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Meanwhile the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate has 360K followers on Twitter.

by bwship 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago
Ideologically it troubles me that political opponents are censored in USA (Trump) even though I vehemently disagree with every thing he has to say and I understand it’s damaging to the society through incitement of violence.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  I'm less troubled that the censorship actually happened, as much as I am troubled by the increasing demand for such censorship. social media networks give you all the tools you could possibly want to prevent you from seeing posts you don't want to see, but that's not good enough—people are demanding that people get deplatformed for speech. ubiquitous smartphone and social media access brought about the slow death of the "libertarian free speech haven" aspect of the Web, and there's no reason to think those ideals will come back into vogue anytime soon.
  - sureglymop 5y ago
    Those "ideals" absolutely exist on the internet... they just don't have a place in mainstream media. For example, I often use Mastodon and other platforms like it. Now while popular Mastodon instances obviously don't want to federate with "free speech" instances, those instances still exist and stand on their own. I still remember a discussion some time ago, about federating with what I think was called Gab. At the end of the day, free speech doesn't mean that a platform like twitter has to let you on to their platform, but should you want to create or host your own alternative to Twitter? Well you can, so you're not restricted in your free speech.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >At the end of the day, free speech doesn't mean that a platform like twitter has to let you on to their platform Perhaps in law, but certainly not spirit. I understand the dilemma. Twitter doesn't want the KKK on their site, but they've gone way too far. It's nothing more than a thinly veiled self-serving propaganda machine anymore, as is all the other large social media sites. The original dream of internet freedom is dead.
  - Pxtl 5y ago
    To me it stems from a basic central problem: verifiable fact has value, but it is not defended by our institutions meaningfully. You can spread all the harmful lies you like as long as your victims are diffuse and lack the standing for a lawsuit. We have plenty of forms of censorship available through the courts - people can be punished for perjury, filing a false report, defamation, false advertising, fraud, uttering threats, etc. But in all those cases, you only face punishment if you target somebody with the standing and means to retain a lawyer, or you target the machinery of justice itself. What happens when you target something like "climate change"? Or vaccines? Or the history of the 2020 election? Nothing. Nobody has standing to sue so the act is not punished. So why is Hulk Hogan more worthy of protection from harmful speech than Climate Change? And letting falsehoods go uncorrected plainly hasn't worked. The "Marketplace of Ideas" has done jack squat about Q or climate change denial or antivaxxers or whatever, and now we're facing real catastrophic impact of those problems. Significant thought-leaders in these communities can be caught over and over again in easily-verifiable lies and supporting extremist and hateful content... and face no consequences in terms of losing support through the normal mechanisms of the platform. You can see what happens to platforms without substantive moderation or censorship - they're gradually consumed by obsessed extremists who simply exhaust all the normal people until they leave. So, with the total failure of a government policy to tackle the problem, is it any wonder that people are looking to the owners of the platforms to tackle the issue? They have the means, and can be influenced through threats of boycotts. Until reality itself can sue for defamation, we have to come up with a decent alternative. The stakes are high and the impact is real.
    - adamrezich 5y ago
      why assume that our institutions have all of the verifiable facts? verifiable by whom? the institutions themselves? and which institutions? the elected federal government? the appointed federal government? the intelligence agencies? who is the authority on truth, and what gives them that authority?
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        The platforms are the authority on truth on their platform. I question whether they should want to be such an authority, or whether they are competent to be such an authority, but they have the power (both technically and, currently, legally) to be the authority... on their own platform.
- bwship 5y ago
  Yes exactly. You should be allowed to disagree with that person still being able to talk. The whole deplatforming of Trump seemed overly orchestrated. [EDIT} this is getting downvoted, but him magically being removed from Twitter and Parler being shut down didn't just happen in a vacuum. We are in full censorship mode as a country. It is sad to see.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    There was a lot of discussion on HN about Parlor ban. I was supportive of the ban because Jan 6 memories were fresh - over the months I've been re-evaluating my position. Not about Trump, but about civil liberties and the machinery that allows peaceful debate, freedom of expression and right to dissent.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Trump was live for millions of people just last week. I'm not sure how you could say Trump is censored. He can get on TV and talk whenever he wants.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Yes, I understand that Twitter is a private platform and it’s not censorship through government. I still have a problem with this. It doesn’t sit well. Big Tech is a proxy for official communications of Gov and banning a political opponent is just so wrong. The timing of this ban was so blatantly obvious - as soon as Biden took oath, Trump was booted off. Other part of me thinks “Twitter is so much better without Trump”. I’m with you all.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      > The timing of this ban was so blatantly obvious - as soon as Biden took oath, Trump was booted off. There may have been another event that occurred right about the same time which had more impact on Twitter's decision to boot him from the platform.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Trump was removed from Twitter and Facebook on January 6th, not January 20th. There are few things that can dampen First Amendment protections (to say nothing of Section 230 protections). Incitement to violence or insurrection is one of them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action), and on January 6th, Twitter and FB made the judgement call that it was too likely that's what the President was doing. Perhaps if one turns one's head and squints, one could consider it government censorship because the CEOs of those companies didn't want any risk at all they'd be hauled into a Congressional oversight (or a court) over the use of their platforms in aiding and abetting an insurrection, but it's a strange type of government censorship that censors the President, isn't it? It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility in the US, given that Congress and the Courts are independent branches; perhaps one could make a claim that Congress can apply indirect pressure to shape what a President may say. (There is, perhaps, more to be said on the topic in terms of why he's still banned from those sites).
- myko 5y ago
  The key thing here isn't that trump was a political opponent of Twitter/Facebook, but he was encouraging his supporters to overthrow the Democratically elected government of the US and put him in the office of POTUS. It makes sense for US companies to ban people trying to overthrow the US.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    normally when people try to overthrow governments, they bring weapons
    - myko 5y ago
      Not in every case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_coup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_coup though in this case I'd argue it was a combination of both, there were folks involved in the insurrection attempt on the 6th that brought weapons: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/13/donald-trump/jan-6-defendants-were-armed-guns-other-weapons-doc/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/13/donald-tru...
      - myko 5y ago
        I'm surprised at the downvotes and lack of engaging with my comment.
  - pyronik19 5y ago
    "overthrow the Democratically elected government of the US and put him in the office of POTUS." That already happened with the "mOsT SeCuRe ElEcTiOn EvaR"

Meanwhile the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate has 360K followers on Twitter.

by bwship 5y ago

Meanwhile the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate has 360K followers on Twitter.

Ideologically it troubles me that political opponents are censored in USA (Trump) even though I vehemently disagree with every thing he has to say and I understand it’s damaging to the society through incitement of violence.

adamrezich 5y ago
I'm less troubled that the censorship actually happened, as much as I am troubled by the increasing demand for such censorship. social media networks give you all the tools you could possibly want to prevent you from seeing posts you don't want to see, but that's not good enough—people are demanding that people get deplatformed for speech. ubiquitous smartphone and social media access brought about the slow death of the "libertarian free speech haven" aspect of the Web, and there's no reason to think those ideals will come back into vogue anytime soon.
- sureglymop 5y ago
  Those "ideals" absolutely exist on the internet... they just don't have a place in mainstream media. For example, I often use Mastodon and other platforms like it. Now while popular Mastodon instances obviously don't want to federate with "free speech" instances, those instances still exist and stand on their own. I still remember a discussion some time ago, about federating with what I think was called Gab. At the end of the day, free speech doesn't mean that a platform like twitter has to let you on to their platform, but should you want to create or host your own alternative to Twitter? Well you can, so you're not restricted in your free speech.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >At the end of the day, free speech doesn't mean that a platform like twitter has to let you on to their platform Perhaps in law, but certainly not spirit. I understand the dilemma. Twitter doesn't want the KKK on their site, but they've gone way too far. It's nothing more than a thinly veiled self-serving propaganda machine anymore, as is all the other large social media sites. The original dream of internet freedom is dead.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  To me it stems from a basic central problem: verifiable fact has value, but it is not defended by our institutions meaningfully. You can spread all the harmful lies you like as long as your victims are diffuse and lack the standing for a lawsuit. We have plenty of forms of censorship available through the courts - people can be punished for perjury, filing a false report, defamation, false advertising, fraud, uttering threats, etc. But in all those cases, you only face punishment if you target somebody with the standing and means to retain a lawyer, or you target the machinery of justice itself. What happens when you target something like "climate change"? Or vaccines? Or the history of the 2020 election? Nothing. Nobody has standing to sue so the act is not punished. So why is Hulk Hogan more worthy of protection from harmful speech than Climate Change? And letting falsehoods go uncorrected plainly hasn't worked. The "Marketplace of Ideas" has done jack squat about Q or climate change denial or antivaxxers or whatever, and now we're facing real catastrophic impact of those problems. Significant thought-leaders in these communities can be caught over and over again in easily-verifiable lies and supporting extremist and hateful content... and face no consequences in terms of losing support through the normal mechanisms of the platform. You can see what happens to platforms without substantive moderation or censorship - they're gradually consumed by obsessed extremists who simply exhaust all the normal people until they leave. So, with the total failure of a government policy to tackle the problem, is it any wonder that people are looking to the owners of the platforms to tackle the issue? They have the means, and can be influenced through threats of boycotts. Until reality itself can sue for defamation, we have to come up with a decent alternative. The stakes are high and the impact is real.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    why assume that our institutions have all of the verifiable facts? verifiable by whom? the institutions themselves? and which institutions? the elected federal government? the appointed federal government? the intelligence agencies? who is the authority on truth, and what gives them that authority?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      The platforms are the authority on truth on their platform. I question whether they should want to be such an authority, or whether they are competent to be such an authority, but they have the power (both technically and, currently, legally) to be the authority... on their own platform.
bwship 5y ago
Yes exactly. You should be allowed to disagree with that person still being able to talk. The whole deplatforming of Trump seemed overly orchestrated. [EDIT} this is getting downvoted, but him magically being removed from Twitter and Parler being shut down didn't just happen in a vacuum. We are in full censorship mode as a country. It is sad to see.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  There was a lot of discussion on HN about Parlor ban. I was supportive of the ban because Jan 6 memories were fresh - over the months I've been re-evaluating my position. Not about Trump, but about civil liberties and the machinery that allows peaceful debate, freedom of expression and right to dissent.
dfxm12 5y ago
Trump was live for millions of people just last week. I'm not sure how you could say Trump is censored. He can get on TV and talk whenever he wants.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Yes, I understand that Twitter is a private platform and it’s not censorship through government. I still have a problem with this. It doesn’t sit well. Big Tech is a proxy for official communications of Gov and banning a political opponent is just so wrong. The timing of this ban was so blatantly obvious - as soon as Biden took oath, Trump was booted off. Other part of me thinks “Twitter is so much better without Trump”. I’m with you all.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > The timing of this ban was so blatantly obvious - as soon as Biden took oath, Trump was booted off. There may have been another event that occurred right about the same time which had more impact on Twitter's decision to boot him from the platform.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Trump was removed from Twitter and Facebook on January 6th, not January 20th. There are few things that can dampen First Amendment protections (to say nothing of Section 230 protections). Incitement to violence or insurrection is one of them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action), and on January 6th, Twitter and FB made the judgement call that it was too likely that's what the President was doing. Perhaps if one turns one's head and squints, one could consider it government censorship because the CEOs of those companies didn't want any risk at all they'd be hauled into a Congressional oversight (or a court) over the use of their platforms in aiding and abetting an insurrection, but it's a strange type of government censorship that censors the President, isn't it? It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility in the US, given that Congress and the Courts are independent branches; perhaps one could make a claim that Congress can apply indirect pressure to shape what a President may say. (There is, perhaps, more to be said on the topic in terms of why he's still banned from those sites).
myko 5y ago
The key thing here isn't that trump was a political opponent of Twitter/Facebook, but he was encouraging his supporters to overthrow the Democratically elected government of the US and put him in the office of POTUS. It makes sense for US companies to ban people trying to overthrow the US.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  normally when people try to overthrow governments, they bring weapons
  - myko 5y ago
    Not in every case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_coup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_coup though in this case I'd argue it was a combination of both, there were folks involved in the insurrection attempt on the 6th that brought weapons: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/13/donald-trump/jan-6-defendants-were-armed-guns-other-weapons-doc/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/13/donald-tru...
    - myko 5y ago
      I'm surprised at the downvotes and lack of engaging with my comment.
- pyronik19 5y ago
  "overthrow the Democratically elected government of the US and put him in the office of POTUS." That already happened with the "mOsT SeCuRe ElEcTiOn EvaR"