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Comment by fasthands9 | Hacker News Reader

I think one reasonable policy could be "form a council of diverse viewpoints and only ban someone if they all (or mostly all) agree the person should be kicked off" and another reasonable policy could be "form a council fo diverse viewpoints and ban someone if one (or a couple) think the person should be kicked off.

I think its fair to say the committee will end up being a scapegoat - but to be charitable to the idea in general its pretty clear that not 100% or even 75% of the population thinks that Babylon Bee should be banned. If you have a system where one voice on the committee can ban someone then most liberal comedians would be banned for played up reasons, too.

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As long as it's legal, why ban anyone? The bar should be VERY high.

If you don't ban anyone, pretty soon the people who advertisers like leave the platform and you're left with free speech purists, hatemongers, and not too much else. Those people don't bring $$.

So in this case, free speech and the free market are at odds.

Ostensibly Twitter has to make money, and most companies do not want their ads to be seen next to blatant antisemitic messages.

In the crazy clown world in which we live, Twitter could theoretically kick off all the advertisers and become Elon Musk's self-promotion platform (which it already is), but I doubt the other investors would go along with this.

Or just not show ads on those pages.

Legal according to who? Different countries have different laws. As we see with India and Signal this week.

Twitter already hides tweets in specific countries based on local laws.

Spam city coming right at ya

for the same reason you don't see laundry detergent ads on pornhub. most advertisers don't want their ads next to certain kinds of content. Whether for their own moral objections or fear of negative customer reaction they won't pay for ad space near it. As advertising pays the bills for this service you have to only host content that advertiser are willing to allow their ads near. It not about whats legal its about whats practical and profitable.

>>>for the same reason you don't see laundry detergent ads on pornhub. most advertisers don't want their ads next to certain kinds of content.

Hmmm, if I had a laundry detergent company I'd totally support tailored ads for Pornhub. "Forgot to take your dress off before the bukkake scene? Don't worry! DirtBlaster Detergent can handle even the crustiest of stains!"

You've actually got me thinking about the viability of this across a spectrum of common consumer products.....

Your first policy is reasonable, but your second is definitely not.

Sure. But ultimately there is some level of arbitrary lines where you have a trade-off of overbanning or underbanning.

Say you have a committee of 9 people? What's your cut-off? There isn't a clear answer - especially as norms change a bit and the committee members change.

I honestly don’t think it matters. The committee will answer to one person who can arbitrarily overrule the committee, whether formally or not.

It’s his company and he can do what he wants with it. Any rules can be changed at any time without recourse.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Well, it might be bad for Twitter the service, but as far as legal governance, it’s the way it works. The only limit will really be what advertisers will support. It is a business after all.

But any type of council should be considered advisory at best.

You could use the second standard to flag a user as "spicy" and hide them for users who prefer to be exposed to more "normal" opinions.

Twitter has become the de facto standard, so IMHO moderation should only ask one question: "is this tweet legal?" If the answer is 'yes' then it should be allowed.

Of course, a corollary is that they should be able to filter content on a per country basis because, obviously, what's legal differs from country to country, but I think there is no escaping that for any platforms which claim to be global.

Sounds like a great way to foster a community filled with racist, unwelcoming, and generally toxic but perfectly legal content. Just like every other "free speech" platform devolves into.

Allow me to coin a hyperstitious and eponymous law.

Frog's Law of Social Media: free speech or advertising revenue - choose one.

Can we stick to a grown-up discussion, please? You are not replying to my points in any meaningful way.

It's shocking that HN commenters could be so toxic, indeed.

Not sure what there is to discuss? I wholly disagree with your idea. There's plenty of other social network sites that have a similar moderation policy and they are overrun by people who wish to turn it into a platform to spread hate.

Any content moderation needs to extend beyond "Legal? (Y/N)" unless your main goal is to drive any real community away.

You're obviously ignoring 'de facto standard', which makes Twitter pretty much a utility in my opinion, hence my comment.

Anyway, it is simply shocking that so many think it is the 'correct way' to disallow what they don't agree with and that they are, like you, so aggressive about it to the point of shutting down any dissenting opinions, as is happening here.

It's a big regression from the heights of the enlightenment, or just the recent past, IMHO.

Some would go as far as claiming that this is "little red guard" behaviour and they wouldn't be completely wrong.

Good day.

What is your opinion on Parler deleting anti-Trump messages? Or liberal viewpoints?

Or r/conservative banning people who have posted on any one of a number of other subreddits, sometimes before they've even posted in r/conservative?

Whataboutism...

Edit:

Not only that but also transparently disingenuous. I don't know r/conservative (my comments are not about liberal vs conservative and I find odd that you and others immediately frame them that way) but a dedicated 'conservative' subreddit is obviously not the same as Twitter, which, again as become the de facto standard for most political and news communication.

Not even remotely. I didn't agree or disagree with your statement on Twitter allowing all legal posts. I expressly chose not to.

What I'm asking you is if you think that those forums should also be required to say "Legal (Y/N)?" and if not, why not?

It's a fair assumption. The free speech absolutist crowd very much tends to trend conservative.

I think most reasonable people would reject the assertion that twitter is the de facto standard. It isn't even in the top 10 for social media platforms by active monthly users, and usage and value of a platform varies way too much depending on age and gender. While twitter is possibly the de facto standard for gen-x + millennials and certain career groups such as politicians and journalists, it certainly won't be for 18-25 year olds. Facebook still has nearly 10x the monthly active users of twitter, in fact Twitter barely beats out Quora.

Ignoring the argument about it being the de facto standard, Twitter is a business. I expect that Elon would like to make money off of his $44B investment. In the battle between the free market and free speech, the free market will almost always win. If twitter goes the extreme free speech route, users who are often targeted by loud jerks, trolls and harassers will leave the platform. It will create bad press both in the form of people complaining about harassment as well as other businesses pulling ads where their customers or potential customers were harassed.

> Not only that but also transparently disingenuous

I notice you didn't mention Parler, though. That one's a bit harder to dance around. The "Premier Global Free Speech App". Surely that should allow all legal speech, right?

I disagree with your assertion that Twitter is a public utility then. There's plenty of ways to communication with other people on the internet. Twitter has less daily active users than Pinterest, if you want to shout out your opinion on the internet then play by Twitter's rules or find another platform.

Twitter is full of awful people too. They’re just on the other end of the political spectrum.

What about “this pattern of tweets is sufficiently correlated with declining user engagement”. Should Twitter make decisions based on the health of the business?

Do you have any example of an open forum that only removes illegal content and nothing else that isn't also a complete cesspool?

I would stay well within the law if I would reply to your post with "oh fuck off you retarded cunt!!!"

This would obviously fall well within the protections of free speech for many countries, certainly those of the U.S. And if you really wanted to you can go much nastier than that.

But I don't think it should be allowed here, or even on Twitter. Even using as an example here already feels iffy, but I feel adding it makes the point clearer.

But you are not making any points here, just basically a stunt.

If Twitter is the de facto standard and akin to an utility why should they make decisions on what's allowed beyond lawfulness?

> But you are not making any points here, just basically a stunt.

My point is that allowing "anything that's within the law" will lead to some pretty unpleasant stuff.

> If Twitter is the de facto standard and akin to an utility why should they make decisions on what's allowed beyond lawfulness?

I don't think Twitter is the "de-facto standard" or akin to an utility, and the problem is that by allowing such content you would drive away a lot of people who would rather not be buried with insults and nastiness every time they post something.

There are loads of places where speech is regulated in some way, and you can't just go off on a expletive-laden rant at any moment. If I go to a Biden or Trump Q&A townhall meeting and start shouting abuse at him I will be removed as well.

You're still attempting to take my comments to the extreme instead of making a substantial reply on any of my points (unfortunately).

In addition, whether a certain moderation approach would "drive away people" is a strawman. This is not the question.

> You're still attempting to take my comments to the extreme instead of making a substantial reply on any of my points (unfortunately).

That was not my intention; I'm genuinely trying to engage constructively and in good faith.

You stated that "anything that's within the law should be allowed", and I'm trying to examine what that would mean and what effects it would have. With an extreme example, yes, but that is the sort of stuff that would be allowed under your proposed policy. Now, if you think that's an acceptable trade-off: fair enough, I can't argue with that. But I don't think it can merely be brushed aside with "that's extreme", because in my experience things like that will be posted, usually by a small (but very active) group of people.

> In addition, whether a certain moderation approach would "drive away people" is a strawman. This is not the question.

The question is what effect this policy would have. This is, in my opinion, one of them.

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