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> My point is that regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum (even if I agree with them), they shouldn't have input on what should be an open p
by comex 11y ago
> My point is that regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum (even if I agree with them), they shouldn't have input on what should be an open platform for free speech.
In other words, you're saying no one should have input on it? There should be no rules at all?
Twitter is fairly unusual even among social networks, and different from most "normal" websites, in that it makes it relatively easy for random strangers to contact semi-famous people. Most of the time this is a great thing. But if you're annoyed by speech on, say, stormfront dot org, you can avoid it by not going there. If people are saying horrible things to you on Twitter, you can avoid it by blocking them - which works up until the point you become infamous enough among a specific subcommunity that a constant stream of random people show up in your mentions, most of them relatively innocuous (but annoying), some of them nastier than that. (And it's not like only misguided people have large numbers of haters - regardless of what you believe about Sarkeesian in particular, a look at mainstream politics is enough to refute that.)
Personally, I would prefer a decentralized social network where different subcommunities could use software to define their own interaction policies, much like the Internet as a whole. But Twitter is a centralized service; most users use the official apps (as is required to get the full feature list) and must rely on Twitter's centralized management to filter out both spam and abuse. There's no way around it short of a radical overhaul of the service.
I would support adding civil libertarian organizations to the mix of advisors, as a sibling comment mentions, for a variety of reasons. One reason is similar to why we have an adversarial system in law - if most people support an idea, such as free speech, in principle, but nobody is really dedicated to defending it and the easiest way to accomplish other goals is to compromise it, the slippery slope can easily become steep without people really noticing. Another is just that it's easy for these issues to be overpoliticized, especially when you have a physical presence in Silicon Valley.
But all that said, there must be rules. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. Who knows, maybe GNU Social will take off.
- exstudent2 11y ago> In other words, you're saying no one should have input on it? There should be no rules at all? I don't think any political organizations should have input. There are rules though, they're the local laws of Twitter's users. If a user posts illegal content then Twitter is obligated to take it down. The potential beauty of Twitter is that you could in theory see the full scope of an argument, good, bad and ugly. What we have instead is a platform where people with controversial ideas can leverage agreement from within Twitter to censor opponents. > I would support adding civil libertarian organizations to the mix of advisors, as a sibling comment mentions, for a variety of reasons. One reason is similar to why we have an adversarial system in law - if most people support an idea, such as free speech, in principle, but nobody is really dedicated to defending it and the easiest way to accomplish other goals is to compromise it, the slippery slope can easily become steep without people really noticing. Another is just that it's easy for these issues to be overpoliticized, especially when you have a physical presence in Silicon Valley. You hit the nail on the head with this. > But all that said, there must be rules. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. Twitter must still adhere to at least US law. It seems like a good idea to not try to duplicate the legal system (minus checks and balances) internally.
- tptacek 11y agoUS law has virtually nothing to say about how Twitter chooses to run its service.
- exstudent2 11y agoI'm pretty sure if I posted copyrighted material on Twitter and the rights holder issued a DMCA takedown, that Twitter would have to comply. Any illegal content can and should be taken down. Twitter is trying to add another layer of judgement beyond that. That's what we're debating.
- tptacek 11y agoRevenge porn, where ex-lovers post intimate pictures of their former partners along with contact information, is also not currently against US law. Are you suggesting that Twitter is in the wrong to censor it?
- eropple 11y ago> I don't think any political organizations should have input. No organization is apolitical. Existing is a political act. To that end, the ones who are being shelled by your fellow travelers probably have some insight into the problems that your fellow travelers cause.