Mexican president mounts campaign against social media bans | Hacker News Reader

Mexican president mounts campaign against social media bans

apnews.com

17 pointsamadeuspagel14 comments

> German Chancellor Angela Merkel is among those who have publicly criticized the action against Trump. Her spokesman said Monday the German leader found it “problematic” that corporate managers could deny someone access under rules not defined by law.

> Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, later called for new regulations that would govern the use of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in the European Union. Without mentioning Trump’s case, he said that “the owners of corporate giants should not decide which views are right and which are not.”

This is a call led by Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to implement a global treaty to enact regulation on social media companies.

This is not absurd or even objectionable on the face of it and the merits of adherence to such a treaty would depend on the specifics of member countries' legislative actions.

The elephant in the room, of course, is whether the country with some of the largest social media companies in the world, China, would sign on.

You misspelled America. In all seriousness, Silicon Valley seems to look at American government with absolute distain, I don’t have any confidence that they will take Germany, Poland, or Mexico very seriously. Additionally I find it highly improbable that the United States would ever agree to such a treaty; Silicon Valley won’t let it.

Maybe he should worry more about gang-related extrajudicial killings and organized trafficking of Central American migrants.

Flagged as politics?

That would be ironic, wouldn't it -- flagging an article about free speech.

No one is entitled a Twitter account as a freedom. You can use Twitter as a service if you abide the terms of service.

Trump violated the terms of service repeatedly for years, he has finally been banned.

Consider that selective enforcement of a promise, whether it's Terms of Service or a Bill of Rights, is causing a legitimacy crisis.

The Terms of Service for just about every platform say the platform can alter their Terms of Service at any time in any way for any reason.

The only crisis here is that no one ever reads the Terms of Service.

You people who say that freedom of speech laws only apply to government restrictions, not to private companies: Do you realize that if this approach were taken to private restaurants we would still have whites-only lunch counters?

Social media are de facto public utilities and should be treated as such. Trump's email should not be turned off for the same reason that his water and gas shouldn't be turned off.

> You people who say that freedom of speech laws only apply to government restrictions, not to private companies: Do you realize that if this approach were taken to private restaurants we would still have whites-only lunch counters?

In the US, partisan political affiliation does not constitute a protected class, and incitements to violence are not protected speech.

Yes, but someone who has committed a speech crime (such as incitement to violence) gets tried for that crime -- he doesn't get forced to wear a gag in public or have his phone service taken away.

Being banned from Twitter isn’t equivalent to being forced to wear a gag in public; it’s equivalent to being asked to leave the restaurant. Presumably if someone came into a restaurant falsely and loudly claiming the food had been poisoned and inciting the customers to inflict violence on the chef, they’d be asked to leave the restaurant.

Well, no. It's more like being banned from a restaurant for life, isn't it? Besides my argument is that social media is more like a utility than any particular restaurant is. Even if you were banned for life you could go to many others.

Tell it to Ajit Pai

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