it right to prevent them from hearing Trump? He was also banned from e-mail plataforms too, so basically all his channels to talk with his voters are down, except normal mail, that was crippled a long time ago by the congress (normal mail has an absurd law where all new hires must have their pension pre-funded 50 years in advance... this is what caused all the mailing woes in US lately, wasn't necessarily Trump's fault as many claimed)
You suggest to make airing his addresses live mandatory? Or to make it illegal to oppose what he is saying in comments?
He is not entitled to use his preferred communication method because he’s abused it to to the degree that he’s created reputational risks for the platforms that carry it. That’s on him and his message.
I’m under no delusion that these platforms are acting nobly. I think they’re acting in shareholder’s interests by moving to mitigate a risk to themselves.
The fact of the matter is that Trump enjoyed tremendous leeway to violate the TOS of the platforms because of his position. Anyone else can and has been turfed out for much less than what he did.
Nope. There's no such evidence.
Parler and Amazon are not, and never have been competitors.
Amazon does a lot of different things, but running a social media site isn't one of them.
Wasn't Parler a glorified WordPress comments section? That's all fine and well, but if I started a website and broke the TOS I doubt anybody would have wept for my losses in the same way.
It's really odd seeing people conflate, or even manufacture, predominant socio-political ideologies for companies and then labelling them competitors when those made-up ideologies differ.