[HN Gopher] Calling for public input on our approach to world le... ___________________________________________________________________ Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders Author : uptown Score : 177 points Date : 2021-03-19 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.twitter.com) | ceilingcorner wrote: | Convenient that they did this now, and not say, last November. Or | even once in the last four years. | christiansakai wrote: | Remove the ability to have followers from world leaders, remove | the ability to be liked from world leaders' tweets. | | Keep the ability to retweet world leaders' tweets, but prevent | retweets to be added more from the retweeters. | etrautmann wrote: | What would it mean to not allow followers on Twitter? | christiansakai wrote: | I was thinking for world leaders' tweets, it should strictly | be news, not popularity contests, not hype machine, not rage- | inducing machine. I'm thinking of making it strictly news. | | In terms of how people can get the world leader's news | (tweets). Maybe something like news feed on their twitter | feed, like Youtube has some local news on my feed even though | I don't subscribe to anything. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | No one would be able to see the world leader's tweets in | their home feed. They would have to go to the specific world | leader's page (or use a 3rd party app too once again see | Tweets from the world leaders in the home feed). | | The practical effect would be that only people who are very | interested in a world leader (and bots) would retweet them. | This would make the Twitter experience even more insular. | jobigoud wrote: | Maybe they mean you can follow but the followers count is not | visible to the public or the account holder. | strogonoff wrote: | I actually wanted to suggest the opposite. Make everyone play | by the same rules. Remove blue checkmarks. Anything you read | could be a lie or someone pretending to be someone else, when | taking things at face value is unsustainable one has to learn | to think critically. | | Of course, this would be against Twitter's interests. They'd | rather fit authorities' stereotypes as to how a public | communication channel should behave, and be normalized that | way. Safer, more shareholder value. | anoncow wrote: | Are we asking Twitter to stop being Twitter? | christiansakai wrote: | Only for world leaders. | marshmallow_12 wrote: | That's discrimination, unpopular as this may be, world leaders | are also people. To fairly implement what you suggest, twitter | must make a rule that political personalities must post | political content while in office on a dedicated "world leader" | handle | krapp wrote: | >To fairly implement what you suggest, twitter must make a | rule that political personalities must post political content | while in office on a dedicated "world leader" handle | | I struggle to see a problem with this. A political | personality making political statements should do so from an | account representing the office, for instance, @POTUS. That | account should belong to the office, not the individual. | Maybe state and corporate accounts _should_ be treated | differently than personal accounts. | marshmallow_12 wrote: | Yes. That is what i am saying. I think that's fair and good | in theory, even if i personally don't think twitter should | take that direction. For one thing, it will be hard to | moderate and set clear boundaries. | KoftaBob wrote: | If anything, for any politicians Twitter account, it should | hide follower count, and for all their tweets, it shouldn't | allow likes/retweets/replies. | | Essentially their accounts should serve strictly as a broadcast | of info, and nothing more. | phone8675309 wrote: | By "shouldn't allow likes/retweets/replies" do you mean by | the politician or by the followers of the politician? | robjan wrote: | They should hide all metrics. Remove follower count, retweet | count, like count. | | Without metrics there is less incentive to game the system and | less feedback when attempting to game it. | mcculley wrote: | World leaders in developed countries should not be depending on | Twitter or private media companies at all. | | There is no good reason why the President of the United States | cannot publish his (in the case of Trump, ill-formed) thoughts | directly to whitehouse.gov. | | We should demand and expect that governments publish directly to | the web in an immutable way that is archived to satisfy our duty | to history. | | Twitter made things worse by hiding Trump's previous tweets. | Every voter should be required to read every damn one of them. | luxuryballs wrote: | "(in the case of Trump, ill-formed)" well at least you're not | trying to hide your lack of intelligence and critical thinking | skills | easton wrote: | Don't worry, the national archives are working on it: | https://www.trumplibrary.gov/research/archived-social-media | bellyfullofbac wrote: | Twitter really was horrible, it enabled Trump's keyboard | warrior persona. He was too chickenshit (or lazy) to actually | say things with a camera and press in front of him, but with | Twitter he can just shit post with no consequence. | sitkack wrote: | Maybe the first thing twitter should do is follow its own | rules and apply them everywhere. Trump should have been | banned years ago. | | Twitter and Trump danced this together and now Twitter wants | to be the good guy? | breck wrote: | My one input: please consider | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan a world leader, | since she is leading the majority of the world (90%) in terms of | providing everyone access to the world's scientific information. | TheRealNGenius wrote: | World leaders should not be afforded any form of preferential | treatment. Everyone is equal under the law; all users equal under | a platform. That's it. The moment you treat a subset of the | population differently from another (such as giving them a blue | checkmark), you begin to break from this ideal. Of course, any | platform is free to do as they please. But congrats, in doing so, | you have devolved into a world of kings and queens. | bun_at_work wrote: | Isn't the checkmark just a verification? Pretty sure that's | there so users can differentiate between real and spoof | accounts. That way users know that @realDonaldTrump is really | him, instead of the (probably) co-opted account @DonaldTrump. | | It's a pretty far cry from having any sort of additional power. | | Furthermore, acknowledging status where it exists is not the | same as creating a distinct group of people with special | status. What about "Dr." for people with doctorate degrees? | Doctors don't have any more rights than anyone else, and having | the title exist certainly doesn't create some part of society | that is inaccessible to others. | | Holding political leaders to a different standard on social | media doesn't mean they are royalty, it's just an | acknowledgement that they do hold power, elected, inherited, or | otherwise. Furthermore, if Twitter's history is a sign of what | any new policy would look like, world leaders would be held to | a more restrictive standard than others, on Twitter. | TheRealNGenius wrote: | I'm pretty sure that not just anyone can get a checkmark. If | it were the case that anyone could get the checkmark, then | sure, I agree it would just be just a form of verification. | This would be perfectly fine :) | | You're right that acknowledging status exists is not the same | as creating it. But does one not go hand in hand with the | other in this case, where you are selectively picking who to | acknowledge? | | Now, I don't know the specifics, but from what I understand, | there is an overwhelming disparity between | journalists/politicians getting blue checkmarks compared to | others who may have more followers. Of course, that would | also be fine, assuming there was a rigorous definition of | what a "journalist" was. Keep in mind, this is not evidence: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni8CpIJpmqw | | I want to be clear, I was not implying political leaders | royalty. But when you hold some group to a different standard | than others or have rules for them that differ (whether more | restrictive or lax), you have basically reinvented legal | inequality. | tacostakohashi wrote: | I don't really have much of an opinion on how twitter should | approach world leaders. | | I'm more interested in the approach of world leaders to twitter. | As far as I'm concerned, people receiving salaries from the | taxpayer shouldn't be spending their time writing free copy for | twitter. They should be communicating with the public via | government operated websites, or press conferences covered by | multiple media organizations. | | If the president feels a need to push out realtime text snippets, | it can be done via an RSS feed on whitehouse.gov, and people can | consume it via whatever app / client they want. If twitter wanted | to scrape that and provide access to it, fine, but they shouldn't | be given a free monopoly on that content. | nostromo wrote: | I don't trust the media enough to honestly and accurately | convey information from my elected officials to me. | | And while press releases on whitehouse.gov are a step in the | right direction, the fact that they are press releases usually | makes them anodyne and uninteresting. | | The best approach is the one we used to have: a non-partisan | (or at least, bipartisan) press corps asking elected tough | questions live on television. But that has been lost for some | time now. | codingdave wrote: | > They should be communicating with the public via government | operated websites | | Most everything a government official or board or committee | does is on the public record. Saying they cannot use 3rd party | tools to organize, document, and communicate their actions | would be more expensive and time consuming for them, which | ultimately takes them away from the business of actually | governing. | jpxw wrote: | A key issue with politicians' use of Twitter is that Twitter's | userbase is a very poor reflection of the wider population. | | Politicians who are on Twitter, whether they know it or not, | start to drift towards the views of Twitter users. Dopamine, | like that which you get from from a popular tweet, is a | powerful drug, and will alter peoples behaviour. | | Aside from that, though, it seems the medium of Twitter has a | remarkable ability to bring out people's most toxic sides... | it's really not healthy. | crazygringo wrote: | It's not "free copy for twitter" anymore than a press briefing | is "free copy for newspapers". | | Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and | listening. | | Today, Twitter is just as important of a conduit as newspapers | or the evening news. | | People already read Twitter and find it far more convenient to | follow a world leader than to visit individual sites or set up | an RSS reader. | | Also you might be suffering from a legal misunderstanding -- | Twitter doesn't get any kind of monopoly, free or otherwise, on | someone's tweet. You keep the rights to your tweet. | | There's zero difference between journalists reporting on a | press conference and reporting on a tweet, except that tweets | are instant while press conferences take time to set up. | | And also that tweets are direct to the public, while when you | read a journalist's article they might be omitting parts or | spinning it. | hooande wrote: | Twitter is a non-government owned software platform. It makes | no sense to use it for exclusive official communications. | Because, as we've seen, they can close any account at any | time. even the us president | | Trump in particular basing his presidency around twitter was | super stupid. He could have and still can post anything he | wants to trump.com, and it will be widely distributed on | social media immediately | | I'm always hesitant to base any major endeavor on a software | platform that someone else owns. because...they own it. They | can do whatever they want with their property | everdrive wrote: | >Today, Twitter is just as important of a conduit as | newspapers or the evening news. | | Twitter is a terrible medium for discourse. You wouldn't | suggest that world leaders communicate via TikTok, simply | because it's popular. | mywacaday wrote: | If it got younger people engaged why would it be a bad | thing? | everdrive wrote: | You can't talk about policy (in a meaningful way) with | memes. Our discourse is already much too simple. If any | group of people needs to be pandered to, then they're | clearly not actually interested in politics. | Judgmentality wrote: | This seems pretty elitist. I think being able to | communicate effectively and concisely is important. When | Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech it was noteworthy | for lasting minutes when normally politicians would go on | for hours. Many critics said the same thing about the | Gettysburg Address as you are saying about memes. For the | time, that was so much shorter than a usual speech, it | was effectively a sound bite (and hey, people are still | talking about it today, wadda ya know?). | | If someone can use memes to communicate effectively, | awesome. Most people suck at discourse in general, it's | not limited to memes. | everdrive wrote: | If elitism is the opposite of populism, then so be it. | | I also don't agree that the Gettysburg address is | equivalent to speaking on Twitter. | _vertigo wrote: | "Important" and "terrible for discourse" are orthogonal. | detritus wrote: | > Leaders communicate wherever people are already reading and | listening. | | I don't disagree with your post, but do general Government | communiques not come in the form of press releases to all | willing outlets? | | Perhaps Twitter should at itself to the list, and press | releases come with an abridged 280 character surmisal that | they could then use. | mandelbrotwurst wrote: | Some of them do, but others go out via Tweet, | advertisements, physical signage, websites, email, and a | variety of other channels. | | The government has to fight the meme wars just like anyone | else who wants to compete for attention. | crazygringo wrote: | I live in New York and I get different pieces of | information from the government via pretty much every | channel -- direct e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, websites, | billboards, ads in the subway, post office mailings, | newspapers, etc. | | Different government agencies and officials at different | levels (city, state, national) use all _sorts_ of different | communication methods. | | Governments have been heavily involved in media campaigns | across all channels as long as there's been media. | | Press releases are just one communications channel among | many. Twitter is just the ~newest in a very long line. | lisper wrote: | The problem is that all leaders have an inherent conflict of | interest between the following two goals: | | 1. Doing the job | | 2. Maintaining power | | The problem is, again, two-fold: | | 1. The things you need to do to serve the first goal are often | different from the things you need to do to serve the second, | and | | 2. You must achieve the second goal in order to even attempt to | achieve the first. | | That's the fundamental problem. It has nothing to do with | Twitter per se. It's an inherent feature of all large-scale | societal interactions. | btkramer9 wrote: | This is a great point and this[1] video gets at the same | thing with much more detail and examples | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs | lisper wrote: | Yes, that is a truly fantastic video. Should be required | viewing for everyone. | | [UPDATE] There's a book too: | | https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost- | Po... | bun_at_work wrote: | The stated conflict of interest is only really an issue in | democracies, or other forms of representative governments. | Otherwise, spot-on. | lisper wrote: | Why only in democracies? Dictators have to work to stay in | power too. It doesn't just happen automatically. | moustachesmith wrote: | A demonhunt ? | | 'Just answer me, nor glamorized regent, whose freedom we the | folk, are going to fight for?' | | 'For the freedom of foreigners? ...is this going to be a | castrated migrationthespian?' | | 'Cos meet the Jones isn't radical enough anymore?' | | (-; | williesleg wrote: | Twitter doesn't care. They're in the business of collecting | data. Now that so many have left, they want their 'opinion' | which is really that they thirst for more data. | ed312 wrote: | Do you also oppose the US President holding press conferences | for privately owned broadcast TV channels? | [deleted] | calvinmorrison wrote: | or that CPAN is a non-profit run by the networks to bring you | full realtime video access into the senate, congress etc? | tacostakohashi wrote: | I can live with it if there's a pool of such channels and a | system for sharing access across them, which is more or less | the case for white house press conferences. | | If the president were to just pick one favorite channel and | only ever be interviewed by them and have them as the only | invitee for press conferences, then no. | cle wrote: | I'm not. There's a natural scarcity of space for physical | cameras and reporters. As far as I understand, the press | themselves are largely responsible for figuring out these | logistics via the WHCA. (Someone please correct me if I'm | mistaken.) | | There isn't any practical scarcity for text streams coming | from the White House though, so I can't think of a reason why | consuming them should be tied to a closed platform like | Twitter, other than marginal costs of setting up and | operating the infrastructure (perhaps not so marginal once we | start talking about government contracts?). | SllX wrote: | Your point is good but I think the reality is just really | mundane: the government could put out its own text streams | and multi-publish them to different platforms, but it's | just not there yet. There's no fire under anyone's ass to | get it done, if it's even occurred to anyone in a position | to do something about it in the past uh... 14 years? | | However I would be fully on board with Twitter banning | world leaders and IP blocking their capitals including the | entire city of Washington. They won't, that's a value | destroying proposition, but a man can dream. | Analemma_ wrote: | Twitter isn't "a closed platform" in the sense that is | relevant here. If I want to read the President's tweets | without a Twitter account, I can. | cle wrote: | That's not the sense that I was using, and I don't think | it's a relevant point either. What's important IMO is | that the platform and the data are not controlled by | elected officials. | wutbrodo wrote: | Well, sort of. Not if they remove it. The fact that they | (mostly) haven't exercised this control so far over world | leaders' tweets is a matter of internal policy at | Twitter. | barbazoo wrote: | Given that the list of organisations [0] consists of public | and private ones, your statement reads somewhat disingenuous | to me. | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_press_corps | dehrmann wrote: | PBS, NPR, the BBC, and Al Jazeera all have seats in the White | House press room. | randcraw wrote: | Yes. But I'd go further. All holders of US political office | at all levels should be unable to restrict any conference or | interview in which they take part to any single interviewer | or news agency, so they cannot control who asks the questions | or who airs the event. | | For several decades, US Presidents have been able to avoid | hard questions by cherry picking interviewers or networks in | order to "massage their message". That isn't news and it | shirks their responsibility to answer hard questions. Tweets | are just the next step in the evolution of accountability | avoidance. | | We did away with royal proclamations long ago for damned good | reason: you must answer to the people. | [deleted] | SkyBelow wrote: | I think it is reasonable as long as there are barriers for | consumption and people can be selectively limited in their | ability to interact with the broadcasts. | | Maybe if Twitter was brought in as a government contractor, | including the inability to restrict people from interacting | with government tweets and accounts (any non-government | entities would fall under the private business side of things | and not be included in this restriction) then I think it | would be reasonable for the government to use Twitter. | throwaway894345 wrote: | Ultimately the problem is that Twitter et al is the new _de | facto_ public square. Politicians want to go where the people | are, not to publish to an RSS feed that some single digit | percentage of their audience (which will skew elite) will ever | access. | | Note also that there are other, broader consequences: Twitter | operates the public square restriction from free speech | provisions like the US First Amendment--it can regulate access | and manipulate the dialogue to suit its own purposes to the | detriment of the broader society, which is the whole point of | provisions like 1A. Some are content that this isn't a de jure | public square, as though that will prevent us from suffering | the de facto consequences. | | I think the answer is to start regulating Twitter so it doesn't | have control over so much national and international dialogue. | We might say that social media giants must behave according to | the first amendment such that it is a "safe" space for | politicians to interact. If we're worried about preserving some | sense of moderation, we could require social media giants to | implement some common protocol so that they don't own the | dialogue, but only a view (in the SQL sense) into the dialogue. | throwawaysea wrote: | Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other tech companies are too big | and powerful and influential to be allowed to act on their own. | They should either be split up or regulated heavily so that they | are held to behaving like a public agency. It's not just not | acceptable to have a company with a user base larger than most | countries to operate with the power to shape societal speech - | they need to just enforce the bare minimum legal requirement and | nothing more. | | Personally I have no trust that Twitter is doing any of this in | good faith. For example take this bit from their blog post: | | > We're also in the process of consulting with a range of human | rights experts, civil society organizations, and academics | worldwide whose feedback will be reflected in forthcoming | revisions to the policy framework. | | This sounds like they will solicit opinions that agree with their | planned policy updates, and will increase the amount of | censorship they perform, informed by their progressive politics. | This blog post just seems like a notice that this is coming, | rather than an honest attempt to collect user input. They're also | not clear what organizations they are consulting but I am | guessing it does not include any moderate or conservative voices. | The blog post does not mention "speech", "free speech", | "censorship", "neutral", etc. It does however mention things like | "fundamental human rights" and frustratingly vague wording like | "health of the public conversation". This blog post is a fluffy | PR piece that is starting the work of previewing and justifying | whatever they're about to do to double down on their current | heavy handed control of speech. | | Another curious part of this post: | | > This is to ensure a global perspective is reflected in the | feedback | | It's interesting that the blog post mentions seeking a "global | perspective", so maybe this is PR for other nations more so than | a US audience. Twitter doesn't do a good job of reflecting | varying perspectives even domestically in the US., since they | regularly disallow centrist or conservative posts on a variety of | controversial topics. When they take this mode of operation | internationally, it is even more unacceptable since Twitter (and | Facebook) are essentially propagandizing other nations and | engaging in a slow-moving cultural shaping mission when they | censor speech from those nations according to their own political | or cultural opinions. I am expecting that the "global | perspective" they seek is one that agrees with their way of doing | things, not an honest readiness to accept ideological/cultural | diversity. If they at all cared about this, they would first | start by correcting their mistakes within the US. | | Other countries are aware of these issues, and the risk that | Twitter and other big tech companies bring to their societies. | We've seen leaders like Angela Merkel | (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...) | and Emmanuel Macron (https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media- | bans-trump-twitter...) point out the obvious issues with Twitter | banning Trump, and it was a wake up call to those leaders. With | leftist activists now calling for other countries' leaders to be | banned (https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-trump-banned- | bolsona...), I would say those nations have every right to be | alarmed. | | It's ironic that we place such a focus on foreign actors | influencing our society in America. We often hear about Russian | interference or other such scary activity, but the same scrutiny | is never given to domestic actors who are waging an all out war | on diversity of thought. Twitter is one of those bad actors, and | cannot be trusted to uphold free speech principles. We need | alternatives to them, and the other companies complicit in | propagandizing our society - regular censors/deplatformers like | Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. | Tossitto wrote: | This is a brilliant post, thank you for your contribution. | | I just wonder what kind of alternatives we have that could be | effective. Something government sponsored but administered by a | third party with a strict constitution regarding moderating | only the extremest content? A system of self-moderation in | place that isn't destructive, but rather hides content to | prevent congestion? I feel like voluntary identification is | also a must. | | I don't know, it's hard to say. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | Marketing tip: Always ask the public for input and consult with | "experts" before doing what you intended to all along. | patcon wrote: | We can only know this for certain looking back. Knowing this | looking forward is often cynicism, and it's a trap imho | | EDIT: The above are mostly something I try to keep in mind with | government public consultations. I acknowledge that cynicism is | a little more understandable for private industry, as they are | not even in theory rooted in anything but shareholder value- | maximization, but gov is at least ostensibly aspiring for | public good. | spacephysics wrote: | Agreed. This is so if they're questioned by Congress at some | point they can say "we regret our transgressions, and have | reformed by asking the community what we should do better" | | Almost like act first, ask permission later. | nodesocket wrote: | Seriously this is such a BS cover their rear-end from congress | move. Now they want to poll the public, get feedback, and move | in a democratic fashion? It's now after the fact they | selectively decided which US presidents can be on Twitter and | which cannot with zero debate or thoughtfulness of consequences | of free speech. | debacle wrote: | Twitch did this with some sort of committee late last year and | it blew up in their faces. | DC1350 wrote: | The deer incident? | debacle wrote: | I think the streamer you're referring to was just the focal | point and scapegoat for a lot of the outrage over the very | unequal and sometimes disturbing way Twitch moderates | content. | thatguy0900 wrote: | I agree people were already mad but you would have to go | pretty far out of your way to find someone with worse | optics, she definetely brought a lot of heat to it | herself. | debacle wrote: | I think that was Twitch's intent. Why promote a basically | no name streamer to a group made up mostly of very | prominent people on the platform? | thatguy0900 wrote: | You think twitch purposefully nuked their own program? | Wouldn't that just make both sides of the isle mad at | them? | joshgel wrote: | Also, if you phrase the question "should everyone follow the | same rules?" in the right way, everyone is going to say "of | course!" | Tossitto wrote: | That's where it gets interesting, though. Assuming you have a | democratically elected official with progressive views in any | direction, and they're telling people to act for their self- | interest, but the current zeitgeist overall is the given idea | is immoral or otherwise objectionable, then what process do | you use to make the judgement other than an arbitrary one | that supplants the "rule of law"? | | Consider if Biden dropped a tweet saying "don't observe DST." | | That could be dangerous, right? You've got two distinct | groups of people that for some reason or another fail to | coalesce, all "hell" breaks loose because some people are | showing up to work at different times, logistical break | down... Do you squelch him? And how does that compare to a | non-violent break-in at the capitol to show congress that | their representation of the general public is failing a given | demographic? | | Personally I think that the channel should be wide open to | anything but the most unbearable aspects of communication, | like child exploitation. You've got no chance of convincing a | white supremacist that his worldview is askew without | engaging in a conversation and logically defeating his | assertions, not to mention the fact that publicly shaming the | ideology (while jointly defeating it) in a widely available | forum is certainly the best prophylactic. Instead the | "acceptable" rhetoric is one-sided which alienates anybody | that has the audacity to even ask the questions proposed, | while destroying their ability to come about a rational | conclusion through empirical observation. That channel should | be equivalently wide for politicians which the people have | elected to represent them up to the extent of tangible action | to break the law up to the barrier of reason, e.g. | meaningfully inciting violent actions against individuals or | groups. | | And this is all precipitated by the fact that Twitter and the | like are commodifying speech, which is a genuine hazard as it | creates a serious hurdle at the intersection of liberty and | commercial interest. Commercial interests want inoffensive | discussion which appeals to the widest possible band of | individuals, meaning that the content and discussions are | only allowed to span a narrow width, generally. It is not in | any meaningful way acting in the public interest at that | point, and only seeks to, through largely automatic | processes, extend and crystallize the status quo which is | genuinely harmful as we're doing little more than discussing | how to spin in place at that point. This is driven even | further through deplatforming (active or passive) extremist | viewpoints, and exposing them disproportionately with | algorithmic processes. | switch007 wrote: | HR too. Makes your staff feel "valued" and listened to. | ike77 wrote: | That's a point of view, and a pretty cynical one. | | I would like to point out that regarding moderation, tech | companies have been asking for guidelines and new laws for a | decade now. Ageing lawmakers have been unable to provide them | and we start to see shy initiatives from the EU regarding | privacy laws but roughly most of the water in which tech | companies operate are still no mans lands. | | All that make me think that even tough you're right that the | end result will not be democratic, I wouldn't throw them the | stone and accuse them of acting in bad faith. | Tossitto wrote: | Aren't these glamorous tech companies supposed to be | employing from the pool of the highest echelons of | intellectualism? How is it that they have such exceedingly | large valuations but they can't manage to deploy a rationale | by which to manage their user-based content? | PartiallyTyped wrote: | It is virtually impossible to not offend anyone, so they | choose from the basket of all potential customers or | products which they believe will be most profitable. If the | ~~nazis~~ alt-right were making them more money than | centrists and leftists, they wouldn't have banned them by | citing freedom of speech and expression. However, their | analysts probably deemed that losing the rest of the user | base through the #cancel culture isn't worth it. | JoshuaDavid wrote: | That argument proves too much, I think. It seems analogous | to the question of "Why would anyone ever want higher | taxes? If they think the optimal tax rate is higher, they | can just pay more taxes." | | If one company takes a more principled approach to | moderation, and that more principled approach is harmful to | revenue, that company will be outcompeted by companies with | whatever moderation policies optimize for engagement / | revenue / growth. As a result, in the absence of | legislation, you get adverse selection i.e. the dominant | platforms will be the ones that optimize for | engagement/revenue/growth, rather than the ones with good | moderation policies. | | If you instead have legislation for what "good moderation" | looks like, it applies equally to all companies and | mitigates the adverse selection problem. | | Of course, it is still entirely possible for bad | legislation to introduce _worse_ problems than the adverse | selection problem. It depends on the object level of what | exactly the legislation is, rather than being a blanket | "legislation bad" or "legislation good" sort of thing. | aww_dang wrote: | I like the comparison to unclaimed land. While other | industries are heavily regulated, requiring legal compliance | and investment, Internet publishing is still largely open. In | my view this is one of the reasons why the online service | economy is booming in the US, where others are in decline. | mtc010170 wrote: | I'm curious because I didn't realize this was a trend. Can | anyone share some more info/sources on the decline outside | the US? | aww_dang wrote: | Please read it as the decline of other heavily | regulated/unionized industries relative to the booming | online service sector within the US. | mtc010170 wrote: | Oh I follow now.. thanks for clarifying! | khawkins wrote: | They banned a sitting president of the United States and yet | have allowed for years known despots, genocidal regimes, and | terrorists groups to operate with impunity. Bad faith is | Twitter's modus operandi until they show otherwise. | statstutor wrote: | > That's a point of view, and a pretty cynical one. | | Twitter can and do ask for user feedback all the time, | without making a press release about it. | | I don't find it cynical to ask why they are doing this in | public - it seems likely that the parent has hit upon a good | part of the reason. | blowski wrote: | The BBC, with its explicit "public interest" mandate, funded by | public money, is constantly criticised for being simultaneously | too deferential, opinionated, conservative, and liberal - and | that's only in the UK. | | How on earth is Twitter going to make a policy that pleases | worldwide shareholders, governments (and their oppositions), and | the general public? | | Maybe I lack imagination, but it feels like Twitter is constantly | trying to kick its inevitable fragmentation down the road. | debacle wrote: | Twitter's problem is engagement. Facebook is a doomscroller's | paradise. How can Twitter replicate that? | osrec wrote: | Facebook, when I used to use it, felt like a reasonably | structured glut of content. Twitter on the other hand feels | like a poorly structured glut of opinions. I sometimes can't | even differentiate between the original tweet, the reply, and | I find it hard to know how many replies there are. It feels | like trying to have a coherent conversation in the middle of | an old fashioned stock exchange - virtually impossible - I | think twitter's UI is at least partly to blame for this. | debacle wrote: | I think Twitter's problem is that there isn't enough feel | good content. Facebook shows you the dark pattern | engagement content, but they also have pictures of your | family, kids selling girl scout cookies, 10 minute videos | about how to turn ramen noodles into a combine harvester, | etc. | | Twitter only has the dark pattern engagement content and it | makes people sick after too long. Maybe they should buy a | Flicker type platform just to try and tone down the outrage | a bit. | munificent wrote: | _> that there isn 't enough feel good content._ | | Any time I see people make sweeping claims about what the | content on some social media site/app "is", I feel | compelled to point out that _your_ Twitter and _my_ | Twitter are likely much more different than you realize. | Because the UI looks the same, people naturally assume | the content is similar, but your experience is _highly_ | dependent on who you follow. | | My Twitter feed is 50% pixel artists sharing beautiful | content, 30% programming language people having | interesting discussions on language nerd stuff, 10% | authors talking about fiction, and 10% politics and other | stuff. I get a _lot_ of feel good content. | | But that's because I chose to make my Twitter feed be | that by who I follow. Reddit and YouTube are likewise | highly nourishing to me. I do wish social media sites | made it _easier_ to curate like this, but I disagree with | the notion that there is any singular view of what | content on these sites is like. | tonyarkles wrote: | Heck, an individual's Twitter experience can be radically | changed just by making some changes. A few years ago, I | had pretty much abandoned Twitter. Like the GP says, it | was a cesspool of negativity. And then I heard someone | talk about the "cocktail party" strategy: "If you were at | a cocktail party and ended up next to this person, would | you hang out and chat? Or would you excuse yourself and | go somewhere else?" | | I spent about a week making decisions like that as I saw | tweets scroll by. Every time I saw one where I'd answer | "ugh, no", I just unfollowed that person. Soon, my feed | was much nicer, and I started to get recommendations for | more people to follow that added to my experience! | osrec wrote: | It makes your tweets nicer, but also an echo chamber, | which will unfortunately be exploited by those you follow | at some point. | mdpopescu wrote: | Huh. While I was using Twitter I was mostly exclusively | following people I agreed with. I was still angry all the | time, because those people were posting stuff like | "another cop kills another civilian" or "the US military | defended freedumbz by bombing more brown people, yay!". | | Following only people you want to chat with doesn't | necessarily mean talking about nice things. | zo1 wrote: | I think they should bring out personalized, customizable | and curatable blocking/block-lists for both accounts and | topics, and perhaps content sentiment as well. | | E.g. I want to follow Star Trek celebrity actors for | their Star Trek/culture/movies/good content, but not for | their incessant anti-Republican and Trump-bashing | content. Yes, sometimes I'll miss stuff because AI/ML | isn't perfect. But we don't want to "desensitize" people | by forcing them to internalize beliefs not their own | because they want "some" of the content posted by the | people they follow. | | Ads and "engagement" have a huge negative externality | that comes with all these online tools, which is why | these platforms never go in the direction of enabling and | giving tools to the users to drive their own experience. | blululu wrote: | I believe that you are asking for a more isolated filter | bubble here. This is nice when it's all positive but | never engaging with opposing viewpoints is a serious | problem. Polarization and atomization make it hard to | cooperate as a society. | Stupulous wrote: | If you have a "no liberals" filter, you'll get a worse | bubble. But if you implement it as a "no politics" | filter, you can get all the benefits without directly | affecting bubbles. | | "No politics" is a tricky problem, though. 'Politics' is | less of a category and more of a spectrum. Is COVID | politics? Climate change? Minimum wage research? BLM? But | at least you could filter out the rhetoric and mindless | other side bashing which are hardly politics anyway. | Jcowell wrote: | Why not just use the mute keywords feature which already | does this ? | sandworm101 wrote: | >> a policy that pleases worldwide shareholders, governments | (and their oppositions), and the general public? | | They won't. The final policy will please twitter shareholders. | That means they will not do anything that might give rise to a | competitor service. They aren't going to kick out the alt- | right. They aren't going to kick out Trump 2.0. If Putin wants | a Twitter account he is going to get it. If Trump wins office | again he too will get one too. Twitter is not in the business | of angering people in power, people who could put barriers | between twitter and profits. | excalibur wrote: | It's already fragmenting. The far-right has essentially left | the platform at this point, the mainstream-right is feeling a | strong pull in that direction I think. | abbaselmas wrote: | "questionnaire will be available in the coming days in 14 | languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hindi, | Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, | Tagalog, and Urdu." not in Turkish! Great! | system16 wrote: | On Twitter you can find promoted full blown propaganda paid for | by hostile (to the US at least) state sponsored news agencies and | government officials. These same governments ban Twitter in their | own countries and would never allow similar content on their own | platforms. Twitter's solution here is to insert a tiny "State | affiliated" footer text below the account name. | | Can you imagine in the Cold War-era NBC being allowed to | broadcast propaganda ads bought and paid for by the Soviet Union? | refenestrator wrote: | Plenty of it by our own government and allies as well. | | Maybe we can be a little more principled than "good guy | nations" and "bad guy nations" if the goal is truth? | loceng wrote: | Who's truth is more truthful, who's lies are more | harmful/helpful? | taf2 wrote: | "Seriously because the aliens are already here and I have | proof!" -- Joking aside sometimes pushing a truth whether | it's true or not has an impact on inflaming conspiracy | theories... Youtube's covid, election banners for example | IMO did more to incite deep state conspiracy then to reduce | it... "One often meets their fate on the path they take to | avoid it..." - Kung Fu panda | loceng wrote: | YouTube's blanket ban was a problem absolutely - it was | lazy and as hands-off as possible missing all nuance. | thereddaikon wrote: | Classic Google, when nuance and reason are required they | instead program a dumb bot to handle it. | refenestrator wrote: | I was struck by the Chinese embassy that got banned a | couple months ago. They said that their fight against | radical islam is good for uighur women.. which is | propaganda but also _the exact same_ propaganda that | western interventionists use all the time. One is ok, the | other is not. | loceng wrote: | I don't think it's comparable - however yes, bad actors | and bad actions are decentralized to a degree. The | different between China and the US is the CCP is in | "permanent" tyrannical control vs. the US et al have | democratic elections and at least the society, the | people, have the chance to evolve society to elect better | people who will steer the ship better towards the ideal | global society. | solosoyokaze wrote: | Electoral politics in the US has done nothing to stop the | US from invading countries around the world (particularly | in the Middle East) for the past half a century+. Who | would I vote for if I wanted to stop bombing people? | There is no one. | pudhbithyftdti wrote: | Well, there was, but a lot of people really went out of | their way to remove him from power. | loceng wrote: | Then run for political leadership. | dirtyid wrote: | Also consider that Chinese narrative of Counter | Insurgency / Deradicalization is the majority diplomatic | position with plurality of UN support. The opposition to | XinJiang block is not only smaller, but the "genocide" | position is also currently the absolute minority | position. It's a case where Twitter content policy goes | out of the way to align with US propaganda. | Robotbeat wrote: | Of course, Twitter DID take action against a Western | leader who was leading an attempted coup, and they got | absolutely creamed by the "freedom of speech" folks for | doing so. So Twitter has been willing to draw the line | for Western leaders as well. | | But that raises a good point: if the media outlets in the | lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion (I won't even mention | the 2001 Afghanistan invasion as there just was not the | same level of meaningful opposition) had stood up to | Bush's propaganda even with the limp-wristed[0] way | Twitter stood up to Trump's, perhaps we wouldn't have | been dragged so deep into Middle East interventionism to | begin with. | | [0]It really was. | refenestrator wrote: | That's american-on-american, I was talking about | geopolitical interests. | | I saw reports of posts from air force bases supporting | our attempted coup in Bolivia, for example. | vorpalhex wrote: | Well it probably helps only one of those is sterilizing | muslim women while keeping them in detention camps? | | Fighting a multi-national ground war against ISIS is a | bit different then genocide against your own citizens. | refenestrator wrote: | Like I said, the 'good guys' propaganda is good :) | | If you track down some of the claims you're making, | you'll find that most of them originate with this guy | Adrian Zenz who is literally a paid propagandist for his | job at the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation". | | Not that _anybody_ who claims to be 'liberating the | muslims' is ever up to any good. But some more objective | measures might be things like, what is the body count | associated with either nation, or has the population been | going up or down in a given region. | solosoyokaze wrote: | Our lies are probably the most harmful as we have the | world's largest military and it's deployed worldwide. Do | you not remember the NYT lying to get the Iraq War started? | I can't think of a more devastating instance of propaganda. | loceng wrote: | So once again, along with naming the CCP vs. naming China | as the bad actor, we need to instead of naming the US as | the bad actor, we have to name the industrial complexes | including the duopoly that has been allowed to develop | over the last many decades - allowing the duopoly's two | core narratives to be the majority of what people get fed | through mainstream media conglomerates (the media | industrial complex) owned by a handful of individuals. | | If we don't correctly, accurately label who is the real | target - our anger will be misplaced - and that is | something the bad actors want to have happen, and will | certainly perpetuate themselves. And we don't learn then. | Quick soundbites spread easily but it's not the way. | ceilingcorner wrote: | It is allowed because the gatekeepers today are much more | financially involved with hostile states. The same situation | didn't exist with the Soviets. | IgorPartola wrote: | You might want to take a look at Voice of America, a Congress- | funded network that broadcasts almost exclusively outside the | US as US propaganda: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America | president wrote: | Not sure if you have read or watched VOA as of late but there | is a lot of "America bad" content in there as well. If it's | propaganda, it sure is doing a bad job at it. | CincinnatiMan wrote: | Sorry, I'm not making the connection to what OP was saying. | Can you expand? Does Voice of America pretend to be a | domestic news source to the areas it broadcasts? | blululu wrote: | No it doesn't. I think the OP was making a what-about | counter argument, that the CIA was blasting pro-NATO radio | programs into the Eastern Block. Of course the Soviets | hated this and constantly tried to jam the signal so I | think this example supports the root comment that most | governments have a serious interest in curtailing | adversarial propaganda. | cma wrote: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Prensa_(Managua) | thereddaikon wrote: | Protip about wiki links. Posting the mobile link loads | the mobile site for both desktop and mobile users however | posting the desktop link will load the appropriate | version for both desktop and mobile users. Always post | the desktop version link. | | I always take care to remove m. from a wiki link I'm | sharing if I'm using a mobile device. | 908B64B197 wrote: | I think it's great that, despite censorship, we work hard at | providing a reliable source of information throughout the | world. | nostromo wrote: | Right. VOA is pretty much a mini American BBC nowadays. | | I think people that call it propaganda are judging it based | on the Cold War era VOA. | mhh__ wrote: | The kinds of people who really have a hateboner for VOA | tend to be the kinds of people more at home in the cold | war anyway. | cratermoon wrote: | Even the folks who worked for the VOA and its parent the | United States Information Agency acknowledge that was | created as a Cold War propaganda channel[1]. The broadcasts | were heavily influenced by the CIA. The agency was | reorganized in 1999 and the USIA abolished, but it's still | mostly about presenting the State Department's view of | international news. | | [1] https://archive.org/details/warriorsofdisinf0000alvi | enkid wrote: | "Propaganda" is a loaded term. VOA is historically a very | accurate and unbiased (as far as that is possible) source | of news. [1] [2] | | [1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/voice-america-bias-and- | reliabi... [2] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/voice-of- | america/ | [deleted] | DyslexicAtheist wrote: | > full blown propaganda paid for by hostile (to the US at | least) state sponsored news agencies | | twitter is available freely on the Internet in any country that | doesn't block it. with that in mind it's extremely difficult to | remain "neutral" or be expected to be the arbiter of truth. | | there are some obvious (easy) ways to implement constraints | against state-affiliated propaganda outlets but with the above | in mind what is "propaganda" to a European audience might just | be news in a FVEY country. facebook has the same problem and I | think it's not solvable in a "fair" way. | | Say if they really went after anything that is "propaganda" | should they also be pointing out that Bellingcat is having very | strong ties with Atlantic Council (and collaborates with GCHQ), | or should @NatSecGeek be called out for only doxing non-US | organizations and individuals? There simply are too many small | players that participate in InfoOps and their alignment isn't | always as straight forward. | | note: I personally think both bellingcat/NatSecGeek do | excellent work but none of them are unbiased (or unaffiliated) | which means they will at times end up as useful idiots (whether | it suits them or not). | ulucs wrote: | Yes, only US should be able to spread their propaganda | nbardy wrote: | You'll have better conversations of you engage with the | argument rather than misrepresent it. | throwawaysea wrote: | Why does it matter if propaganda is coming from a foreign state | actor or domestic groups, like activist groups that seek to | shut down any opposing views? | Robotbeat wrote: | Your comment has some unintended irony if taken as a call for | action. | [deleted] | etxm wrote: | I got an idea, don't let world leaders use it at all. | | They have official means of communicating with the public. Leave | Twitter for people without a voice, posting memes, and general | bullshitting. | | World leaders don't need to get caught up in quippy bickering. | mberning wrote: | Mighty fine of them to start caring about this months after the | US election. They are run by transparent political operatives but | the media constantly runs air cover for them. 50 years ago the | media would be investigating the inner workings of Twitter with a | microscope. | Shivetya wrote: | I would suggest that besides concentrating on the world leader | issue that Twitter consider some sort of expiration, short at | that, for all tweets so as to put down this revenge/vengeance | oriented the woke have created. | | people complain about fake news and rightly so but the cycle of | hatred that results from these purity tests applied to anyone | because of past tweets is worse | spacephysics wrote: | Ideally that would be quite a feature, but in practice nothing | on the internet is assuredly temporary. | | Logistically it's infeasible. Someone will create a database of | archived tweets, or screenshots will circle the web. Etc. | IgorPartola wrote: | They might want to address issues like this as well: | https://gizmodo.com/twitter-stands-by-lets-oann-link-to-repo... | kyrra wrote: | Btw, a nytimes reporter did the something similar, but not as | gross. | | https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-nikole-hannah-j... | shrubble wrote: | If you know who the first Lord Beaverbrook was, or have read The | Fountainhead and remember the character of Gail Wynand, you can | understand and almost predict the next moves of Dorsey/Twitter. | | Its the same reason for Bezos' purchase of the Washington | Post.... having a media outlet gives you political power. | mc32 wrote: | I hope every country they have users in demand they keep the data | for local users local and they conform to the laws of the | jurisdiction like local media has to. | dreen wrote: | We need a public place where anyone can get verified and only | verified people are allowed to interact (in addition to more | traditional as well as anonymous spaces) | benlumen wrote: | Interested in a dialogue now they helped put their guy in office. | The power of this company is chilling. | hristov wrote: | I think twitter should give foreign leaders pretty wide latitude | to tweet, as long as they do not call for violence, use their | tweets to command foreign agents, etc. Of course twitter can put | notices on their tweets that these are foreign leaders that may | not have the best interests of Americans at heart. | | It is rather pathetic that the citizens of the US, which is | supposed to be a democracy run by its citizens are too scared to | communicate directly with foreign leaders but are begging the | government to create a smoke screen of propaganda so that their | fragile minds can be protected from direct statements of foreign | leaders. | | We are supposed to be adults and we are supposed to be making the | major decisions for our the direction of our nation and forcing | our politicians to execute our will. We are not supposed to be | scared children begging an expensive army of government | officials, journalists, and shady "analysts" to protect us from | the reality of the world. | | If you let someone else shape your world view for you, they will | do it to their advantage, and in the US this usually means more | war, more tax payer dollars spend on the military, more death. | Most of the more recent wars the US got into have been aided by | carefully manufacturing powerful supervillian images of foreign | leaders who were usually just garden variety low level a-holes | that were completely harmless to the US. | | So man up, or woman up, read what the other people have to say | directly from the source and try to make the best decision for | the nation and yourself. | Tossitto wrote: | Your error is in assuming the public has any meaningful say in | government outcomes. | seany wrote: | Seems like not censoring anyone regardless of who they are is the | best option. | sneak wrote: | It's the best option for the world, but not the best option for | Twitter Inc, sadly. | | They aren't the same thing. Twitter is a for-profit company and | has a legal obligation to not build in revenue footguns, even | if it would be better for society and the world for them to | stop censoring people. :( | binarymax wrote: | How about: the same rules apply to everyone no matter who you | are? | glitchc wrote: | World leaders should not have a forum on Twitter. We have | official government channels for that, where other stakeholders | in the system provide their input before the message becomes | public. | | If an individual moves into the position of a world leader or | equivalent, their account should be frozen until such time that | the position ends. This is the only sane policy. Anything else is | too dangerous for humanity. Twitter and similar forums have the | potential to destabilize global peace in the long run. | | Ex: A world leader should not be allowed to say "We are going to | war" on Twitter, only to have the military turn around and say | "We're doing what?!". Most governments have an official process | for declaring war for this very reason, otherwise we are | regressing back to medieval times. | hesk wrote: | "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've | signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin | bombing in five minutes." | | Who needs Twitter when you have TV? | drstewart wrote: | So given the problem of a megaomaniac world leader who wants to | unilaterally start a global thermonuclear war... the solution | is to have Twitter freeze their accounts? And we're all good to | go, no other issues? That's the actual solution that you came | up with and think "yep, solved it!"? | jefftk wrote: | It sounds like you're proposing something where some | politicians can participate in discourse on Twitter but not | their slightly more successful rivals? | skybrian wrote: | A line needs to be drawn somewhere, but it could become a | prestige thing to be too big for Twitter. (Also, in practice, | their press secretary would be on Twitter and say things for | them.) | crazygringo wrote: | That should be up to countries, not Twitter. | | Whether a world leader can announce a war without consulting | with the military first has nothing to do with Twitter. In the | past (and present), they can still do that just as easily over | live radio, live TV, or announced to journalists as breaking | news. | | It's up to a country to determine the official processes by | which a leader can speak to _any_ media outlet. | | For _most_ leaders, they use Twitter responsibly and blandly, | not very different from other channels, and honestly their | staffers manage it for them. If a leader is irresponsible, then | it 's up to the legislature to take action. | dv_dt wrote: | I think I disagree there. Though there are negative effects, | one positive effect is that Twitter creates an opportunity for | direct public feedback being seen by world leaders vs official | channels that insulate from that feedback to a much higher | degree. Though I do say "opportunity" because obviously leaders | can create organizational insulators to Twitter accounts just | as with any other channel. | BoorishBears wrote: | What feedback? | | Does anyone think Donald Trump ever actually read those one- | line zingers random celebs would reply to his tweets with? | | Do people think some dictator is going to ignore the people | they're oppressing but listen to @xx69destroyerman calling | them out? | dv_dt wrote: | Not all opportunities are exercised - but especially on HN | I would think we should realize that it's significant that | they exist. | | But your comment also brings up a possible secondary | benefit: the benefit of the people to see and possibly get | in contact with other real people (real for the most part | hopefully), as they criticize world figures. This is | something that doesn't exist in other media outlets or | exists only for people who can afford to take time out to | go to a protest or in person official function. | BoorishBears wrote: | No idea what that first paragraph is trying to say. | | And people can contact other people and criticize world | leaders whether or not those leaders spend countless | hours a day tweeting. | | Twitter is quite possibly one of the worst places for | that anyways for multiple reasons (established fake | account infrastructure distorting conversations, poor | layout for async discussion between many people, etc) | dv_dt wrote: | I was trying to say that just because one individual | leader did not avail himself of the opportunity, doesn't | mean that having that opportunity exist isn't valuable | overall. | | People can contact each other but having the leader | somewhere available provides a focal point that otherwise | wouldn't exist. | | Twitter has problems - but it's not clear to me how a lot | of the problem unique problems of twitter vs common | problems of meeting and filtering out any anonymous mass | of people at a party or conference. | BoorishBears wrote: | > I was trying to say that just because one individual | leader did not avail himself of the opportunity, doesn't | mean that having that opportunity exist isn't valuable | overall. | | Then say that? Because this: | | > Not all opportunities are exercised - but especially on | HN I would think we should realize that it's significant | that they exist. | | Sure doesn't mean that. | | > People can contact each other but having the leader | somewhere available provides a focal point that otherwise | wouldn't exist. | | What? No. The focal point is the person and their | actions. | | Donald Trump was also one of the most contentious topics | on every other form of social media that doesn't have him | posting. Just look at Reddit. | | > Twitter has problems - but it's not clear to me how a | lot of the problem unique problems of twitter vs common | problems of meeting and filtering out any anonymous mass | of people at a party or conference. | | Then read my comment again. | | All platforms have problems, Twitter is just even worse | than par, and the format is _especially bad_. | | I can't believe we're actually going to pretend the | platform that started by limiting people to discourse | based on 140 characters supposed to be some sort of | rallying point against bad leaders rather than an echo | chamber where everyone talks past everyone except those | who agree with their views. | | - | | Leaders should use their official platforms that aren't | subject to the whims of a private company. If news | companies or individuals or even the platforms themselves | want to drop those official statements into their | ecosystem that's on them. | | It's one thing if a country just can't put together that | infrastructure but the spark for this is literally the | only country in the world with a tld for their government | (.gov) there is no reason it should have ever come to | this. | [deleted] | canoebuilder wrote: | If Twitter maintains its place in public discourse and | communication, then sooner or later the "approach to world | leaders" or politicians on any level becomes a moot point, | because if anyone's views diverge to a sufficient degree from | Twitter staff they will be banned long before attaining political | office. | | Twitter should not be filtering and censoring public discourse, | debate, and information, acting as the arbiter of what ideas and | information can influence politics. | | Communications platforms in the United States should adhere to | the United States constitution. | timdaub wrote: | While on first sight, I find it applaudable that Twitter cares | and wants to learn, I think it's not in their responsibility | anymore to moderate. | | They've proven to be incapable and overwhelmed about making | legitimate decisions. | | They should get regulated and they should stop regulating. | spacephysics wrote: | Optimistically I'd agree, but given corporate politics my gut | instinct leads to deep pessimism. | | I think this is just a PR stunt, nothing will change that isn't | already planned before this public input session. Move along, | status quo. | undefined1 wrote: | how about a simple rule? | | No politicians on Twitter. | jonnypotty wrote: | Oh sod off twitter, don't pretend you care what the public think. | jimmytucson wrote: | I must say Twitter is handling this masterfully. They already | censored the president of the United States, oft-called the most | powerful person in the world. The die is cast. Soliciting | opinions now adds a layer of plausible deniability without | changing things. | | What could be the outcome? Will a cohort of COVID-deniers | convince Twitter that everyone is entitled to an opinion, leading | to the great unbanning of Donald Trump? | devwastaken wrote: | Same rules, no special treatment, no special indicators or | "official" tags. Don't involve yourself in the politics. You do | not want to be caught in wether taiwan is a country or not, or | who the leader of palestine is, etc. | 908B64B197 wrote: | I aggree with this. | | And no special moderation either. If it violates what Bay Area | Americans consider ok, ban the account. | | After all, these foreign world leaders have decided to use a | private American company as a platform. If they don't like it | they should simply build their own. | exabrial wrote: | Be a free speech platform, how about that? | matthewmacleod wrote: | Except maybe it's a bit more complex than your ridiculously | simplified pithy one-liner. | | Seriously, what the fuck is that even supposed to mean? It's | literally duckspeak - a reflexive slogan uttered without any | thought. It elides all of the complexity of understanding what | free speech is, or what a platform is. | weakfish wrote: | People tend to conflate freedom from persecution due to | speech with freedom to say whatever, wherever. They are not | the same. | vxNsr wrote: | Oddly, until recently they were. It only became different | recently and obv xkcd popularized the idea, but if freedom | of speech _isn't_ associated with freedom from persecution | it's not really free speech. | | Everyone in the world has the right to free speech because | they can literally talk and say whatever they want, but if | the society that speech is spoken in doesn't agree to allow | that speech to be spoken freely (as in beer) it's not a | truly progressive society. Apparently the brits have been | struggling with this for years[0] | | [0] https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free- | speech/in... | krapp wrote: | >but if freedom of speech isn't associated with freedom | from persecution it's not really free speech. | | Given that every government in history which has | recognized the concept of "free speech", including the | United States, has regulated and even outlawed some forms | of speech, and given that "consequence" is a natural, | emergent property of societies and the fact that humans | are social, emotional animals who don't process speech as | mere passive data, one must come to the conclusion that | free speech has never existed at any point in space or | time. | | That being the case, one wonders why everyone is so | concerned _now_ about something that, clearly, humanity | has never needed up until this point? | vxNsr wrote: | None of that really follows, the idea that because | something hasn't existed until now proves it isn't | necessary is again a reductive argument that simply | doesn't make sense. | | There are many things that didn't exist and thus, were | unnecessary for "modern" living and yet once they were | invented and adopted it would be hard to go without them. | T-hawk wrote: | If you continue being okay with every loss of speech, | then the only endpoint will be to have no speech at all. | krapp wrote: | When did I claim to be okay with every loss of speech? | | Every business and website since time immemorial has had | the ability to choose with whom they do business, and | what goods to stock and what not, and every publisher has | had the right to choose which work to publish and which | not. Despite common arguments, sites like Twitter are not | the public commons, nor do they hold a monopoly on human | communication, nor do they control public discourse. | | Even Benjamin Franklin sometimes turned away people who | wanted to publish slanderous material in his newspaper. | Freedom of speech doesn't obligate all platforms to carry | your speech - it never has. Twitter being able to | moderate content and ban accounts - even the personal | accounts of Presidents of the United States - does not | violate freedom of speech. | vxNsr wrote: | > _Every business and website since time immemorial has | had the ability to choose with whom they do business, and | what goods to stock and what not, and every publisher has | had the right to choose which work to publish and which | not._ | | This is false. As you said in your previous comment the | government has always had a very heavy hand in regulating | what people could and couldn't do, it's very much | regulated who you can do business with and what you can | stock and sell and to whom. This doesn't mean we | shouldn't strive for a society that protects the rights | of both the buyer and seller as much as possible. | | Your two comments contradict each other in such a stark | way it quite frankly makes my head spin. | vxNsr wrote: | Your response was less constructive then the one you replied | to, not only did you fail to adequately explain what is wrong | with asking a platform to be a place for free speech, but you | failed while using truly reductive decisive rhetoric that | just serves to make someone dig into their position instead | of being open to hearing why they're wrong. | matthewmacleod wrote: | Nah, fuck that. | | "Be a free speech platform" means nothing by itself. It's a | sentence without meaning. It communicates no ideas - | because we all already like the idea of free speech, and | the challenge is to understand what that means in a modern | context. | | (Of course, underneath all that, it's a dogwhistle. We all | know what "free speech platform" means, because it's what | Parler called itself. I'm doing the parent the justice of | assuming they weren't deliberately using a tired dogwhistle | phrase.) | danaliv wrote: | How about we all admit that this is a simplistic position that | flies in the face of centuries of case law trying to work out | exactly what "free speech" means and how it squares with | people's other fundamental, inalienable rights, because in real | life it's not, in fact, obvious? | [deleted] | kbelder wrote: | Simple doesn't mean simplistic. | | I'd like a platform that removes illegal speech, nothing | else. Such a platform should be legal. | sneak wrote: | The boundaries of legal speech are pretty well sorted out. | | Web and email hosting companies don't have an issue figuring | it out. Twitter shouldn't either. | nonotreally wrote: | Can I call for the death of someone on this platform? | canoebuilder wrote: | Can you do that on the television, telephone, radio or in a | newspaper in America? | nonotreally wrote: | I'm trying to find the limits of Freedom of Speech. | | Are we agreeing that there are in fact limits on Freedom of | Speech? | canoebuilder wrote: | Yeah, this has actually been thought of before. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroristic_threat | nonotreally wrote: | I'm not suggesting that I've stumbled into some new idea. | | I'm trying to understand what people mean when they say | "free speech platform". | | It seems to be a get out of jail free card of sorts. | | "Free speech" without any limits obviously doesn't work. | Where are the limits of the parent comment? The devil is | in the details. | canoebuilder wrote: | Twitter, Facebook etc. are communication platforms in the | same way the postal service, telephone system, etc are | communications platforms. | | Communication platforms in the US should adhere to the US | constitution. | sneak wrote: | The US constitution effectively says that you have | complete editorial control over the content of your own | website. | | Facebook and Twitter run websites. | nonotreally wrote: | It can't be that simple. This is a private company. | | Isn't this where the entire problem is coming from? If | this were a state run service, we know the answer and can | apply it easily. | | The confusion is coming entirely from it being something | other than the state. | ska wrote: | Are you suggesting that these international platforms | should keep track of location (and nationality?) of | everyone who is on them and apply different standards | based on that? | | Or just on the basis of the one or more places the | company itself is are incorporated? Will they shop around | for communication laws the same way they do for taxes? | ookdatnog wrote: | These platforms exist and aren't hard to find. They also tend | to be cesspools. | | Part of the value proposition of their competitors is that they | do moderate their content, to some extent. | | I don't see why we should force all platforms to operate | essentially without moderation. | alexashka wrote: | This false dichotomy of authoritarian governance or | 'cesspool' keeps coming up. | | There exist other options. | | Just let the people filter and set their own rules for | engagement. | | Of course that would eliminate these creepy company's ability | to insert ads and other trash into your life, so no one does | it. | | Facebook had a perfectly fine and working news feed, but then | they wanted to insert ads, so they made an 'algorithmic' feed | that decides you want to see ads instead. Convenient. | | These platforms pretending they can't solve the issues of | idiot speech and outright law violations without acting like | Stalin is laughable. | campl3r wrote: | Free as in everything that's legal? | | Sounds conceptually great to me. | | How can such a platform figure out what's legal? Can it default | to leaving legally questionable things up? Consulting real | lawyer's in every fringe case seems not practical. | jmeister wrote: | Was this motivated by the hostile meeting with China on Friday, | and an expectation of worsening US-China relationships? | gonzo41 wrote: | World leaders can tweet, they shouldn't be able to untweet. It's | public record. They shouldn't be able to block users - If the | feedback is so bad, then twitter should be banning those users | under regular T&C's The T&C's that apply to me should apply to | them. If they cross they line they should be handled like I would | etc. | | Pretty simple IMO. | BaseS4 wrote: | > let radicalized employees ban anyone they want | | > never release details of how the censorship algos work | | > spend lots on PR firms and lobbyists in the hope to get your | product nationalized as a utility | | > ban a United States President | | > already possess a bajillion recommendations in your tweet | database about what to do | | > ask anyways to create the illusion of group participation and | community building | | ok twitter | kjrose wrote: | Basically, we know that governments and leaders are going to | punish us for taking sides in political fights. So we are going | to pretend that the side we took is supported by the "public" | | Please don't nationalize/regulate us. | whitebread wrote: | At this point it feels like the best option is to shut twitter | down completely. What good comes solely from twitter? | ralmidani wrote: | World leaders should not "be subject to the same rules as others | on Twitter", they should be held to a higher standard; if some | random loser writes a Tweet justifying genocide, reasonable | people can disagree on whether that loser should be banned. But | when it's people who are backed by a military which can actually | carry out a genocide (and, e.g. in the case of Netanyahu and his | ministers, the Assad regime, the Chinese Communist Party, and the | Burmese military junta, has already been carrying one out for | years), they must be banned, full stop. | aww_dang wrote: | I'd like to see the tweet and read their genocidal rhetoric | directly. If the alternative is a news outlet digesting and | editorializing their words, I'd rather hear it directly from | the source. | ralmidani wrote: | Sometimes the genocidal rhetoric is not subtle, but sometimes | they market it as "protecting minorities" (Assad, who is | decimating the Sunni Muslim majority), or "liberating women | from being baby factories" (Chinese Communist Party, on | forced sterilization of Uighur women). | aww_dang wrote: | Dissent is valuable. Twitter should allow replies on these | posts. There should be more transparency on how the replies | are ranked or hidden. | ralmidani wrote: | Hitler and Mussolini were not debated, they were | defeated. Dissent is good if it's your only option, but | we're talking about external parties not under the | control of these "leaders". | steve76 wrote: | There is no moral equivalence. Public consensus means nothing. | Laws still restrain people no matter how many people agree. The | purpose of laws, in regards to humans? Limit the violence, not | create it. | | Here's an idea. How about not betraying the people paying for | your bailouts. You could at least hire more people. | | Isn't Karl Marx the one European who has enslaved more people | than anyone? Wealth doesn't accumulate. What once was novel, like | electricity, becomes ubiquitous. And you can't "rich" yourself | out of society. If you are moral and behave, you accumulate | wealth, and often give it away before your lazy spoiled children | ruin you. | | And the dialectical materialism, didn't Marx misread Hegel? | Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Hegel never said that. What Hegel | said is if you choose an "-ism", the very real world proves it | wrong, and that's how you get ideals. | | The communist plague the world. OK. We'll just advance medicine. | The communist bribe and loan our leaders? OK. We'll just take the | money from them, and throw them in the ocean when the loan comes | due. | | Anything else? | macspoofing wrote: | Oh man .. Twitter ... what an effin mess they are. What do they | think they will get from a questionnaire? | gedy wrote: | I think the nuance is interpreting "the rules" instead of just: | | > "whether or not they believe world leaders should be subject to | the same rules as others on Twitter". | | E.g. Twitter in 2020 was rife with "inciting violence" but | largely depending on your point of view/politics, and if it was | "justified". Etc. | dnndev wrote: | Differentiate between official and unofficial announcements... | most are unofficial unless scheduled ahead of time etc. Such as a | government public announcement. Similar to TV | at_a_remove wrote: | A Republican Congresswoman was just locked out of her Twitter | account prior to some kind of Dem resolution, at least if you | believe https://www.mrctv.org/blog/marjorie-taylor-green- | reportedly-... as a source of truth. | | Nothing to see here, move along. | nonotreally wrote: | I'm not seeing your point here. | | Do you like this? Not like it? Why? | | I feel like this is exactly the type of feedback they're asking | for. | at_a_remove wrote: | I offer data, not a conclusion. And it's data that is well- | timed, given the statement. | | What do _you_ think? | nonotreally wrote: | I didn't raise the point. I haven't formed an opinion on | this particular issue. | | Why did you offer _this_ data? | at_a_remove wrote: | I guess I will break all of this down for you, since you | did ask. | | 1) Twitter calls for public input on their approach to | their handling of accounts of government officials. This | individual is a government official and this is an | instance of handling their account. | | 2) Well-timed. They called for this input on March 18th. | This instance of account handling is from March 19th, | approximately one day later. This makes it "more | relevant," given that it was not, say, six years ago. | | So, I offered this data because it was topical and timely | to the discussion at hand. Rather than a hypothetical, it | exists as a real instance of how Twitter as a corporation | handles the Twitter accounts of government leaders. If I | were to discuss the price of tea in China back in 1887, | that would not be topical or timely. | GrinningFool wrote: | This may be all be true[1], but none of it explains your | "nothing to see here" trailing remark. | | [1] Though there's activity on her account from 15 hours | ago. In addition if someone is banned from Twitter, | doesn't Twitter take their tweets offline/hide them? | at_a_remove wrote: | Oh, the trailing remark is because Twitter has long had | the habit of "whoops the algorithm did it!" happening as | the most convenience of excuses when the timing is | suspicious. | | I don't know what Twitter does with people's tweets. | Frankly, I find the platform almost too chaotic to look | at for more than a few seconds. It feels like a roomful | of ping-pong balls with text on them, whizzing at your | head, only loosely clustered. | andyxor wrote: | Cancel culture in action. | foobiter wrote: | marjorie taylor green requires more detail than simply "a | republican congresswoman" - she's blamed forest fires on jewish | space lasers, among other racist, homophobic, and transphobic | conspiracy theories | ufmace wrote: | Is there like a guide somewhere telling people to bring up | some specific incident every time a particular UnPerson's | name is brought up? I swear there's a few dozen people for | which, as soon as their name is mentioned, a dozen green | accounts will suddenly post what somebody has determined is | "critical context" under which we are supposed to see them. | | Okay she made one silly facebook post that doesn't really | quite say that. If we're gonna popularize the absurd things | said by every freshman congressperson on social media, well | we've got a long book to write. | Jcowell wrote: | What? There's a difference between "one silly post" and the | perpetual spiel of QAnon conspiracy theories and beliefs. | Your comment makes it seems as if she said that one edgy | thing we all say as teenagers in a one off. I don't agree | with muting her until after her expulsion, but this comment | is disingenuous. | at_a_remove wrote: | And some of the "more detail" might also include that her | account was re-instated after that, but that today's | suspension comes at a timing that some might consider | interesting, as a movement is attempting to oust her from | government. Yes, more detail could be invoked. | [deleted] | rubyist5eva wrote: | She is still an elected member of congress, and from what I | hear - a rather popular one, regardless of her "tinfoil | hatery". | | Opposition parties should _never_ have the power to just | expel people they don't like from the opposing side. | | I'm sure it's purely coincidence she is locked from her | twitter account on the same day that congress will be voting | on a resolution on whether or not to expel her. | tobylane wrote: | > Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution | addresses the question of what is required to expel a | person from Congress. It states: "Each House may determine | the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for | disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two- | thirds, expel a member." | | If it's in the constitution, especially if the founding | fathers put it in, it can become popular with Americans. | astrea wrote: | > I'm sure it's purely coincidence she is locked from her | twitter account on the same day that congress will be | voting on a resolution on whether or not to expel her. | | Surely you could see that correlation as a pattern of | questionable behavior finally biting her and not some | conspiracy between the liberal elite and Twitter. | kaiju0 wrote: | Shes has only been removed from twitter for spreading false | information. Her free speech has not been violated. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | Free speech is not concerned with a person's ability to | spew and regurgitate bs in private platforms and I see no | reason to give her preferential treatment over anyone else. | andyxor wrote: | freedom of speech protections exist to protect against | this exact sentiment. | | You can't just silence everyone you disagree with. | | They have their right for 'spewing' their 'bs' just like | you have for 'spewing' yours. | | And it's not up to you, me or Twitter to decide which | opinions are right or wrong. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | They can go in a public place to do, e.g. press | conferences and so on. | | Any person has the right to dictate a mode of conduct on | their platform and penalize individuals who do not follow | said code. Why should I be paying for bandwidth and host | the content of any individual who does not follow my | rules in my platform? I provide a service and I have the | right to dictate who gets to use it. | | The senator can go spew her homophobia, conspiracy | theories and racism in a public space, nobody prevents | her, but I certainly wouldn't provide a platform for her | and her ilk. | BeetleB wrote: | > freedom of speech protections exist to protect against | this exact sentiment. | | Sorry, but that's plainly false. No legal scholar will | agree with you. | williesleg wrote: | Oh that's just a twitter way of collecting more data. They're | assholes. | dirtyid wrote: | World leaders are ultimately going to decide if ceding messaging | influence powers to Twitter values / US influence is wise, not | public input. Most countries are going to want sovereign control | over online speech / content moderation eventually. | AlwaysBCoding wrote: | A good article by Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, on | "credible neutrality" as a guiding principle for the protocol: | https://nakamoto.com/credible-neutrality/ | | Twitter has long lost credible neutrality as a platform which is | why it's ultimately going to die. | statstutor wrote: | I understand "credibly neutral" here to mean the idea that you | appear neutral, whether or not you are actually neutral. | Compare with: plausible deniability. | | The goal of credible neutrality is to convince people that you | have acted fairly and gain political acceptance [Vitalik does | this by appealing to the standards for property ownership under | capitalism]; the goal is _not_ to act fairly [as Vitalik softly | admits, the true goal is to do whatever is necessary to support | (his) wealth accumulation]. | | I would much rather credible neutrality did not exist as a | justification for particular actions, and that it faced | automatic criticism. | | Give Bob 1000 coins and admit that you did so, rather than set | up a system of rules which is designed for Bob to receive 1000 | coins. The use of passive voice is an indicator that someone | has disguised their responsibility. | TameAntelope wrote: | All things ultimately die, I dunno how useful that is as a | prediction... | matthewmacleod wrote: | I have quite literally no idea what the correct answer is, and I | reckon anyone who claims to have an easy answer is lying, because | the landscape is fundamentally different to anything we've seen | before. | | Twitter is both a public forum and a private enterprise. The | decisions it makes--not just in terms of moderation, but in terms | of structure and incentive--substantially affect the spread of | mis/disinformation. Is it the responsibility of the platform to | prevent its abuse to that end? Or is it essential for it to | remain entirely neutral? How does that work across different | legal, social, and political environments? How does that apply | differently to democratically-elected leaders? What constitutes | harassment or targeted abuse? What counts as impersonation or | parody? | | It feels like it's going to be a fairly unpleasant period while | we figure that all out. | matz1 wrote: | There is no correct answer. There is only answer that you want | and what you can do is to fight for your answer to become the | outcome. | | That being said I prefer twitter to be as hands off as possible | when dealing with this. | aww_dang wrote: | >The decisions it makes--not just in terms of moderation, but | in terms of structure and incentive--substantially affect the | spread of mis/disinformation. | | If we can't trust individuals to digest information themselves, | what are we doing? | | I find the premise troubling. People can disagree and interpret | events differently. Without that, there's very little to | discuss. | TameAntelope wrote: | Much like the global economy made morality an infinitely | complex problem (thanks The Good Place), the global Internet | made digesting information equally as complex. | | We don't equip people to do it through our education systems | in America. What we're doing is sending millions of people | out into the world, wholly unprepared to navigate it | successfully, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation | and exploitation. | | I don't personally blame Twitter. This is such a gigantic | problem, that pinning it to a single source is just | understating what's happening. If America wants to survive | another 100 years, it will have to find a way to fix its | "lack of critical thinking skills" problem in a way that | flips the statistics, which is more or less impossible, | without swift and decisive action to make large changes to | how we educate our children. | aww_dang wrote: | >We don't equip people to do it through our education | systems in America. | | Does the largely state run education system have an | incentive to create critical thinkers? | | Institutions trend towards group think. Credentials are | granted by authorities. I'm not sure we can get there using | the tools at hand. | TameAntelope wrote: | Yes, the state has an incentive to create critical | thinkers, the incentive is just obfuscated substantially | from the average decision maker in "the state". | Tossitto wrote: | I don't believe so. The state by its nature wants to find | equilibrium like practically every other system. One of | the paths of least resistance is the manipulation of the | public into an unthinking, docile, and generally inert | individual. This makes everything much more predictable | and controllable, which brings it closer to equilibrium. | | You could intuit this sort of outcome, perhaps, from a | reading of "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Humans don't really | do well with probability, we _want_ definitive binary | outcomes that aren 't reliant on probability. We _want_ a | quiet, well defined day to day. Politicians _want_ the | same thing (alongside a disproportionately large | allotment of control and wealth in return). Want though, | is the difficulty, because the reality is that the | underpinnings of practically all human functions and the | world in itself are fairly chaotic. | | I think you're under the impression it's a noble goal in | the name of progress, but [genuine] progress is | disruptive in every field. That disruption breaks the | equilibrium, and makes the quiet day a rather loud | lifetime. | | "May you live in interesting times." | TameAntelope wrote: | The state _is_ people. There is no difference between | "the state" and "its people". If its people are | manipulated, the state is manipulated itself. | | The state wants compliance as much as the people want | compliance, which is certainly one incentive, but it | exists in parallel with other, competing incentives. | | "The state" doesn't exist as an independent thinking | body. I don't think it's healthy to treat it like it | does. | | I do agree though, the incentives are hidden, non- | obvious. Progress is incentivized because it helps the | state, and it helps the state because it helps the | people. | GrinningFool wrote: | > If we can't trust individuals to digest information | themselves, what are we doing? | | We're realizing that it's no longer as simple as "people | should just know better", because the forces they're up | against are armed with all the latest psychological tricks to | induce belief even in people who /do/ know better. | jtdev wrote: | Simple answer to this entire issue: If it's not illegal, don't | censor or moderate it in any way. | | Social media companies like Twitter realize that this is the most | reasonable approach, but it effectively removes their ability to | manipulate... so of course they continue to censor and moderate | in a biased fashion. | nonotreally wrote: | My gut says that you are right. | | I think the election fraud nonsense suggests it might not be | that simple. Bad actors in positions of power are abusing these | services to the point where we have real conflict occurring. | | How do we account for these edge cases? | jtdev wrote: | If it's not illegal, don't censor or moderate it in any way. | More speech is better than less speech; Uncensored speech is | in fact the antidote to the supposed problems that Twitter, | Facebook, Google, etc. disengenuously claim to be solving. | nonotreally wrote: | Are there any cases where more speech is not the answer? | | Can we agree that calls for violence is a limit of speech | that is good? | jtdev wrote: | That would fall into the "illegal" [0] category if people | are in fact calling for violence. | | [0] | https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC- | prelim... | driverdan wrote: | Not if it's non-specific. What if someone says "Death to | all [group of people]", should they be banned? It's | calling for violence but is not illegal in the US. | nonotreally wrote: | Sounds like we agree on this. I want to push you here | though. | | Did twitter contribute to the events on the 6th? Do they | have any role to play? | | Do you have to use the words "go and kill them" in order | for it to be violence? | | I'm trying to be genuine here, because I don't know. I | will say it certainly _feels_ like we saw the violence | being induced for months ahead of time on twitter without | explicit calls for violence. | | Should we just allow this? | | It's happening still. We have members of congress calling | the election stolen. This is how more violence happens. | It's a slow burn, but it's a burn. | jtdev wrote: | If the speech is legal it should not be censored or | moderated in any way. Any deviation from that results in | the technocrats interfering with the flow of legal | information and manipulation of social, economic, and | political processes - which is in large part how we ended | up with the events of recent months in my opinion. | nonotreally wrote: | What if it's a private company? | | Hackernews famously moderates their comment section, to | the benefit of all. | | Why can't this happen on Twitter? | jtdev wrote: | Twitter/HN is not an apples/apples comparison... but | sure, Twitter is completely within their _current_ lawful | rights to moderate and censor whatever content they want. | But I would posit that they are actually causing more | harm than good through these efforts, and they've now | firmly placed themselves in a total quagmire in doing so. | nonotreally wrote: | That is a really good point - HN is much smaller and | attracts a very different audience. | | I agree, they have created a really unfortunate situation | for us and for them. | | In principal, forgetting the practicalities, would you | support HN style moderation on Twitter/FB? | | My gut reaction is yes. It seems to be a good balance of | gut check and "we don't have time for this". | | o/t | | 5 star online conversation dude. | alexashka wrote: | Yup. Tragically, I have a feeling they are actually doing it | out of good intentions. | | They actually think their Stalin approach of banning people is | good, because the world is made up of right and wrong, which | they know and need to enforce upon the rest of humanity, who | don't know any better. | | You know, kind of like America installs 'democracy' around the | world using its military industrial complex, because other | countries don't know how to govern themselves without daddy | America installing their dictators to show them the way. | kaiju0 wrote: | Here is a leader calling for Jewish genocide | | https://nypost.com/2020/07/30/twitter-execs-refused-request-... | | It must be moderated. | ars wrote: | I'm not sure how to find the survey, but my take: | | If the Tweet violates guidelines then remove it from any kind of | public listing of Tweets, but leave it for people who | specifically follow that person. | | Perhaps mark it with a special "click here to open" kind of | thing. | | But don't ban/block anyone for something that is not illegal. | It's as simple as that: follow local law, and block only what's | actually illegal. | protomyth wrote: | Twitter is incapable of doing any judgements where the leaders / | office holders of any country are concerned. If people want to | follow a leader, let them. If they are incapable of handling what | they see then that's on them. They are leaders of countries, not | some Instagram star. | teraflop wrote: | > Twitter is incapable of doing any judgements where the | leaders / office holders of any country are concerned. | | What do you mean by this? Surely Twitter is _capable_ of making | judgments and enforcing its rules accordingly, just like Burger | King can require the president to pay for his meals. Are you | saying Twitter should _decline_ to enforce any rules against | world leaders? | protomyth wrote: | They allow anti-semantic comments from some leaders and | censor others over opinions that they don't support but | haven't violated any actual reading of the rules. They have | demonstrated that they cannot figure this problem out. So, | since they cannot do it in an objective or fair way, they | should not do it at all. People can follow or not follow. | Elected leaders have always been a special case. | qbasic_forever wrote: | Purely from an opsec perspective I doubt we'll ever have world | leaders as online and accessible on private platforms like | Twitter as we did in the last years. It's just too much of a | national security risk and every major state has to assume the | CIA/Mossad/KGB/etc. is actively trying to intercept and undermine | world leader's online presence. It is stupidly easy for a | determined state actor to over time infiltrate and get an in with | a private American company. The risks are just too great to have | a world leader using Twitter or similar platforms for anything | more than reshashed press releases and announcements. Smart | nations will probably get ahead of potential hacking or other | incidents by just having a blanket and clear policy that no | official business will be communicated or done on Twitter or | similar platforms. | kitd wrote: | This came up when Trump was threatening social media with | restraints. I wrote this at the time and haven't changed my view: | | For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the | injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and | the ordinary citizen. During the Enlightenment, the authorities | were monarchs, but even before that, the origins of free speech | can be seen in the Reformation, the authorities being the | established Church and the battles being eg the right to a Bible | in your own language or the right to worship without priests. | | In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well, | authoritarian. Global leaders & business people who tweet or post | on FB carry an authority ex officio that make their proclamations | much more acceptable to the neutral reader. That in itself is a | dangerous situation and Twitter or FB absolutely need to take | control. If these companies want us to take them seriously as | champions of free speech, they have to play their role to help | restore that balance of power, by being far more stringent about | fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would | be for ordinary posters. | readflaggedcomm wrote: | So absent power dynamics, speech shouldn't be free? I rather | think of it as a fundamental human faculty which one has the | right to exercise. Not everything is about your hierarchies. | curation wrote: | What is free speech? I argue it is not even a concept. | Concepts divide people. There is no person against free | speech. Please don't bring up Russia and China. I've been to | these countries and people they cherish free speech;they just | have freely spoken to have an explicit authoritarian ruler. | Free speech is conversation to have out of laziness. | readflaggedcomm wrote: | You might want to aim your comment bot more accurately next | time. I offered a definition which your copypasta | conspicuously fails to address, and your geopolitical | tangent has no relevance. | meragrin_ wrote: | > by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of | those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters. | | That would be nice, but all they'll do is push their own | agenda. They've already proven that. | Traster wrote: | This is pretty extraordinary. Close to 6 years of Donald Trump | brazenly breaking twitter rules as candidate and president. | Repeated violations, culminating in a riot at the capitol. March | of 2021 and Jack Dorsey rocks up "Hey guys, I think we should | think about our policies with regard to politicians". | andrew_ wrote: | Color me dubious that any policy will be enforced evenly. | mmaunder wrote: | I think Twitter fails to realize that cyber space will ultimately | supersede real world in its importance as a common space to | interact, transact, communicate and live. We're already close to | that point. | | This: "Generally, we want to hear from the public on whether or | not they believe world leaders should be subject to the same | rules as others on Twitter. And, should a world leader violate a | rule, what type of enforcement action is appropriate." is | interesting. | | The trouble is that, from Twitters perspective, they are the | arbiter of how these interactions happen. Same for other major | platforms. | | It fails to address the question of whether private for profit | corporations should be sole arbiters of the very substrate upon | which we live and its rules. | | Once the public and world governments think this through and | fully game it out, I don't think they'll settle for the current | status quo. | | We're already seeing internet shutdowns during elections in | certain countries as a course and crude enforcement or regulatory | action. I'd expect this to become more granular over time and to | expand. | loveistheanswer wrote: | >Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the | private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from | taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really | have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to | commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to | a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to | a company as a monopoly. | | -Marshall Mcluhan, 1966 | Iv wrote: | Twitter, decide what you are: | | 1. Are you an infrastructure? In that case you censor nothing but | probably give users tools to manage their own censorship (like | "remove suspected bot content" "remove tagged hate speech" | options) | | 2. Are you a media? And in that case you have an editorial line, | that you apply TO EVERYBODY. Or you state that world leader (or | which world leaders) get a free pass. You make it explicit. | | You can't be the first one for leaders and the second one for | random individuals. Be coherent. | | Let's be real, we are mostly talking about Trump here. To this | day, I am not sure if it was just simple selfish greed or higher | twitter instances aligning with his opinions, but there was an | anomaly, an incoherence in your stance. | | If you want to fix the cynical image you are trying to get, | choose a coherent stance and stick to it, EVEN IF THAT MAKES YOU | LOSE MONEY. Or accept that you are a cynical entity. | known wrote: | Wisdom of Crowds is mot always correct; You may want to consult | with socioeconomic experts; | stakkur wrote: | I can't seem to find the case for treating some users one way, | and some users another. Also can't determine how a 'leader' will | be concisely defined and vetted. | baryphonic wrote: | Suppose you run a message broadcasting service hosting three | hypothetical world leaders. One posts propaganda about an ongoing | genocide in his country, namely that the genocide is highly | beneficial to those being genocided. The second posts racist | messages threatening another country with annihilation. The third | posts that his recent election loss was "stolen," and subsequent | to these posts a few of his supporters stage a riot in the | capital (without coordination from the leader). | | Which messages do you allow? Which do you censor? And which world | leaders do you ban? | lupire wrote: | They have several years of public input in their Tweet database | already. | 6510 wrote: | Why isn't this message a tweet? | GiorgioG wrote: | Politicians like everyone else are entitled to their own | opinions, but they aren't entitled to their own facts. We should | hold all of our politicians accountable to provide factual | information. | | It's one thing to say "I believe the election was rigged based on | facts X,Y,Z" and quite another thing to say (real tweet): " "I | concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED | ELECTION!" | | Maybe world leaders need two accounts/streams, one for 'official' | government business and one for political rhetoric which has some | sort of limitations (can't be RT'd, etc.) | caconym_ wrote: | Isn't spreading political disinformation, hate speech, etc. not | allowed on Twitter? I think that's generally a good policy; and | they should just treat this kind of speech from political | leaders, the rich and powerful, etc. the same way they'd treat | it coming from a nobody. | | The most visible accounts should be the ones subject to the | highest level of scrutiny and moderation. Doing it the other | way round is bizarre, IMO. | | We're living in a time where most people on Earth have an | unprecedented ability to broadcast their opinions to the world, | effectively free of editorial oversight, and I think a lot of | people forget that. Especially given how quickly this change | has happened, it's kind of nuts to see so much hand-wringing | over media platforms exercising a bare minimum editorial | oversight to prevent incoherent toxic bullshit from dominating | the information landscape they host. | lgleason wrote: | This is laughable. Twitter banned the president of the United | States of America. They are not a neutral platform and should be | stripped of their section 230 exemptions. They are the last group | that should be trying to be the "arbiter or truth". Twitter's | culture and actions are so politically slanted in one direction | that as an organization it would not know what truth was if it | had teeth and bit them. | nautilus12 wrote: | This feels like a honeypot for twitter to keep tabs on people | that disagree with their policy. | | They are going to do whatever they want at the end of the day, | they've given me absoloutely no confidence to believe that they | want to do whats right. | zpeti wrote: | Or they will have justification for removing "problematic" | politicians because their userbase said so. You know, | democracy. A userbase that already leans one way... | meepmorp wrote: | You really overestimate the level of importance that everyone | else places on whatever it is you have to say. | square_usual wrote: | Yeah, this is Twitter, not Cultural Revolution China. Jack | isn't Mao with his Hundred Flowers campaign. | nautilus12 wrote: | Do not underestimate the limits of Jack's desire for | control | meepmorp wrote: | Yeah, he's basically Pol Pot without the humanitarian | streak. | xg15 wrote: | > _Politicians and government officials are constantly evolving | how they use our service_ | | I find corporate-speak as dreadful, artificial and insincere as | the next guy, but this bit was unintentionally funny. At least I | wonder now how a constantly evolving government official would | look. | geoelkh wrote: | How do we give feedback? | | I think Twitter should allow trusted/editorial account that shows | prominently (even part of the tweet itself) on world leaders | tweets. | | This will be NYTs, Washington Post, etc... of the world. | | The big plus here is we return the editorial part of these | institutions. Imo, these used to be net positive on the society | (see Watergate during Nixon) | | Twitter will pick the list of editors (kind of what they | currently do with the verified account) The bar to be an editor | needs to be high and a trusted source of news. | jtdev wrote: | Who defines what is "trusted" in this scenario? I think your | entire assertion here is problematic... the "trusted" sources | that you mention have for years shown an inability to report | without injecting their biases and agendas. | User23 wrote: | I'm much more interested in world leaders' approach to Twitter. I | expect we'll be seeing some object lessons in the difference | between power and influence. | | The way Twitter is framing this is really interesting, they're | evidently operating under the assumption that they are in the | position of power. | toast0 wrote: | The only reasonable policy is to ban all world leaders from | Twitter. As world leaders, they can speak elsewhere. | | If someone is accused of being a world leader, and you have | adequate identification, it's fairly easy to confirm or deny. In | the case of a disputed election, maybe both candidates could be | considered leaders until the dispute is resolved. | nonotreally wrote: | I think this is a useful idea. They have platforms already, and | we give them platforms on TV and in papers. | | Unfiltered access to their hyperbole seems to be a net- | negative. | ars wrote: | The problem is that ever since banning Trump they have less | usage on the site. | | So they need those "exciting" world leaders. Telling Twitter to | ban all world leaders is the opposite of what they want. | | They want to be able to have all those people on there, while | not being blamed for leaving "bad" content up. | jfengel wrote: | They need those exciting leaders if their sole goal is to | maximize their profits. If they also want to have a world to | spend their profits in, it's worth considering that some | tactics may be different. | | This is unusual territory, since it's not all that common for | one company to be so closely involved with what could | literally have been violent insurrection, even leading to | outright war. It didn't, but it came far closer than the | leadership of Twitter liked. They want to be ubiquitous, but | not so pervasive as to be existential. | ars wrote: | The capitol hill thing was planned on Facebook, not Twitter | (or Gab for that matter). | | Twitter has an inflated sense of its own importance. | jfengel wrote: | Twitter was the primary medium connecting the President | with the people who believed that thy were doing "the | capitol hill thing" at his behest. Whether that was his | intention or not, Twitter carried messages directly from | the President to people who acted on them. | | Twitter was without a doubt important. It wasn't the sole | player, to be sure, but they were a direct intermediary | between a prominent leader and his followers, bypassing | all other gatekeepers. | | Perhaps he'd have switched to an email newsletter or | Facebook or another social medium, but in the days | leading up to January 6, it was very much about Twitter. | toast0 wrote: | On the plus side, the lower traffic seems to have helped with | links to twitter threads, which actually work now (or at | least better) | TrispusAttucks wrote: | So let me understand this, Twitter, which banned it's own United | States President, is now removing itself from responsibility of | banning other nation's presidents many of whom call for genocide | and violence and are stated enemies of Twitters parent country? | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | I think you're misreading the history. For years, Twitter | refused to ban basically any world leader, including the US | president, despite many calls for them to do so and many tweets | that would've gotten you or I banned. But events 2 months ago | rendered that stance untenable. So now they've gotta come up | with a new one, since they don't want the rule to be "special | privileges, but only for leaders who Twitter, Inc. happens to | like". | | It's very likely that whatever new policy comes out of this | will involve restrictions on other nation's presidents. | chmod775 wrote: | > But events 2 months ago rendered that stance untenable. | | Now that's just not true. What trump did was a relatively | minor infraction compared to what is happening in some | countries around the world. Like it just doesn't come close | on any scale. | | The realization here is that people at twitter have an | opinion on _US_ politics, and are generally oblivious to the | rest of the world. | | The waters they're in would've been way less hot if they just | did nothing and claimed neutrality. In that light shedding | their neutrality was a very conscious _decision_ by Twitter. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | It was relatively minor, but it was a lot more relevant to | Twitter because it happened in the country where most of | their employees and servers are located. What they | realized, I think, is that their prior stance of "we'll | never ban a world leader" was naive; they hadn't fully | thought through the potential negative effects, because the | full spectrum of consequences that a government leader's | speech can have was outside the personal experience of the | policy setters. | TrispusAttucks wrote: | No. What's naive is to think that the United States | President being banned wasn't political. This is an | admission of that and an attempt to save face. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | Who thinks it's not political? That's why they had a | hands-off policy for so long - they knew that any real | sanction of a world leader is inherently political, no | matter how good your reasons are. | chris_wot wrote: | Wow, too little, too late. Such bravery asking _after_ Trump left | office. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-19 23:00 UTC)