Not surprising. Social networks have been known to block smaller competitors.
After all, it’s their right to as a private company. Isn’t that how that works? Everyone always says that, and this is a case of that.
After all, it’s their right to as a private company. Isn’t that how that works? Everyone always says that, and this is a case of that.
Unless I missed it, until you wrote this nobody had argued it wasn't their right to do this.
It's literally the dumbest idea possible.
Unless the aim was literally to destroy these large left-leaning, people-empowering, highly profitable, internationally reaching businesses.
Now imagine which political party and which geopolitical adversary would like to make the internet less liberal, silence the powerless, make American tax revenue lower, and make more space for authoritarian voices on the world stage.
But people-empowering? These large platforms are very much anti-democratic and anti-empowering people. Even more, subverting peoples wills about what they buy by managing what they see and algorithmically trying to guide what they should think is very much anti people.
Any people empowering is merely a side effect and not at all the purpose
As for "the purpose" of social media, I suppose a simple reductive answer would be "to make money", but there were (and I think still are) people who are idealistic about social media giving a voice to the voiceless, even if you think that, in practice, commercial messages and misinformation end up having a bigger and more negative effect.
A thought experiment I think is useful is to imagine how Western political discourse could have been shaped (by politicians and the traditional media) if grassroots movements couldn't form and raise awareness through things like "hashtag activism".[0] The fact that authoritarian countries invest resources in censoring or banning social media also seems to confirm that they see it as a threat rather than a harmless distraction.
Or do you have something concrete in mind on what to replace it with? Because just repealing it would lead to a much different Internet than it is today — and not in a good way.
In the EU it works well: the only social networks that exist are American :P
In the EU that would be Digital Services Act, chapter two of which offers websites similar protection to the Section 230. It's gonna be voted on soon™.
At the moment the EU has precedence in the opposite direction, with an Estonian news site Delfi having been held liable for anonymous user comments made on their platform: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delfi_AS_v._Estonia
Well, I’m just glad https://www.laarc.io is unblocked here now after many years.
What does Twitter have a monopoly on? Twitter users? By that definition by local dry cleaner has a monopoly on me.
Not being able to talk about it on existing social networks is basically a death sentence for growth. I saw it first hand.
The 80+ percent of Americans who don't use Twitter might be a start [1][2].
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2013/11/04/twitter-ne...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/970911/monetizable-daily...
It might actually work in Chicago. They had a pretty active tech scene. Covid killed those mall adventures though.
It is really not early days for either of these 'alternatives'.
Why do people always use the term "private company"? Twitter is a publicly owned corporation. If the Musk deal goes through, it'll be private. But I'm not sure what work the word "private" is supposed to be doing.
What's the point in saying "private company" if 99.99+% of companies are private?
Is that statement sufficient to stop further nitpicking?
Almost every use of "private company" is in contrast to a publicly traded company. Except when people start talking about "rights", and then they're apparently using it in a different way, which I find very odd and ideological.
Is it?
Actually, no argument has been given why a government owned company couldn't block links to whatever the government wanted.
Different rules, laws, regulations, etc. apply to private sector vs public sector.
Specifically in this case, OP is implying that a theoretical public sector social network wouldn't be allowed to block linking to mastodon because of the second (EDIT: no, wait, first amendment!) amendment, but that Twitter is well within its rights since they are in the private sector. Whether that's true or not, I dunno.
I dispute that the OP was implying or even thinking anything about a theoretical public sector social network.
Like I said, I don't know how far the first amendment would or wouldn't apply in this situation. In any case, it would likely have to be tested in court.
I don't know how I feel about a well regulated Militia overthrowing the government to protect free software and open standards...
The government actually controls companies. In fact they wouldn't exist as legal entities without the government.
I feel there is a common misconception that "private companies can do whatever they want", belied by the existence of government regulation, but nonetheless a misconception regularly employed to dismiss antitrust concerns, for example.
They're aware of the concept of law but frequently unaware of specific laws. ;-)
“There are two commonly understood ways in which a company is considered public: first, the company’s securities trade on public markets; and second, the company discloses certain business and financial information regularly to the public.
In general, we use the term to refer to a company that has public reporting obligations.”
They’re talking about $TWTR, not Amtrak.
But as other comments have already mentioned, you are confusing two different meaning of private/public.
No, I'm not not confused. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31609113
It's a publicly traded company. Not a publicly owned company. The owners of twitter are primarily private citizens/corporations, not public/government.
> But I'm not sure what work the word "private" is supposed to be doing.
Public = government. Private = not government.
When I ask, Why do people always use the term "private company", this is somewhat of a rhetorical question. I'm not asking for an explanation of what "private company" means, as if I were an ignorant simpleton. That's the uncharitable reading of my comment. Rather, I'm asking for the justification of the use of "private company" as a rhetorical term in the defense of the actions of corporations. I see this rhetorical usage constantly.
Everyone knows that Twitter is a company. That Apple is a company. That Google is a company, etc. And everyone knows that these companies are not run by the government. None of this ever needs to be explained in an argument. So the question is, what rhetorical force do people think the term "private company" gives them in defense of corporate actions? Or maybe the question is, what's the psychology behind the use of this form of rhetoric?
There are various government regulations that do or could be applied to these companies. Antitrust is very relevant for the tech giants. Communications Decency Act. Whether these regulations actually will be applied to these companies is another question, but it's a legitimate debate that can't be simply dismissed by "private company, anything goes".