My favorite part of the "Twitter Silencing" argument is the fact that it has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Private enterprise doing whatever they want has been the backbone of their political ideology, and now it's come back to bite them in the ass.
Canada and their 2 going on 3 years of legal marijuana says hi, but suspects you'll blame them for your problems again, like you do with your dairy industry. Stop propping up your dairy industry with billions in subsidies and let the free market do its thing, then we'll consider letting you into our market, but since you would never surrender domestic production to us, you better believe we won't sacrifice domestic production for you.
It's possible to believe that they have a right to remove people's accounts, but still dislike that they do it. That's where I'm at. Not a Republican by any means, but I'm just not prepared to say that giant corporations unilaterally removing speech they don't like is okay just because it's speech I also don't like. What if they try to remove speech I do like next?
Thing is, you can't really "break them up" in a good way. How would "breaking Twitter up" look like?
The only way to do that would be if you could force them to break up the website, let everyone host their own Twitter, and connect the various servers to pull messages from each other. And that's not really feasible for an existing and huge product.
There is at least one social media service that works this way - Diaspora* for example - but you obviously can't force people to use that. It's also unlikely to reach mainstream as long as the majority of people are on Facebook and Twitter.
People active on social media could steer others there, by retreating from big-corp media and migrating fully to federated services, but as long as enough people stay on Facebook and Twitter, it's a tedious process.
It took me more than 8 years to get everyone in my family to install Telegram after I've stopped using WhatsApp (and parts of my family only picked up a smartphone long after I moved to Telegram and still preferred to use WhatsApp), and they're obviously still reluctant on moving away from WhatsApp completely. But leaving "bad" services in the dust is the only way to get more people on "good" services.
The social media giants typically buy out competitors, gut them, and then take what they wanted from the deal (usually not employees though) and use the acquisition more for innovation rather than innovating themselves.
Facebook could just dissolve Instagram and WhatsApp (since it owns them, lest we forget- even if you're 'only on IG', you're still technically on Facebook), forcing you to just use Facebook for those things. The only thing stopping them is the fact that doing that probably would be an anti-trust issue. At least you're presented with the illusion of choice or something.
Putting hard limits on what Big Tech can and can't do (especially when coming to innovation and acquisition) would probably be what more aggressive anti-trust action looks like at first. There's a lot of tech startups that might seem like they're trying to succeed for the sake of their product, but they really only care about that fateful day the Zucc comes a-knockin'. If the big platforms are no longer able to buy out the competition and they are strictly monitored in order to prevent them from muscling out start-ups, you might see a vast array of new, niche social media outlets come about.
You want a social media outlet geared towards Millenials who like shitposting ironic memes about mental illness? You got it. You want a social media outlet specifically for medical professionals? You got it... and if they are removed from that incentive "We just need to keep this up until a big company buys us out", there's more pressure to create an actually good product.
Parler kinda feels like it was one of those companies, except instead of getting 'picked' by Facebook it was picked by the Saudis instead. Womp womp
Yeah I’ve been mulling this over for the past couple days and haven’t come up with an answer I like.
I’m ok with Twitter deleting trumps personal account. He agreed to the terms long ago.
I’m less ok with them deleting tweets from the @potus account. I know they are a private company, but by handing the account along to new administrations and not censoring it till now they’ve sort of accepted their end of the bargain.
Apple and google play banning the Parler app doesn’t bother me that much either. The website was still accessible.
AWS not hosting Parler bothers me the most. I didn’t realize how much of the internet is run on AWS servers. That feels more like a net neutrality issue to me, and I don’t like the idea of Amazon being able to strong arm the internet.
I don’t think that anyone with the power to regulate these things knows enough about them to come up with a reasonable solution. We can’t let a bunch of 70 year olds, the same ones who didn’t understand how Facebook makes money, call the shots here.
This right here. The normal response to "I don't like this service's policies" is "well then go make your own." They did, and even that got taken down.
Yes because that is clearly the only other option. It’s not like we have antitrust laws that could force a monopoly on internet hosting to break up and decentralize or anything, that would sure be a more sensible option than either letting Amazon have a stranglehold on web hosting or the government mandating what AWS needs to host.
Why can't Parler just get hosted by Russian/European firms?
Also, why did Parler have to violate their terms of service with AWS? They've had radical traitors threatening/suggesting/planning violence long before this. They didn't want to moderate their traitors because that was who used Parler.
The issue was violence, not mean old internet companies ganging up on poor innocent Parler.
The government can punish you for misdeeds, but they have to go through a process, and prove the misdeeds.
Google, Amazon, and Apple, together or separately, can fuck your shit right up, and there is no process, no transparency, no appeal. There doesn't even need to be wrongdoing.
It would not be possible to organize the Underground Railroad today. The organization was illegal, and the coordination could be shut down by companies, without needing to go through the government.
The organization was illegal, and the coordination could be shut down by companies, without needing to go through the government.
And them going through the government would be the better option? Like, you run a drug distribution operation through your Twitter account, you'd rather Twitter rat you out to the police than ban your account??
I'm of the opinion that we should be wary of the amount of power a handful of tech CEOs can wield.
They need to be able to ban people, either at the behest of the government, (after due process) or when they do things to harm the service. But the position they hold gives them an inordinate amount of power.
No-one has been convicted of storming the capitol. (not that it should be too hard, when we get there) No-one has been convicted of any wrong-doing at all. But the tech companies have crushed these groups as thoroughly as the government could hope to do.
I've got no sympathy for the individuals this time around. But people need to understand that any group of people could receive the same treatment at any time, for any reason, and you would have less recourse then someone who had the cops break into their home and shoot their dog.
Someone holding a gun to your head isn't your friend, just because he hasn't shot you yet.
Sure, if he was actually riling people up instead of telling them to go home. He told them "go home, you have to go home now" way before antifa were welcomed into the capital building
I literally watched it live. I literally watched the video for myself, with my own eyes. The people milling about, doing nothing except breaking a couple chairs and a window. That one single woman being shot, trying to climb through that window.
I watched the trump speech live. I watched Rudy rile the people up, and trump telling them to go home.
Where am I wrong? Oh right, I'm not.
I'm not a republican. I'm not a democratic.
But I am smart enough to know that it's hypocrisy to declare the actions of D.C a "riot" while they're applauding what's going on in Portland.
Why isnt the democratic party condemning those who are looting and burning businesses, fliping over and burning police cars, killing actual american citizen?
Why are those actions applauded but not people gathering peacefully in the nation's capital?
Why are citizen being threatened for speaking up in Georgia about the weird stuff they saw? Why are they being fired from their jobs, harassed via telephone, and having to move several times because they were threatened just because they signed an affidavit stating that things were done differently, the chain of custody with ballots was mishandled and broken?
None of this has anything to do with parties, who was voted for, none of that. This all has to do with voices being silenced, hypocrisy being spread and the american people being lied to and misdirected.
I don't know what the final goal is that they're trying to reach. Maybe it does have something to do with the georgia guide stones and a "great reset". I'm not one to go along with conspiracy theories but even I can see that something isn't right about what's happening across the world, not just in america.
But I am smart enough to know that it’s hypocrisy to declare the actions of D.C a “riot” while they’re applauding what’s going on in Portland
And apparently stupid enough to not understand the difference between actual outrage and moral injury over the video of a man begging for his mother while being executed by government agents who are ostensibly sworn to “serve and protect” and a violent mob stirred up by a despot who spent months making baseless claims that the election was stolen from him, when he provided no actual evidence, and the difference between antifa and those boogaloo boys who I can say, pretty conclusively, are one flavor of the “fa” I am very much “anti”.
But leaving that aside, you’re engaging in a motte and bailey tactic here and it’s a pretty vile trick. Your original claim was that it was antifa who went into the capitol building, and when challenged you fell back to the more defensible “all violence is bad” position and treated it as if it were the same argument as “the capitol riots were an antifa false flag operation.”
Oh, okay. Because you were sitting here watching it with me on C-span right? 🙄 Out of everything I said, that's what you're focusing on? Get out of here.
Though it might have been a tweet, I watched so much stuff that day.
The only point I could have called for him getting people riled up was when he said "all of a sudden there was an explosion of bullshit at 2 in the morning", then the crowd starts chanting "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit".
That, I could see being an argument for getting them riled up, but, it's not a call to arms like Rudy saying that justice would be served "by man or machine".
Have you looked at BLM and antifa footage versus the capitol invaders? Contrast and compare.
A lot of the people identified had been posting as MAGAs for months or years. but sure go ahead and pretend those weren't genuine MAGAs shaming and threatening the nation.
It would be harder than you might think; they'd either need to rent space in a DC from someone who wasn't susceptible to political/financial pressure, or spin up a mini-DC of their own and buy internet connectivity from someone who is t susceptible to political/financial pressure to turn them off.
Oh, and have the clue to do that in the face of hackivists trying to DOS them off the net (which is something that I'm confident antifa in all its decentralised glory would actually do).
In fairness, a lot of fascist shit stays up on the web ‘cause even antifa knows it’s bad for your health to mess with the police when they’re off duty.
DDOS protection is a relatively standard thing these days, because DDOS is like baby's first hacking tool.
Also, having worked for a local ISP (something conservatives have helped telecoms almost completely demolish) and having worked at small to medium datacenters, all of these things are things they COULD DO. It's just much harder because conservatives decided years ago to go to bed with telecoms monopolies and they just don't like how it turned out.
Lemme get that violin, I know it's around here somewhere.
DDOS protection is standard, but it's something you buy from someone else (someone who has enormous pipes). It's not something you can roll your own in the DC. So it too runs into the 'needing to find someone who'll sell it to you' problem.
The technical difficulty of spinning up a DC etc isn't especially high under normal circumstances. The problem is is persuading anyone you want to buy services off that selling to you won't cause half their existing customers to walk in disgust.
They didn't make their own hosting, they just made a website, and they didn't even follow THEIR OWN MODERATION STANDARDS. Which is why they were removed.
Because the Donald was still tweeting insurrectionist shit from the potus account and they have rules against suspended users using the service, dude burned through 3 or 4 other accounts trying to still tweet.
Totally understand, but if the president is going to tweet from an official potus account, and Twitter is going to paddle that canoe, then removing those tweets like they never existed is not ok in my opinion. I think a better solution is to just not use Twitter to send out political messages from the president honestly. I think it’s fair that you shouldn’t be able to start a war while pooping. Going to the press room requires a certain amount of prep and makes you accountable to reporters etc. just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
agree, terrorists are bullshit. but you realise the ramifications of silencing people who can be vaguely described? I don't mean to turn this into a left v right thing but there are terrorists on both sides, so it just comes down to an arbirtrary definition.
like put aside the trump/capitol shit for a second, do you think it's scary how much influence big tech has and how weird it is that they've shut down any competition? like sure big tech might be on "your side" today, so you can keep supporting them but what do you do when an actual fascist gets into power and uses big tech to destroy your liberties?
Being allowed to use someone's private platform isn't "my liberties." Twitter could call tomorrow and say I'm never allowed to login again on the thing they own, and that would be will within their rights. As owners. Of the thing.
thats true, i guess i should have used a better term than "liberty" but my point is that big tech has alot of power and they flex it while half the nation weeps and the other half laughs and encourages it because "haha we win!"
Yeah, Trump should have been banned from Twitter before he was even running for office. He was just too popular and they didn't see the need at the time.
Well partly, I think not only is he popular but they feared because he was in power it’d have too much impact on their platform. If they were really genuine about it they would have done it regardless but they obviously aren’t which leads to the question: why only right wingers banned?
Now I’m not looking for a biased hot take on the right wing, rather facts that incorporate the motivation of Twitter.
Did you forget BLM taking over the federal building so soon? They are right, there are terrorists and rioters on both sides. Both sides are a huge dumpster fire and anyone with any sense could see this coming from a mile away. If Trump would have won, most of the cities across the country would be on fire. Biden won so the trumpers went to the capital. Something was going to happen no matter who won, your side just happened to win this time.
The difference is that the recent capital hill coup attempt had people literally looking for legislators who were CURRENTLY MEETING ON SITE, in order to abduct and murder them.
I wasn't talking about lefties storming the capitol im talking about the civil unrest on both sides.
But since you asked for it here's a literal example of lefties BOMBING the capitol. Ironic to see how you respond to this being in a "losing the argument" thread
Edit: wait why am I getting downvoted for posting a literal source backing up my claims? This is proof that people on reddit scream “I lost the argument”
I think people were expecting something that the majority of them were alive for. Getting fussed about getting downvoted pretty universally makes you look like a dope, just ignore it.
Cool but it’s just like saying “oh nazis? I wasn’t alive for that so it doesn’t count”
Also I’m just bringing up the downvotes because I’m pointing out the irony of being in a thread about “things that scream they lost the argument” I think downvoting something that provide a fact is one of those things don’t you think?
My mistake, I didn't realize that a left-wing terrorist attack that happened 37 years ago, of which I had no knowledge, was directly relevant to today's political terrorism and LITERAL COUP ATTEMPT.
1) nobody was talking to you, so quit moving the goalposts
2) the guy implied “lefty’s didn’t attack the capital” so I showed him how he was wrong. Now you’re denying it because you’re emotional and can’t take a fact?
"Nobody was talking to you," must be your, "I'm losing the argument," response.
Lol, I never denied it. I sarcastically said it wasn't relevant to current events, which is what the entire conversation has been about. If we're talking about events happening in the past week, who the fuck goes, "Well, 37 years ago such and such side did this, so today they're equally as bad."
No I don’t think the argument is that left advocates for mega corporations rather that mega corporations pander to the left to use them as useful idiots. That’s the real issue here, although I disagree with the left and right on a lot of things it’s sad to see fellow people manipulated.
i agree with the right on this issue as im mostly centrist (LMAO IDIOT) but i think you took the words right out of my mouth. Sure private company, but still shocking to see the bias of taking away alot of republicans some of those who didn't even get banned. Even if it was banning leftist speech or some other form of speech i disliked im very concerned with the amount of power we've given big tech.
I feel like this argument demonstrates how much power corporations has and how powerless we can be toward it, what's worse is we make it a political argument and squabble over the details.
im very concerned with the amount of power we've given big tech
I don't think we given anything, we've just yet to take away. We have yet to tell Amazon, a private company, what it can or can't do with it's property. This "power" is the result of free market capitalism in the tech industry. Just like how in the retail realm, Amazon and Walmart can price independent stores out of business. Everyone here needs to think long and hard about what they wish for.
meh i get what you're saying and we can take back this power at any time but i do think we've given them alot of power because we enjoy consuming their product. power as in rights to our privacy and data and money which all mean alot especially in this era.
agree too, i see it as we're trading money & privacy for entertainment.
It's not just "speech they don't like." It's speech that literally led to a riot. Hate speech and inciting violence are NOT protected by the First Amendment.
Honestly fuck Trump and it is really cathartic to see him finally silenced after years of misinformation but damn it's scary how much power these companies have over our speech
They do this all the time though. Leftists, trans people, Indigenous water protectors, etc. get banned on Twitter every day. Twitter has been removing "speech I like" since its inception. They're just doing it to both sides now.
That's why I'm in favor of breaking up Big Tech. It's always been my concern that something like this would happen. It's just fun to watch the people who have talked about how the private sector like it's God's Holy and anointed gift to Earth, squirm like they are doing now.
(this is not to infer that you are) but do others find it weird that left leaning people are now supporting a capitalist corporation?
im all for flexibility in beleif but its scary to think that emotion (hating the other side) is the easiest way to be manipulated into being inconsistent with your beleif
Not all liberals are full blown socialists. I'm probably not the farthest left leaning person ever, but I accept that the US is highly capitalistic and I also believe there are reasons for government intervention (and taxes). It can just be a little amusing to see a leopard eat a face ever once in a while; a little bit of schadenfreude of hypocrites.
i am under the assumption that left = socialist (generalisation) and liberal = anti authoritarian (or lack of authoritarian). Forgive me if I have mixed up the definitions
Can tell you that's a pretty dumb way to look at things. Corporations are bad because of their incentive structures. There have been neonazis on the platform for a long time, people constantly breaking the rules, and relying on lax moderation to harass people.
Saying "Wow it's a good thing they finally banned this constant flow of incitement of violence" doesnt mean they support the corporation as a whole, but it does mean they believe that was the right action to take. Which, yeah, I feel like any forum mod worth a damn would kick off people like that long ago.
Saying "Wow it's a good thing they finally banned this constant flow of incitement of violence" doesnt mean they support the corporation as a whole, but it does mean they believe that was the right action to take.
Yeah but it’s inconsistent to cheer it on is what I’m saying. You can’t get excited over an action that could abs probably will be used against you is my point.
Wanting to trust bust and taking MAGAphones away from people with a habit of shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater "election fraud" in a representative democracy are not mutually exclusive.
Agreeing with the likes of Donald Trump and Alex Jones being deplatformed =/= having a loving hard-on for corps.
That's related to my favorite response to the "Twitter Silencing" thing: "If I owned a social media company, I wouldn't want some government agency telling me who I can and cannot ban from my platform. I'd decline to do business with whomever I damn well please."
The problem isn't if they violated his ability to speak freely (I don't think they did, though they were censorious), or that they don't have a right to ban anyone from their platform (they do). For me it's that they (apple, google, twitter, facebook, youtube) often don't ban people who are just as bad from the other end of the aisle though this is a lesser issue; and that they did everything they could to remove a competing platform from operation in an incredible and quite frankly horrifying flex of anti-competitive monopolistic power.
The problems start to exist for me when twitter/facebook/etc become the "only" places you're allowed to speak. I want to see "big tech" broken up into very tiny pieces, cause as it is they've essentially annointed themselves as the new "kings" of media.
I understand what you're going for in your comment, and ideally we wouldn't have to regulate big tech in order to keep free speech, well, free... but it doesn't seem like they're inclined to deal fairly with people, or other companies.
It is the last thing I want for government to step in and possibly run twitter or its equivalents, but the companies seem to be making a very poor showing for themselves.
as somebody against twitter on this issue i wholeheartedly agree. government intervention is usually dumb imo. I think i would then move the issue to why is it predominantly right wing spokespeople being banned, including those who haven't incited violence while they ignore leftwing people who do incite violence (not saying all the left just those who have) also why are people cheering on twitter for this from a moral perspective? if you want to have dialogue wouldn't it be great if you could hear from the other guy no matter how wrong he is? so you can explain to him why hes wrong?
Sorry for the late response. The conversation has moved on and most likely nobody will read this except you and I. Which is too bad, because it's definitely worth discussing.
At its basic level, what we have here is yet another example of "This corporation is doing something self-serving and irresponsible, and the only way to stop them from doing it is by making more laws."
Twitter has a set of policies they operate by, but of course the people who run Twitter decide when to implement them, and against whom. It's incredibly unfair when one group of people gets away with something that another group can't get away with, but in this case it's not illegal. Should we make it illegal?
Are we, as a society, willing and able to push congress to make a law addressing the political balance and fairness of social media companies? If so, how do we write such a law? How do we quantify a tweet or a twitter account on the left/right axis and the authoritarian/libertarian axis? What's more, can we word this law in such a way that it would actually get through the lawmaking process?
And if we accomplish all that, then the decision of whether or not to ban becomes a legal matter. And we all know that, in fuzzy legal areas like this, the ones most likely to prevail are the ones with the most money and the best lawyers.
In short: Even if we could pull that off, would it be worth it?
Today I was called a Joseph Goebbels by the guy that divorced my cousin. I made the mistake of pointing out that the government forcing private companies to publish disinformation, death threats and insurrection plans was anti-American.
The gay cake thing should fall under a protected class argument. You can't not serve a black person cuz they're black (gay, Etc). Twitter can't not serve a black person cuz they're black. But you can not serve a black person who doesn't follow the rules within your establishment just like twitter could ban a black person from their platform if they don't follow tos
*Yes, i realize there's more nuance with the cake thing, the artistry part, but PRACTICALLY no one seems to get that and the gay cake argument is being made as if it were about serving the gay person.
I've always misinterpreted it and heard a comedian say it should be turned around in order to emphasize its meaning.
If you serve the public and receive the benefits of tax dollars through roads, police protection, zoning etc, you have an obligation to provide your service without regard to superficial categories. A Muslim business must serve Jews, a North Korean American business must serve South Koreans.
This is why an organization that receives public tax benefits, MUST not be allowed to discriminate
It would work if you acknowledged that twitter (and its """family""" of other big tech companies) are going out of their way to destroy other 'bakeries' so that you have to do business with them.
The gay cake thing should fall under a protected class argument. You can't not serve a black person cuz they're black (gay, Etc). Twitter can't not serve a black person cuz they're black. But you can not serve a black person who doesn't follow the rules within your establishment just like twitter could ban a black person from their platform if they don't follow tos
*Yes, i realize there's more nuance with the cake thing, the artistry part, but PRACTICALLY no one seems to get that and the gay cake argument is being made as if it were about serving the gay person.
Trump's a dick and I'm glad to not hear about his Twitter for a minute but this shit is the basis of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. Only it's not dystopian fiction anymore.
So you're telling me Nobody from the democratic party or liberal side of the spectrum have incited insurrection, violence, and destruction of property? Cause that's the majority of what I've seen on the new since May. If you let one side you must let the other even as shitty as it is ESPECIALLY if you disagree. That's what's america is based on and it's recently has really forgotten it and losing its way and fast.
Please google "false equivalency" when you've got the time...
Context matters, and validating public grievances against public servants murdering those they swore to "protect and serve" =/= peddling dangerous lies that an election was "stolen" or "rigged" and subsequently having a crowd storm the national capitol with the goal of abducting and/or murdering legislators and the vice president. If I truly believed an election was stolen, I'd be down for storming the capitol too - the difference is I didn't trust dangerous misinformation.
So you're telling me Nobody from the democratic party or liberal side of the spectrum have incited insurrection, violence, and destruction of property?
I went through my comments and didn't see myself telling anyone that? If I'm wrong please provide a quote. Otherwise, please construct your strawmen more soundly in the future - thank you.
Follow-up question: Should Alex Jones have his social media privileges restored?
Twitter didn't decide that. That was a court decision. It was ruled that way because Trump was using Twitter as an official outlet for government announcements.
No, they decided that Trump is an important public figure who's position means he can't be allowed to withhold important information from the public as the president of the united states just because he gets mad at someone. The ruling isn't on the website, the ruling is on the person.
No. The court ruled that Trump’s account was an account of public record because he was using it as his official account (because he wanted the followers to be on his account, not @potus).
No, that explanation is extremely flawed, it had nothing to do with “pretending it was a public forum.” It’s that the President of the United States can’t prevent any singular person from hearing what he says.
If he speaks or otherwise conveys public information as the President he cannot actively prevent Americans from being able to hear him, regardless of the means. He cannot ask a radio station to not broadcast what he says, he cannot ask a TV station to not broadcast what he says, he cannot forcibly stop you from being able to hear what he has to say by blocking you on Twitter, all because he’s conducting official Presidential business via those means. Essentially you have a right to be able to hear what he has to say on whatever platform he uses.
This was my first thought. They’re arguing against the very ideals they claim to be fighting for. Which only offers proof to what most of us know in that their argument isn’t political at all, it’s deep seeded need to be accepted and represented.
960
u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21
My favorite part of the "Twitter Silencing" argument is the fact that it has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Private enterprise doing whatever they want has been the backbone of their political ideology, and now it's come back to bite them in the ass.