8 ms·

It's vaguely disturbing to read the CEO of a company that hosts one of the world's largest communications platforms talk about "measuring the health" of convers

• dilap 9y ago
  It's remarkable how quickly the west has embraced a culture of censorship.
  • facetube 9y ago
    Twitter is under no obligation to distribute your content for you for free.
    • CNJ7654 9y ago
      True, but it's sad to see people continue to use Twitter even when they're aware of it's active censorship. Twitter isn't doing anything 'wrong' technically, since it's well within their rights as a private company, but it's still sad to see a society accept and embrace the practices instead of shunning them.
    • dilap 9y ago
      In China, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by a state censor. In the US, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by corporate censors or allied groups like the SPLC. I'm not sure I see a huge difference, in practice. "But if you don't like Twitter's policies, you can just make your own app." Sure, like Gab, which was subsequently banned from both the Google and Apple app stores for not itself censoring. Not a lot of breathing room when the modern communication mediums are dominated by a duopoly. But that's all tangential to my point, which was referring to the cultural appreciation of free speech. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when site's like Twitter claimed to be strong supporters of speech as both a principle and a practical reality to strive for. Nowadays, the more common attitude is, "if we allow people to speak freely, they will spread conspiracy theories, fake news, and hateful thoughts harmful to society, so these ideas must be suppressed." In just a few years, the zeitgeist has gone from valuing free speech as one of our most cherished ideals to valuing social cohesion as the most important good. Pretty crazy.
      • dnomad 9y ago
        The only thing that's "Pretty crazy" is this idea that giving free reign to the Nazis and the trolls represents an "embrace of free speech." Americans really don't understand their own history. Free speech has nothing to do with letting the most vile elements of society and hostile foreign nations deploy bots to spread as much hate and fear as possible. I think the key change here is how completely radicalized even the mainstream has become. This popular defense of actual neo-Nazis would be unthinkable even just 20 years ago. But now we see the power of common interests (ending all immigration) and the terminal logic of "the enemy of my enemy."
        • dilap 9y ago
          Here, learn some history. https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
      • willstrafach 9y ago
        I can understand that an app may be more convenient to use, but needing to use the website instead of an app seems pretty different than having no place at all to post the messsages that most users do not want on Twitter.
        • dilap 9y ago
          That's a fair point -- and it's great the web exists. Super-awesome, open platform. We're really lucky to have it, and here in the US, in a raw, uncensored form. Frickin' awesome. But from a tech/convenience perspective, the web is pretty...janky. Native apps are where it's at. And those have centralized gatekeepers with absolutely no freedom of expression. It's not just conservative-ish stuff like Gab that gets hit. Another example is Apple refusing to accept an app that sent notifications when the US assassinated people via drone strikes. I think this does real damage to the polity; this is an important political message that cannot be delivered by the most salient medium because of corporate censorship. And in the artistic or gaming realm, there's all sorts of "adult themed" stuff that'll get you rejected from the store. It's like a return to the 50s before the various Ferlinghetti obscenity trials. Do you think the app-equivalent of Lolita or Howl or the Tropic of Cancer of even American Psycho would ever make it onto the app store today? Highly unlikely. (Maybe you don't think apps are as important as books, but I think they will be.) (And again, more generally, the interesting thing is we seem to have rapidly culturally shifted, where many people value the desire to be protected from disruptive speech more than the freedom to speak without disruption.)
    • gaius 9y ago
      under no obligation to distribute your content for you Then it’s not a “common carrier”, can’t have it both ways.
  • loriverkutya 9y ago
    You would quickly change your mind about that, while you read death treats sent to your daughter by trolls.
    • dilap 9y ago
      No, I would still think it was remarkable. I'm not sure if I should read your comment as some sort of meta-threat...?
    • UncleEntity 9y ago
      Pretty sure death threats aren't protected speech unlike other hate crimes like intentionally misgendering him.
  • willstrafach 9y ago
    Serious question: If people want to post hateful content, what is preventing them from doing so on either their own website, or to one of the many existing websites which are friendly to that sort of content? I honesrly don’t understand why mainstream social media websites should be allowing that sort of thing. There are plenty of other places they can freely post, so they really are not being censored.
    • commandlinefan 9y ago
      > what is preventing them from doing so on either their own website Hosting companies that decide what is and isn't acceptable speech just like Twitter and Google are doing right now.
    • geoffpado 9y ago
      It's very hard, if not impossible, for someone to have a "their own website" that doesn't have someone in the loop that can kick them off: hosting company, domain registrar, ISP, etc. See what happens regularly with piracy sites, for example.
      • willstrafach 9y ago
        If there were any examples besides Stormfront, that would make more sense. But it seems like if that were to actually happen, it would make more sense for pushback to be aimed at those providers, rather than it currently being aimed at private social media companies out of a fear of what providers “may” do if people were to set up their own websites (or use one of the many existing ones).
        • geoffpado 9y ago
          You want an example besides Stormfront, and I did so in my original post: piracy sites. If you want something a little more morally clear, take a look at what happens with Sci-Hub. They finally actually lost a court order (which led to the suspending of their hosting), but it doesn't always take that. They've been playing "domain whack-a-mole" for a very long time now: https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-battles-pirate-bay-esque-domain-name-whack-a-mole-171216 https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-battles-pirate-bay-esque-do.... And as that article mentions, less-savory sites such as The Pirate Bay get taken down without court orders all the time.
  • r00fus 9y ago
    By "the west" I presume you mean the corporatocacy/security state running the vast majority of the US and Western Europe? Truly free speech doesn't exist; there are always limits based on societal norms and convention.
    • dilap 9y ago
      Should've said 'the USA' & 'the internet subcultures I have sampled'. Regret the error.
• joshuaheard 9y ago
  Twitter is a reflection of society. Twitter can't fix society, only censor its speech, which never works. Congress needs to look at extending First Amendment protections for users of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google.
  • Karunamon 9y ago
    Especially given how much these private companies act as the public commons nowadays. Between network effects and wide proliferation, the "just go elsewhere" defense doesn't work too well anymore. I think it's workable. Once you both market yourself as an open platform for discussion (as Twitter and many other social sites have done) and reach a certain level of use (which I think we can debate on, but certainly Twitter who has world leaders making official pronouncements on it would clear that bar), some kind of oversight should kick in to prevent abuses.
    • nyxxie 9y ago
      I don't like the idea of letting a government body regulate how a communications company how to run their business. Ignoring the moral implications of holding a gun to a business owner's head and forcing them to run their business the way you want, are we not opening up the doors for legitimate censorship down the line? If we're concerned about world leaders making official pronouncements on Twitter, why not just dictate that they don't do that and instead utilize a different platform? Something decentralized preferably.
      • DanAndersen 9y ago
        >I don't like the idea of letting a government body regulate how a communications company how to run their business. This makes me wonder if phone companies have the right to disconnect customers based on political speech they don't like. If, say, Verizon decided they didn't want to "facilitate extremism," and decided to cancel the plans of politically unpopular organizations or its members, is that allowed? What if they decide that they don't want to have any of that 'filth' on their network, and disconnect anyone communicating to/from Verizon numbers if they are politically undesirable?
• Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  I don't see it as eliminating speech; I see it as first getting metrics into how much of Twitter's usage is positive - because it's human (and the media's) nature to focus on the negative - and second to promote and encourage the "good" kind of communication, instead of trying to censor and stifle the "bad" kind. Carrot vs stick.
  • nyxxie 9y ago
    Would you not say that rewarding "good" communication through better exposure is effectively censoring "not good" communication by prioritizing it less than the "good"? Twitter isn't banning anyone, but it's relegating an arbitrary set of speech to a position where people will receive less exposure to it. If we normalize the level of exposure the net result would still be censorship.
• gglitch 9y ago
  I read it less as an indictment of any real person expressing a real thought or opinion and more as a constructive criticism of a system that can be gamed to destructively exacerbate tensions between different thoughts and opinions, rather than constructively negotiating them.
• maldusiecle 9y ago
  I think what's troubling is that this conflates really problematic, damaging speech with what is merely controversial. Dismissing "healthy speech" as a category is one thing, but let's not have any illusions about some of what falls outside of that category. Twitter has a problem with anonymous users sending mass quantities of death threats, racial slurs, and other horrible invective at anyone who says something controversial. Twitter has a problem with bot accounts that deliberately disrupt and overwhelm healthy conversations. Twitter has a problem with literal Nazis being all over its service. So far Twitter has been pretty much unable to fix these issues. Now it's broadening what "healthy speech" means, looking at the problem differently, in other words flailing around and trying yet another strategy for fixing its mostly-toxic platform. I doubt it'll work, but I think it represents less Twitter trying to become Big Brother and more Twitter trying whatever it possibly can to fix these glaring problems in its service.
• commandlinefan 9y ago
  Back in the 90's, we used to scoff at the idea that the internet would be subject to widespread censorship - "the internet detects censorship as damage and routes around it" was what we used to say. It's starting to look like not only were we wrong, but that the internet is shaping up to be the ultimate censorship tool.
  • dfxm12 9y ago
    Twitter is not the Internet. The Internet is not Twitter. Platforms come and go. My computer will always be able to be connected to yours, though. If you're worried about communications going through a third-party, privately owned service getting censored, then you're communicating wrong.
    • krapp 9y ago
      The web isn't even the internet.
  • userbinator 9y ago
    It's more like "the internet detects censorship as desirable and strives toward it" now.
• T2_t2 9y ago
  The problem is Twitter as a company, not as a concept. Twitter as company has destroyed the third party ecosystem that could have been INVALUABLE here. Twitter the company wants to be all things to all people. But the ruler of the kingdom shouldn't also be the judge, and Twitter's taking on of all the technical tasks leaves it both vulnerable to criticism, and the only solution, where every solution must be a twitter engineered solution, which means one shot, no variety, no multiple-bets, no creative destruction. Examples: A third party ecosystem designed around tasks like blocking content would also preserve free speech. A twitter run system never could. A third party system around bot detection, tied in to paying for tweets from "influencers" (god I hate that term), would work well where twitter can't do that. Twitter should abdicate from the multiple roles of sole judge, executioner and tech provider, and start to let others take up some slack. That provides a buffer, preserves all the rights people could want or have, and allows more tools that empower people while twitter focuses on the technical challenge of keeping the thing up, and being profitable.