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Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

I find the question of ownership to be really interesting for a platform like twitter that relies, entirely, on user-generated content.

It seems to me like share-holder ownership is pretty incapable of dealing with the complexities of being such a global and influential platform. The plutocratic model of 1 share 1 vote and financialization of what is pretty much seen and used as a public service really gets in the way of turning the platform into something that could be truly useful for humanity.

I think we are very much due on a change of paradigm when it comes to these sort of services. What is it that twitter users want, what do governments want (many politicians use twitter as an official means of communication), what do workers of the platform want? All of these stakeholders should have a say in what is done with twitter.

To me, saying "the board is at fault" and thinking it could be better as a privately owned corporation is also missing the target. Of course, I think these tech billionaires think they can make better decisions for everyone and so to them it is obvious that a truly public form of ownership would be a mistake. It's the benevolent dictator story.

To finalise, it would be interesting to see an exploration on technologies that could help stake-ownership management so that we can have firms that are capable of making decisions that make people happier and societies a better place.

View on HN

The issue here is that you're ignoring completely how Twitter was built, and how things like Twitter get built.

It's very easy now to say that everyone should get a say in what is done with Twitter, but back when Twitter was first launched what most people thought was that Twitter was stupid and would never get off the ground. I mean, who'd want a service where you can write only an amount of characters so short you can say nothing of substance?

It was people like Dorsey who bit the bullet and actually built the thing, which only later was proven to have potential. Never mind that people could be right - Twitter could be a stupid idea and it could have blown up in the founders' faces. It would be very good in that case that we didn't have a "truly public form of ownership" in that case - then it would have failed without damaging anyone but the founders.

But you can't get that protection to society without the flipside. If everyone gets protected from the blow-ups, then you need to make the people who create the ideas that seem very stupid but actually work out in a huge way be rewarded proportionately to how much everyone was wrong about the idea. Which is, thankfully, how it works.

The idea that Twitter should be "truly public" because the content there is user-generated ignores that there would be no Twitter and none of that user-generated content in the first place without a small group of people taking the risk to build something everyone considered "stupid". The idea that people who take that risk should have the fruits of their risk-taking taken from them for their success just means that such risks would not be taken.

Socialization - such as what you propose - is the flip side of corporate bailouts, and just as wrong: Bailouts make society liable for a business's failure while making the business the sole beneficiary of its own success, while socialization punishes the founders for succeeding while making them the sole holders of liability for failing.

I guess, but as someone else pointed out; the people who created twitter already greatly profited from the venture. I mean, Dorsey isn't part of the board anymore!

In a way, I'm questioning more the IPO than anything else; I think taking the company private after an IPO is a mistake and having it as shareholder owner company is also a mistake due to the size and influence of the platform right now.

I think as a platform grows there are many different ways that ownership can be distributed, no one thinks that a mom and pop shop needs to be socialised, but look at the size and influence of twitter (or facebook, or others). Do you really think people will stop innovating because they can't retain ownership of platforms with hundreds of millions of users? Any platform that gets to this size has already produced billions of dollars for their original owners! I think that's a cynical way of viewing the world, I mean, if anything there are tons of platforms out there that are built from the ground up with openness in mind.

I think you're not approaching things correctly when you say socialization is the flipside of a corporate bailout. The founders and owners of the platform are obviously entitled to compensation for their effort, but I believe there is a point where we can say "okay these people have done good enough!". I mean, big companies buy out smaller companies all the time; why do you think it would be so wrong for a state, or several states to buy out companies and then rework the ownership model of them? Maybe my original comment made it seem as though I was arguing for a state to simply take over. That is not what I'm saying, I'm saying, we need new ownership models. Lots of states around the world, for example, give benefits to people forming coops; but obviously with Twitter, it's a huge platform that already exists so what should be done about it?

> most people thought was that Twitter was stupid and would never get off the ground. I mean, who'd want a service where you can write only an amount of characters so short you can say nothing of substance?

This isn't how I recall the start of twitter. Since the transmission medium was sms/text messages, the character limit was due to what many characters could be sent in a single sms.

Twitter was seen as a genius application that allowed for sending group sms.

What it grew into, while stubbornly retaining the character limit baffled many people...

The disconnect for me is that I while I agree a lot with this line of reasoning: that is, that private risk taking and entrepreneurship generally is a net good. However, I don’t agree that it necessarily follows from there that such a system falls apart completely if we limit what founders are able to do in perpetuity.

Do you really believe that once you’ve made one thing at one point in time, you should be entitled to everything that follows from it, no matter the effect your subsequent a actually have?

The founders, investors, employees already HAVE been greatly rewarded for their risk and efforts, and in many cases are already off on new ventures. So the system worked as intended. Now the only risk is is held by the likes of Vanguard and a Saudi prince, who are unlikely to be deterred from participating in capitalism in the future if their positions were closed at $54.20.

I don't disagree with you! However, proposing that the government (for instance) should be able to forcibly socialize a platform "for the greater good" opens up some very risky avenues.

What if it doesn't have to be a government forcing but rather a user demanding? Any way that users unionize or demand "no attention without representation"?

Yes, stop using Twitter. It wouldn't work as a company without unpaid user engagement.

Comparing it to unionization or political representation is ridiculous. Most users of Twitter are getting exactly what they want from it: entertainment from a product that's provided "for free".

I believe a total boycott is one approach to try to get a group of people to change their behaviors. I think unionization is another approach that people take, who, for whichever reasons, don't want to leave, and try to gain collective bargaining power to change how the group of people behaves. I think political representation is another approach that people take to change the structure of decision making so that when people don't like something, they have more options than threatening to leave.

But as you say, maybe most, or even the vast majority, of Twitter users don't care and just want it for the "free" entertainment. And that's fine, I'm not saying that people who are satisfied with the current behavior should take any approach to try to change them. I guess I just don't think "well, if you don't like it, you should just leave" approach works very well in situations where it can be quite detrimental for people to leave. Maybe it seems easier because it's "just an app" but some people build much of their professional and social lives on some of these platforms—I know many of these platforms have mediated my professional and social lives during the pandemic—and just up and leaving everything behind may not be the approach that people always want to take for change.

This argues to the side of the point. There’s plenty of models where founders are rewarded for taking risks and the community ends up owning significant shares. In fact Jack himself seems to have been screwed out of much of his stake, which isn’t uncommon when going through many rounds + IPO, and he’s a big proponent of one of these alternative models.

One answer is something people here love to hate, and yet it’s proven to work well for this exact scenario.

It also solves in my mind a few other problems with social network startups. You see before it was almost entirely luck and timing, there didn’t exist many so if you had something unique and the collective unconscious was ready for something new you’d get lucky launching twttr at SXSW.

To beat Twitter or do something similar but different you’re back to the classic catch-22 of social networks, the users drives the value, but you need users. Startups like to give away a few hundred bucks to early adopters, but that just isn’t an incentive anymore.

What is an incentive, and has been proven without a doubt as one as of late, is giving away micro equity. Users will flock to your platform if they get a chance in the upside.

So it solves the catch-22, and it solves the long term ownership alignment problem.

It also attracts scammers, but that shouldn’t have ruined the whole deal for everyone. Unfortunately it did thanks mostly to the SEC.

There seems to be a trend of 'let's socialize this company: it's a public utility!' that is getting stronger. The problem is that people who say this haven't lived in a socialist country and bore the brunt of the ills of 'socialization'. Almost everywhere that governments nationalized corporations, they have turned into cesspools of corruption, inefficiency, and almost no accountability towards (paying) customers or society. I am willing to bet you wouldn't see Russians, Indians, Cuban expats, Venezuelans and others (who lived through the vicissitudes of socialist centrally planned economies) arguing for this.

Sure, but which side here really has the burden of proof that they are best option? It really seems to come down to that. Is the incumbent system really spared from the same or parallel criticisms (corruption, inefficiency, accountability) precisely because its incumbent? "We don't want that because it has been shown to be bad" has less of a ring to it these days, when all the same problems are replicated in the existing, private, commodified system.

People are not saying "let's do twitter like the USSR would have done it." People are rightly saying: "let's try something different."

This place alone, and sometimes despite the crowd in the comments, has taught me more about the ills of ad-based private social networking than anywhere else.

It just doesn't seem rational to me to label any drastic changes as filthy communism and just.. Move on

It's not 'filthy communism', and people who suggest nationalizing industries ought to be better informed: they are the ones who are suggesting the dramatic shift from the status quo. I am suggesting that the nationalization suggestion comes from a place of ignorance of the (grave) pitfalls of doing so.

Suggesting that industries be nationalized is not just "let's try something different"; it's something that's much more serious and has larger implications that should be weighed carefully, versus a corporation that's only answerable to its shareholders changing how it runs its product.

As long as we are weighing things carefully, and weighing the right things, I'm on board.

> It just doesn't seem rational to me to label any drastic changes as filthy communism and just.. Move on

Because they don't want to move anywhere or change anything; they will say no to everything because the current system benefits them.

You’re using a couple of totalitarian states as an example, ignoring a whole bunch of nationalised companies in perfectly reasonable countries (like in western Europe), that work quite well. Britain is not turning into a communist hellhole because they nationalise some rail operators that failed to give a decent service.

To get a somewhat relevant example, I really haven’t seen a decent railway infrastructure manager that wasn’t nationalised. Private interests are too eager to cut corners.

Most of the countries you are referring to have a higher economic freedom index than the US and even tighter shareholder control of corporations. They have nationalized industries that are mature and run at a loss, like railroads and postal services. If you put Twitter in the category of "mature industries that should run at a loss" then you might have an argument.

> If you put Twitter in the category of "mature industries that should run at a loss" then you might have an argument.

I do not. I was reacting to the “socialism is EVIL” part of the OP. I won’t argue that Twitter needs to be nationalised, it can DIAF as far as I am concerned.

Not the person you originally responded to but you are literally doing the exact same thing you accuse the original poster of. You are using one example in western Europe while ignoring a whole bunch of countries throughout history that support the original posters point.

Seems to me when non socialist countries (western europe) nationalize companies it generally goes better than when socialist countries do.

So both you and the original poster are somewhat correct but you both are trying to manipulate the data to only support the cause you want.

> So both you and the original poster are somewhat correct but you both are trying to manipulate the data to only support the cause you want.

How so? Their point was that nationalisation was intrinsically totalitarian and bad. My point is that there are several counter-examples that show that it does not follow. I never said it was a panacea.

> So both you and the original poster are somewhat correct but you both are trying to manipulate the data to only support the cause you want.

You missed the point of the guy you are replying to.

> what do governments want (many politicians use twitter as an official means of communication)

This needs to be changed; ideally governments would contribute directly into a digital commons directly from their own official web presence. We've had the answer since 2008 for this too - the federated social web.

public communications funded with public money should occur via public infrastructure. Twitter could be in the business of selling this (their hosted software on custom domains) to public agencies, institutions, groups, or anyone who just wants ownership of their own ActivityPub interoperable namespace.

EDIT: No one asked me but I just want to remind everyone here that Bluesky, a vaporware "protocol" initiative, is not doing anything of value.

Governments and politicians need to reach people where people are. Though I agree it is extremely important for governments to have official state-owned channels of communication; we can't close our eyes and pretend like people don't go to twitter first.

That's the situation we are in, that's the situation governments find themselves in. Due to network effects it's very difficult to get people out of these platforms so what should be done about it?

> Governments and politicians need to reach people where people are

One of the other points I've made elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31067225) is that the public has jumped formats many times before. I suppose they will continue to do that as media evolves.

At least in the case of the US, you need to distinguish between _the government_ and _politicians_. I would agree with your position that, when a politician is acting in their official capacity or when the government as an entity itself is seeking to communicate, that communication should be done in an open manner using the infrastructure of the state.

However, when a politician, or a political group, seeks to communicate, it should _not_ be done on that same infrastructure. There are all sorts of negative implications of real First Amendment protections for speech "in the commons". If, for example, the government owned twitter, it would have to support and allow Neo Nazis, the KKK, cult leaders, and all sorts of other corrosive participants to have access. Private entities have greater leeway.

So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board.

But if you are arguing that Twitter should somehow be nationalized, I think that way lies dragons.

> So, if you are saying the government and officials in their official capacity must communicate via some protocol (RSS, ActivityPub, printed letterhead, etc.) that can be shared and accessed equally by other platforms or tools, I'm on board.

This option, completely. Thank you for the further substantiation of this idea.

An example of this would be a system set up specifically for members of the House of Representatives, each member having access to an account (member@HOUSE.GOV) and access is provisioned through normal directory services like LDAP. We do corporate/institutional email like this today, so the public is more than familiar with this principle.

Then, as a further extrapolation of this idea, we will have have all of the fire departments and police departments and departments of motor vehicles and what have you all running their own individual systems (or bidding for managed services that provide this), allowing for common subscription through standardized protocols - why are all of these groups sharing one giant Twitter.com namespace? Who knows but it's a tired system.

Or just make a twitter where government officials have create update and delete privileges and make it read only for the public.

That sounds like a regular webpage.

A single place where all government officials, maybe elected officials, can make announcements that you can filter (or follow officials youd prefer to follow, would that make it web app enough?) by branch or state? Haven’t seen such a webpage yet.

You are describing a B Corporation. They can be started with charters which focus on something other than shareholder value. Feel free to start one as a competitor to Twitter.

https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-companies-are-becoming-b-corpora...

>All of these stakeholders should have a say in what is done with twitter

That sounds reasonable, but the person who gets the real power is whoever mediates all those stakeholders and their different needs/goals/desires. Who do you think that will be?

It is why I think we need to explore new ways of democratic control and decision making! Through technology there could be different solutions to the problem of representation.

It is particularly interesting because twitter is so diverse, I think my point is mainly that there are no efforts put into turning making these things happen. And why would they be? The status quo works out very well for those in power.

>It is why I think we need to explore new ways of democratic control and decision making! Through technology there could be different solutions to the problem of representation.

Example of the latest crypto scam that I read about yesterday:

"...a fairly simple [governance] attack:

1. Propose a piece of code to the protocol that says "send the entire treasury to my address A" 2. Buy a bunch of equity tokens and vote the change in 3. Send the entire treasury to your address A"

Step 2 is possible because of flash loans.

"Literally in a single transaction, the attacker buys a ton of governance tokens, injects malicious code into the protocol through governance voting, then uses the malicious code to steal a bunch of money. Web3 is insane"

https://twitter.com/AnthonyLeeZhang/status/15157022763961303...

Danny Spitzberg & Nathan Schneider suggest cooperative ownership by the user community might be the best model.

https://www.wired.com/story/you-yes-you-would-be-a-better-ow...

Ownership would require that users actually invest their capital. I and most other Twitter users have zero interest in doing that. We have better things to do with our money.

One doesn't necessarily have to invest money to get ownership of something. For example, I'm pretty sure worker-coops give ownership rights based on labor, not investment. I wonder if Twitter users could be considered as workers, customers, and clients. Workers as in the ones who produce the content and maintain other users' attention. Customers as the ones to whom people advertise. Clients as the people who advertise to others.

Twitter is very top heavy in regards to who posts and who gets followers / draws interest to the platform. You want Katy Perry & Co. owning Twitter? It wouldn't be an improvement, it would end in disaster. There's no scenario where you can distribute based on content creation and have it not end up like that, it'd be top heavy (relatively small group of outsized owners) in every outcome. When it comes to content, creators are a hyper minority in society (especially those that do it in a prolific manner), mimics and consumers are the extreme majority.

Ok, so make it not a pure worker-coop. I don't think a traditional cooperative structure would work on this anyway, even though expanding the "work" to people who not only reply but also retweet and like might get beyond the typically 1% / 1-9-99 rule of the internet[0].

Would I want only the "content creators" to make decisions on the platform? No. Right now, they don't even have that much official say, if any. I'd prefer that they have more say, that contributors have more say, and that lurkers have more say.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

Twitter already compensates many of their employees for labor partially with equity. And many current employees were already users before being hired. So you're not proposing anything different from the current state.

I'm confused but maybe I didn't explain it clearly. I'm not suggesting to give equity to people who are currently official employees of Twitter or people who will become official employees. I'm suggesting to give equity to people who might not be considered employees or even contractors and may never be considered employees under US law.

What I was imagining was a way to have more representative democracy in tech companies, not just limited to the corporate shareholders, but perhaps through a cooperative structure that gives decision-making rights to the many stakeholders of the service, not the 1 share 1 vote model.

I guess overall I look at the document in the US that so many of us Americans revere and fight for—the Constitution—and see it as representative democracy and then wonder why we have private companies that don't have similar principles.

If you're doing work for financial compensation such as wages or equity then legally you're either an employee or a contractor. Calling that relationship by some other label doesn't change reality.

It's totally possible to found a B Corporation with a charter that formally gives decision making rights to stakeholders other than shareholders. Many such corps exist and anyone could found one as a competitor to Twitter. However this structure makes it more difficult to attract capital from outside investors.

https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-companies-are-becoming-b-corpora...

> If you're doing work for financial compensation such as wages or equity then legally you're either an employee or a contractor.

Fair point. Apparently AirBnb petitioned the SEC to allow it to give equity to its hosts while still being a private company because that is currently illegal.

> However this structure makes it more difficult to attract capital from outside investors.

Another fair point. Outside investors seem to like to have 1 share = 1 vote, rather than 1 person = 1 vote, because then those with the most financial shares owned (typically investors) can have more decision-making power.

[0]: https://sites.law.berkeley.edu/sustainability-compliance/the...

Equity gives you a share of the money pie, but it doesn't necessarily give you a share of the decision making pie.

The problem that I raise isn't necessarily with the profitability of twitter, but with the decisions that are made about where the platform goes as it grows or gets older. I believe everyone who participates in the platform should have some form of decision power over where it goes, for such a big platform there are many different actors involved but how many of them actually get to make decisions?

Where the profits go is one of the many decisions that are made, as it stands now, people with equity get some of the profits and that's about it. How much is reinvested, how much is paid out, and so on are not really decisions most equity-holders make.

If equity holders don't like where the platform is going or decisions about dividends then they can join with their peers to push through a shareholder resolution, or replace the Board members. This is similar to running a political campaign. But it seems some users and minority shareholders feel entitled to control management decisions without doing any of the hard work.

This model is already proven to work via Kickstarter, Gofundme, and Patreon. Users already have interest in investing in ideas that _don't even allow them to retain ownership_, like Star Citizen -- it's still a copyrighted piece of work despite taking a ton of money from users to fund their game.

That is hardly the same model. You are describing donations, not investments. Reliance on donations doesn't seem like a sustainable business model for running a huge worldwide enterprise. Eventually you run out of suckers with money to fall for the scam.

Unless you're Wikimedia that is.

Very little of Wikipedia Foundation's donations come from individual users.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/benefactors/#section...

I think owners wanna make money by owning twitter, next question.

I think they rather control public discourse than make money.

Meta nee Facebook "solved" this problem by being set up so Zuckerberg would always have effective control of the company, no? Have they arrived at a better place?

What does "stake-ownership management" mean?

Facebook censors things similarly the way Twitter does. Matter of fact, all the major social media platforms do. I've seen friends and family banned for the silliest of things, for years and years now. We've only just now reached a point where politicians are being targeted, which is kind of insane.

The problem with censorship and I've posted this on HN plenty of times: Today it's the voice of those you disagree with, tomorrow it's your voice.

Does the slipperly slope argument work here? The goal of these services is to make money by remaining popular, not to ban as many people as possible.

I also note that hackernews has stricter rules than those services.

Edit: maybe the popularity of hn is because you can't attack someone and must be civil

>The goal of these services is to make money by remaining popular, not to ban as many people as possible.

Many would argue that this isn't the case, and the "goal" of these services is actually to manage the public narrative at the behest (both directly and indirectly) of the wealthy and the powerful. Did Jeff Bezos really buy the Washington Post because he thought that it would offer the best return on his investment, or because he wanted to hold the bullhorn of one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the USA? Does Twitter choose which people to ban and what information gets promoted/demoted based on what's most popular, or based on the narrative they want to create and/or reinforce? Did the Twitter board really reject Musk's offer because it was too low or because they didn't want to give up control of the narrative to Musk?

Twitter makes money based on ads and advertisers put pressure on services if they feel pressure from the public. For example Tucker Carlson is a very popular show but 24% of the ads are for Fox news or related [1] and many advertisers have have stopped because of controversial speech [2].

Elon musk has stated that free speech is important to him. Let's assume if he purchases Twitter he'll decrease the amount of censorship. I'll make the claim that the less censorship a service has the less money it can make from advertisers.

Some have suggested that, maybe Musk did himself?, that he'll start charging users for the service however a survey stated that 74% of people would prefer an ad based service, if they were forced to choose the numbers are closer depending on the age bracket [3]. I'll claim that people wouldn't pay in sufficient numbers and would flee the service. What other popular social media service requires a subscription?

Therefore Twitter's action is in the best interest of the shareholders.

[1] https://www.tvrev.com/news/whos-still-advertising-with-tucke... [2] https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/tucker-carlson-fox-news-mob... [3] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/would-people-pay-to-us...

HackerNews also has competent and transparent moderation.

The problem with large social media companies is that:

1. Due to their size and scope, publishers often have to have a presence on there (giving them market power)

2. Due to their size and scope, the platforms often fail to properly adjudicate their rules correctly, and as a policy are often opaque or outright hostile towards their users regarding moderation (you're banned, we can't tell you why, now shut up and stop doing the thing you know you did)

The underlying problem is that these platforms do not properly fund their own moderation staff because it would cost too much. It's specifically the "make money by remaining popular" thing that causes this.

HN doesn’t promote comments based on a secret, politically motivated algorithm. Users also don’t get banned if they express a contrarian opinion. If I post something skeptical on Covid origins or the vaccines, I won’t get banned from HN. People can downvote, reply, or ignore as they choose. Even comments that are “dead” can still be read if one chooses. There is some common sense moderation, for example calling someone a nazi or some kind of slur can get you in trouble, but ideas themselves aren’t censored. HN doesn’t “fact check.” Ideas on HN compete on their merits generally. When Twitter and friends use “fact checks” as a weapon to suppress other viewpoints, that’s the problem.

The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before an election is a shining example of the problem with Twitter. All sorts of “fact checkers” claimed it was a false story. Some even claimed it was a Russian plot (none of those who claimed such things had their Twitter accounts suspended by the way.) Two years later WaPo and The NY Times verified what the NY Post said all along.

Hillary Clinton maintains the 2016 election was stolen. Yet she’s still on all of the socials. There are still Democrats that claim 2004 was stolen and videos of their theories are still on YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=77i_pC3lp04

The problem isn’t one of moderation. It’s a problem of so-called fact checking. Twitter, by “fact checking” has become a publisher. Moderation isn’t the same thing as fact checking. HN users do the fact checking (as opposed to HN itself,) but it’s left to the reader to decide for themselves.

Secret algorithms promoting content and opaque fact checking is the real problem with Twitter.

First - You make this claim "HN doesn’t promote comments based on a secret, politically motivated algorithm. " what evidence do you have for this secret politically motivation algorithm?

Censorship and Fact Checking: You are claiming that ideas are being censored via fact checking. However you state multiple examples hence you are aware of them and the ideas aren't being censored. The reason for this is that multiple services exist and therefore what is the damage of Twitter moderating with fact checks?

The Election:

Hillary Clinton conceded Nov 9th 2016 "“Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country,” Clinton said." [1] To be fair she rolled this back [4] but has she made it her entire platform or have the Democrats used it to whip up anger?

As to "Democrats" who make claims of election fraud or videos; are they elected officials, if so how many? I can become a member of a party by filling out a form or just state that I'm a "Republican" and say anything as well. Would it be fair to then say "Republicans are saying X"? That sounds like an easy way to damage the reputation of a group that basically has open membership.

The difference between previous elections and now is the number of election lawsuits, the amount of actual Republican politicians making the claim, the amount of time and number of news outlets discussing it, the January 6th attack, the number of protests that are still happening, states planning to send alternative electors, and the former president still claiming wide spread fraud.

In fact Trump has claimed 2016, the election he won, was fraudulent as well [2] and just last month filed a lawsuit about it [3] This isn't an argument about censorship only against comparing then and now.

[1] "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/ge..."

[2]https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37673797

[3]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/24/trump-hillar...

[4]https://www.yahoo.com/video/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-e...

This speaks directly to the "the board is the problem" argument, if Facebook is the same then the board is not the problem.

Can you elucidate an instance of someone you know getting banned from Facebook with the actual content they posted? I am genuinely interested because the only person I know banned from Facebook was hurling obscenities at someone's every post and comment over a period of time and got turfed. I would really like to see what benign content can trigger it.

I will do you better, I will show you how they are all the same:

https://dtspartnership.org/

Look at their partners: Facebook, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitch, Discord, Twitter, Reddit. This is how they all derive their terms of service. I noticed any time Discord had new rules or policies usually reddit followed suit.

I also noticed Discord has a new TOS update recently that put a lot of their known policy into black and white, but included an interesting tidbit about being able to ban people for off-platform TOS violations. I forget the name of a Twitch streamer who got banned recently for off platform behavior but if you are still following you will note how a policy in one becomes law in another and vice versa. They are all in some alliance and Elon Musk would likely ruin this.

This is extremely uncommon knowledge that you only run into it if you moderate on Discord and Reddit and dig deep enough. But also it should frighten you that if you do anything wrong all these platforms will ban you in unison and they absolutely can based on their TOS.

So, to be clear, you "know many friends and family who got banned" but when asked for specific examples, dodged providing any.

You would of likely have said it was anecdotal, aside from that I do not owe anyone here personal details about myself anytime they ask.

I wouldn't have, I was hoping for some specific stories because I would really, really like to know more about "normies" on these platforms getting banned!

I don't want names and addresses, I just would love to know examples of what they did.

The comment higher up specifically asked for anecdotes to strengthen your point. It's looking like you don't have any. As for sharing personal details, you kind of started down that path with "I've seen friends and family banned for the silliest of things".

he might be a replicant

I generally agree with you, but I strongly disagree that "politician" is in the same class as any random person. I find it rather bizarre that anyone would find more stringent requirements of politicians to be "insane" incredibly strange considering the power they hold over the average citizen. I see things as being quite the contrary, frankly, and regaining the ability to speak freely is as simple as resigning. Politicians (and the wealthy) are not a protected class and there's no need to treat them as such considering the power dynamic.

>Today it's the voice of those you disagree with

Can you give an example of someone being banned for voicing an opinion? I'm not from the US so i may not have been paying too close attention. But lies aren't opinions. The truth isn't an opinion for that matter either. Example: The earth revolves around the sun (fact), there is a 5g microchip in the vaccine (lie), the US education system is really bad because I have to give you these examples (opinion).

It is not about the topic. It is about how it is phrased. If I were to say you rank the worst, it would be a lie.

So I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if what you are saying is true. (they are censoring opinions). But it's not an opinion. It's either true or you are a liar.

>We've only just now reached a point where politicians are being targeted, which is kind of insane.

That your politicians can tell prvbable lies but that your electorate doesn't instant fire them is crazy. No accountability. Seems like a much larger problem to me. And people not distinguishing between objective and subjective matters like you will cause the US to collapse. That is my opinion though. I don't have facts, because I can't actually tell the future.

> people not distinguishing between objective and subjective matters like you will cause the US to collapse

Caution: Admitting ignorance on the topic and then levying an accusation that failure to discern is responsible for nation-state collapse seems like a large leap that one might want to avoid.

As to the rest: Most of the bans I've seen have been based around what I'll call controversial opinions, which I won't bother expounding on but some examples include references to Caitlyn Jenner's Olympic achievements, or whether they are biologically male or female.

Beyond that, I've seen a large number of bannings from those who questioned official government narratives:

* COVID vaccines have affect menstrual cycles

* COVID likely originated in Wuhan

etc.

These all seem to fall under the concept of 'opinion' and at least to the bulleted items, both of those opinions seem to have consensus support now, despite that they might have gotten you deplatformed just a year ago.

There has to be room for civil discourse to question official narratives (for the citizenry and elected representatives alike) and for elected representatives, it seems that "I think the narrative is incorrect and so I should resign to give voice to it" then leaves the politician ineffective at countering what may well be a disaster, and leaves open the possibility of a heckler's veto of sorts wherein the executive could merely inject insincere poison pills into the official narrative and then wait for their ideological opponents to resign in objection.

> It's either true or you are a liar.

Point of order on this dichotomy. There is a third option, they could just be wrong. It's only a lie if it is wrong and he knows it is wrong.

Feminist author Meghan Murphy was permanently banned from Twitter for stating an opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_Murphy?wprov=sfla1

Meghan Murphy was banned from Twitter for deliberately misgendering trans people. She's on record saying that she has no problem with people having reassignment surgery etc, but then she built up a long track record of calling trans women "him" or using a name they've changed away from as a personal attack, and that's not a defensible "opinion" according to Twitter's terms of service.

But you can insult conservatives by calling them Nazis and that’s ok on Twitter. You can call Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom” or a “House N—“ and that’s ok. But using a different pronoun as a political statement — that’s where the line is?

Twitter's terms of service differentiate between calling someone a mean name once and establishing a pattern of harassment. The line is somewhere in there, apparently. Insulting people is not against the terms of service. Harassment is. It's not clear it's even possible to harass Clarence Thomas on Twitter as he doesn't seem to use the platform.

That's why I originally posted; it's not like Meghan Murphy posted one unkind thing about one person and suddenly found herself banned. It was a protracted pattern of behavior (at odds with her own stated beliefs, no less). So, the original statement that she was banned for "stating her opinion" is disingenuous at best and outright false at worst.

What an absolutely bizarre stance, that people calling you by the wrong name is harassment.

Where does this stop ? is calling Putin or some other pollitican a dictator harassment ? it's a name he almost certainly won't like. I can construct dozens of much more ridiculous examples. What's the difference between this and the pronoun thing ?

I don't think it is bizarre, it is a pretty clear effort at highlighting the fact that you are a transitioned trans person in an effort to hurt you and let all of the people seeing the message know what's up, and harass further.

It doesn't seem very complex. It is very different from calling Putin a dictator, that seems clear!

I feel like she knows what she's doing, or she wouldn't bother doing it.

I have to admit, 10 years ago when the LGBTQ community was struggling I was a strong supporter. After all the cancellations I really want nothing to do with organized LGBTQ. I don't know if they realize they are affecting people this way. It's probably all a numbers game to them.

I can’t speak for other contexts, but the organized lobby representing Asian Americans has very little relationship with Asian Americans themselves: https://www.slowboring.com/p/yang-gang

I don’t know how these organizations became so politically powerful. When organizations purport to be speaking for and making demands on behalf of “AAPPIs” like me and my family, you’d think maybe I’d at least heard of them at some point. :-/

Next look up what autistic people think of most of the Autism organizations out there.

You should continue to support the LGBTQ community and ignore "organized LGBTQ"!

Vote out folks engaged in this absurd "grooming" moral panic but don't pay any attention to people that want to cancel your grandma for not articulating the perfect version of inclusion!

> such a [...] influential platform

Influential amongst whom?

Some people (eg Trump) are notorious for their use of it, but beyond that how can that notion be supported? Influential people might post on it but it's not like they're not on TV or in newspapers saying the same thing. Twitter's influence seems vastly overrated.

Anything that people spend lots of time on, and that gets to decide what they experience, is going to be influential. It shapes what they know about the world and how they feel about it, after all.

If you added up all the advertising money spent and all the payments to “influencers” and all the money spent on bot farms and fake accounts, you could approach a measure of that influence’s value.

OK, but Twitter has about 330m monthly users, that's not much compared to Facebook, TV, newspapers, radio, etc.

Consider that 10% (probably more like 1%) of people make decisions that effect how society will go. At least in the English speaking world, those people care about what's happening on twitter. The other 90% use Facebook.

Real-time infovores, high-value segment

Possibly all, of the current social topics came to be topics because of academics and minorities leading the culture on that same site that has cache with the various kinds of elites.

> All of these stakeholders should have a say in what is done with twitter.

I love the new propaganda term "stakeholder". Stakeholders do have a say. If you don't like twitter, don't use it.

> I think these tech billionaires think they can make better decisions for everyone

No. They think they can make better decisions for themselves. Bezos didn't buy washingpostpost for everyone's benefit. Musk isn't trying to buy twitter for everyone's benefit. You don't become a billionaire by thinking of other people. Their PR team pushes propaganda telling the naive masses that these billionaires are doing it for the benefit for society.

> we can have firms that are capable of making decisions that make people happier and societies a better place.

How would "stakeholder capitalism" do such a thing? If there is an atheist stakeholder, a muslim stakeholder, an lgbt stakeholder and an anti-lgbt staekholder? And by "people", do you mean most people or the privileged woke leftists?

What we need is more competition. How we do that? Not really sure. Though I think nationalism is a good start. Why are japanese, brazilians, hungarians, etc all using twitter? They should be using their own national versions. And then maybe we'll get intranational versions of twitter competing with each other.

> You don't become a billionaire by thinking of other people

I'm not making a claim of the veracity of this statement, but wouldn't a system that made this false be the best system?

What sort of system would produce that outcome?

For a new company, product features tend to overlap current or future needs of the users. If they didn't think of other people, they would probably not be billionaires. I suppose once you're a large company you can influence users in a way, but not really in a mass mind-control sort of way.

>What we need is more competition. How we do that? Not really sure. Though I think nationalism is a good start.

The companies don't want the kind of competition you're proposing though. All these companies spend massive amounts of money in loss-leading markets just so they become the ubiquitous platform of choice in all markets. Also, given that we don't have a world-government - what exactly are you proposing?

I think you bring a very interesting point when you talk about how should so many different views be managed.

Well, that's I think one of the most interesting problems in political philosophy. And people have been discussing it since, well, forever! From Plato's republic to Machiavelli's The Prince.

In truth, I don't have an answer on exactly how is it that we can reach good decisions; but what I'm saying is that because there are so many different actors with different priorities it seems problematic for some of them to rule over everyone else. What are the decisions of the board prioritising? Probably share-price, and this comes with a whole set of baggage.

Is share-price really the parameter we should be optimising? I think many would say no, and in fact, I think when Elon Musk says he wants to take twitter private he might want the platform to go elsewhere; but what I question is that, is taking the company private really the most optimal way to ensure the platform heads in the right way? If you've got a good king, sure, you might have a good kingdom; but is this a sustainable way of structuring power? It doesn't seem as though it is, given that most countries in the world have transitioned from monarchies to more decentralized decision making structures.

Why is it that a platform like twitter is fine with a monarchic power structure but not our own states? I think in a way, I see twitter much closer to a state than I see it close to a small business that sells honey in the farm market. And so I think we ought to push for state-like, power structures. And in reality, I would like it for twitter to push it way further, to experiment and to improve on collective decision making! I don't think current states are as good as they could be.

> privileged woke leftists

Why don't we have a strong epithet like this for the right?

(also, I can't imagine anyone more privileged than Musk)

I'd prefer to reduce overall name calling and broad assumptions based on nothing in particular like in the parent post, personally.

The fact that the post is currently light grey gives me some hope that I'm not in the minority.

while labeling does not help, we can all agree that Musk is privileged, but he is certainly not on the right..

Maybe, 'alt-left' similar to the existing 'alt-right' label?

No?

Anti-union.

Anti-labor.

Very binary views on gender (this admittedly can cross the political spectrum).

Donates to both parties, as almost all billionaires do, but donates $1MM to the Republican Party for every $140K he donates to the Democrats.

"Certainly not right", how exactly?

I guess it depends on what you would consider is being "on the right" or "on the left". Personally I would consider Elon Musk very much economically right wing, and I think the question of ownership in the firm pertains to the economy.

I don't really care much about Elon Musk's moral beliefs, I'm not trying to befriend the guy, I care much more about what he does with his money that affect society's power structures.

Because at this point anyone right of privileged woke leftists is a Nazi apparently.

The right has successfully made calling out racism to be a bad thing these days. Feels like the right is currently enjoying a complete victory in talking points and memes. The left has been completely marginalized in the political vocabulary. Discussions like this Musk thing happen completely within right wing framing of the issues.

The right is successful because the left frequently calls people racist when they aren't. When everybody is a racist nobody is.

The left is almost always successful at political framing. Look at the don't say gay bill. It wasn't the right who came up with that name of the bill. Perhaps it is changing but it doesn't look like it to me.

They are enjoying victory in talking points in grassroots places, like social media, that aren’t controlled.

In almost every other place now the left dominates, anywhere where there is power or important people. Academia, tech, film, tv, music. You basically cannot get a right wing viewpoint in anywhere.

> You basically cannot get a right wing viewpoint in anywhere.

This is a great joke. Good delivery, great setup, 9/10.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-networ...

What right wing view point do you feel can't be shared?

It's not even view points any more. It is facts detrimental to Democrats which get people deplatformed.

still same question, do you have an example? and an example of the first would still be good

Hunter Biden's laptop? 2 years ago it was lies planted by the Russians and peddled by evil Russian sympathizer Republicans trying to destroy democracy. The New York Post was banned from Twitter. Now, leftist news outlets have come out and confirmed the information.

No, they confirmed that it was most likely his laptop.

The entire shit show of blind laptop repair techs not taking down any contact information but recognizing Hunter Biden, waiting three years and then snooping on the contents, and then reaching out to Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani (who he apparently had no difficulty contacting, but somehow couldn't reach Hunter to say "Hey, your laptop is fixed"), making multiple copies of a drive, and then the loss of said laptop when it was "shipped" across country by USPS, untracked, uncertified, when it came time to give it to the FBI?

That's all still lies and bullshit.

thats not what happened, nypost started sharing some non story about alaptop trying to make it a big deal when it wasn't even confirmed. wouldnt that media be making it political to begin with? russia had nothing to do with it? What damning thing was confirmed since then? Why are you using antagonistic phrases like "leftist"

> You basically cannot get a right wing viewpoint in anywhere.

> It's not even view points any more. It is facts [...]

First, it was viewpoints that you can't share. Now it's not viewpoints, they're "facts"?

What facts do you think are going to get you deplatformed?

Babylonbee is banned for posting a satire article about a transgender person.

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