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There's nothing wrong with Twitter operating a highly moderated platform. Hacker News is a successful example. In both cases though, it's a huge problem that t

There's nothing wrong with Twitter operating a highly moderated platform. Hacker News is a successful example. In both cases though, it's a huge problem that there aren't alternatives that do off truly uncensored speech. At the very least, there needs to be a force that checks these organizations when they step over the line.

root_axis 9y ago
> there needs to be a force that checks these organizations when they step over the line. Why? Consumers are not paying twitter for a product or service and use of twitter is not a necessity.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  > use of twitter is not a necessity This is arguable. Our country is changing massively, and because of the network effect[1], social media platforms condense to only a few winners, currently mostly Facebook and Twitter I believe. This oligopoly[2] means that a handful of sites basically run what is considered the internet for most people. In America, we have a constitutional right to free speech. If in our country, most people speak solely on one of these sites, then why shouldn't our constitutional rights extend onto them? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly
  - root_axis 9y ago
    It is not arguable, it is an unequivocal fact that use of twitter is not necessary. > that a handful of sites basically run what is considered the internet for most people. That is the result of individual choices made by those people. That's like lamenting that a handful of musicians basically produce what is considered music for most people... So what?
ufmace 9y ago
Well there is gab.ai and the mastodon network to provide similar services with (allegedly) less censorship.
DiffEq 9y ago
Hacker News is successful because it is still yet relatively small. It will not scale.
- cgb223 9y ago
  Exactly. It's essentially an example of a benevolent dictator model. Right now the people moderating are doing a great and largely unbiased job, but if you try to scale, you'll bring in new people, and gradually the quality of those moderators will vary with the larger group.
  - staunch 9y ago
    This is just lack of imagination talking. Reddit's sub-reddit moderator system is just one example of how to scale moderation to millions of users. If a moderator gets out of hand, reddit admins step in or users move to a new subreddit. There are a virtually unlimited number of systems like this one could create and make work.
- staunch 9y ago
  What exactly makes you think it can't scale? Hacker News scaled from hundreds of users to hundreds of thousands of users and is still very high quality. Worse in some ways and better in others. Reddit scaled to tens of millions. Just because Twitter is run by people that can't scale it doesn't mean it's not possible to scale it.

root_axis 9y ago

> there needs to be a force that checks these organizations when they step over the line. Why? Consumers are not paying twitter for a product or service and use of twitter is not a necessity.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
> use of twitter is not a necessity This is arguable. Our country is changing massively, and because of the network effect[1], social media platforms condense to only a few winners, currently mostly Facebook and Twitter I believe. This oligopoly[2] means that a handful of sites basically run what is considered the internet for most people. In America, we have a constitutional right to free speech. If in our country, most people speak solely on one of these sites, then why shouldn't our constitutional rights extend onto them? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly
- root_axis 9y ago
  It is not arguable, it is an unequivocal fact that use of twitter is not necessary. > that a handful of sites basically run what is considered the internet for most people. That is the result of individual choices made by those people. That's like lamenting that a handful of musicians basically produce what is considered music for most people... So what?

ufmace 9y ago

Well there is gab.ai and the mastodon network to provide similar services with (allegedly) less censorship.

DiffEq 9y ago

Hacker News is successful because it is still yet relatively small. It will not scale.

cgb223 9y ago
Exactly. It's essentially an example of a benevolent dictator model. Right now the people moderating are doing a great and largely unbiased job, but if you try to scale, you'll bring in new people, and gradually the quality of those moderators will vary with the larger group.
- staunch 9y ago
  This is just lack of imagination talking. Reddit's sub-reddit moderator system is just one example of how to scale moderation to millions of users. If a moderator gets out of hand, reddit admins step in or users move to a new subreddit. There are a virtually unlimited number of systems like this one could create and make work.
staunch 9y ago
What exactly makes you think it can't scale? Hacker News scaled from hundreds of users to hundreds of thousands of users and is still very high quality. Worse in some ways and better in others. Reddit scaled to tens of millions. Just because Twitter is run by people that can't scale it doesn't mean it's not possible to scale it.