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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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First, that scenario is hypothetical and implies a gross dereliction of duty on the part of regulators. I look around and I see plenty of venues for speech: several major networks, multiple social media platforms, and thousands of independent media entities. If we get to a point where there is one and only one private entity governing everything we see and hear, that would present a major problem, but we aren't there yet and I don't see a reasonable path for us to get there.
Second, the problems of social media are much deeper than hypothetical censorship of speech that the owners don't like. The biggest problem is in fact that they allow discourse to be isolated into little bubbles that reinforce their own beliefs, insulated from outside influence.
Third, whatever scenarios we may invent in our heads, the problem at hand seems to be the exact opposite of your concern: social media platforms being far too reluctant to ban public figures for obvious hate speech and lies. When the popularity of a political message is more important than its factuality, we are deeply screwed.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2021 at 10:24:32 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"What Sanders was saying is that it's not a good thing that Twitter takes up so much of the infosphere that its ban has a significant impact on Trump's ability to be heard. It's an anti-monopoly argument rather than a free speech one. Which is a fine but somewhat silly argument to make; social media is dominated by a few providers because network externalities mean that everyone wants to use the social app that their friends are using.
It wasn’t just the banning of Trump from Twitter that hobbled his ability to communicate to the public at large or even to his followers prone to violence.
The key thing was that journalists changed how they reported on Trump internet ramblings. How many people got their Trump news because they actually followed Trump on Twitter compered to reading/listening to news reports that started “Trump tweeted...”?
None of that reporting requires Trump to have a Twitter account. Every “Trump tweeted X” news story could have been replaced with “Trump blogged X” and his communication with the public at large would have been relatively unaffected.
Twitter isn’t actually a key platform for communicating with the public, it is however a key platform for communicating with two major groups. Journalists (who are often Twitter-obsessed always-online people) and always-online radicalised groups prone to violence and hate. There’s an argument that to be made that it’s worrying that communication with journalists/news networks has moved to be under a single platform, but the fact that Twitter, Reddit and Facebook have between them a near-monopoly on the online presence of radicalised idiots prone to violence doesn’t mean someone can’t be banned from them. That would be like saying you can’t ban someone from a chain of sports bars because then you’re limiting their ability to communicate with drunk sports fans.
Edited by Silasw on Mar 27th 2021 at 2:58:36 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranSanders has a fixation on monopolies. He gets off on breaking things up: banks, media, etc. Now, he's not fundamentally wrong, but his positions lack nuance (big surprise there).
As noted above ![]()
, we have to consider the kind of monopoly involved. Social media platforms have "natural" monopolies because it's simply more efficient to use one app than many apps for social communication. In a rational world this would indicate a higher risk for allowing them to go unregulated, but there are serious free speech implications for regulating "carriers of speech" in much the same way as there are problems with regulating news media.
In other words, Sanders has good intentions but a miserable grasp of details, which is exactly on brand for him.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2021 at 11:00:35 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"One thing to consider is this - if we were to make Twitter a utility, what happens if people abandon ship to avoid "government control" or whatnot, or even just jump ship to the next big platform because that's where everyone else is? It'd turn into the equivalent of whack-a-mole.
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"The monopoly argument is stupid.
I'm on Tumblr. The monopoly argument says that my Tumblr page, the Exposition Dragon, doesn't exist because Tumblr isn't real. There is only Twitter, the One True Social Media, and nothing else.
And. Like. I get that Tumblr isn't exactly mainstream as a social media platform. Fine. But "Twitter shouldn't be allowed to ban Trump because Facebook doesn't exist" is a bizarre argument to me. Twitter is not, and has never been, a social media monopoly. So any argument rooted in Twitter being a monopoly is automatically wrong.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The argument is that Twitter has a monopoly on Twitter. It’s not that social media is a key public communications system, it’s that Twitter specifically is.
Like Hooters has a monopoly on Hooters establishments. But if Hooters had a big a percentage of restaurant footfall as Twitter does Social Media footfall.
Edited by Silasw on Mar 27th 2021 at 3:17:45 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranDidn't Facebook also ban him though? That's also a thing, when these bans happen, they are often simultaneously across platforms, see Alex Jones f.e.
Again, we don't have to agree with the other side completely. But to act as if these platforms don't coordinate with each other when doing things like that is disingenuous.
Edited by Forenperser on Mar 27th 2021 at 4:21:27 PM
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian![]()
And again, this is not about Trump specifically being banned. The whole Capitol thing more than crossed the Free Speech line.
This is about these Tech Giants not being motivated by any ulterior motives and having too much power. Which they will (and in fact, already have, see the latest Left-Wing mass bannings) not only use against the people who deserve it.
Edited by Forenperser on Mar 27th 2021 at 4:29:47 PM
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianI'm still not actually convinced everything typed by the President in such a venue is inherently !news just because of their job. Letting people know that the President is, in fact, attempting to tweet racist and/or sexist junk and attempting to incite an insurrection, sure. The public should know that. An article that "the President's tweet was deleted from Twitter because it violated so-and-so clause of the user agreement" or "the President was banned from Twitter today because of such-and-such" would also do that.
And as for censorship... they can literally call a press conference and get everyone there to report on it. Please.
St. Louis police officers on trial for beating Black undercover detective during protest
BBc featured some choice quotes from those involved
“ Remember were are [sic] in south city. They support us but also cameras. So make sure you have an old white dude as a witness," read another from Mr Hays.
It might not be for you, but it very much is where this discussion came from. Remember, this started because Bernie made a statement that he doesn’t think Twitter should be able to ban the US president/former president.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
And Bernie is wrong, both in principle and in legal fact. He only escapes being absolutely wrong because of the hypothetical strawman of a single company completely monopolizing social interactions.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2021 at 11:44:11 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Yeah, that brings to mind the (thankfully non-fatal) shooting of Charles Kinsey
, where the officer's defense is that he was aiming at the autistic man holding the toy truck, but wound up striking the prone social worker instead. And, naturally, he was only found guilty of culpable negligence, which didn't even carry a prison sentence.
"Nothing to be done, says only nation where this happens regularly."
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And this is why "now is not the time" does not work, even if it was a good faith argument. These shootings are happening so often, there never would be a good time to talk about it.
Oh, and there wasn't just one shooting incident, there were two, apparently unconnected.
Edited by Redmess on Mar 27th 2021 at 5:59:58 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesReminds me of a moment from The Last Podcast on the Left. In their episode on Howard Unruh, hosts start off talking about how they considered delaying the episode on Unruh, one of America's first big spree shooters, because of a big shooting that had occurred shortly before the episode was due to air. They decided against it in the (by their own admission) cynical belief that it would pass from memory before the episode's release date, but then another publicized shooting happened and they decided "fuck it, if we wait until it's not too soon after a shooting to do an episode on a shooter we'll never do an episode on a shooter."
Edited by sgamer82 on Mar 27th 2021 at 10:23:32 AM
"But... but.... what about drunk drivers?!" - Sen. John Kennedy
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Which is not even remotely what happened. Twitter is not in control of everything, they're one social media platform that booted a guy for using it to incite violence.
The moment a single company controls all news sources, things have gone clearly sideways.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 27th 2021 at 3:21:25 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from history