6 ms·

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.)
    - facetube 9y ago
      Sounds more like an antitrust issue than a censorship issue to me. My local grocery store doesn't carry Daily Stormer magazine, but I doubt that'd be cast as "corporate censorship" by anyone.
      - dilap 9y ago
        Yeah, I agree. Without the monopoly, the censorship isn't hugely important (except maybe important to you as a site user, or as an interesting cultural trend). I do think app platforms are natural monopolies, so I wonder if the best thing to do is regulate them somehow to ensure openness. E.g., require any app to be installable that does not actually do illegal things. It's seems kind of heavy-handed, but the current situation of Apple heavily restricting the kinds of apps we can have seems very non-ideal to me, too... (The web is a great escape hatch for all of this, as pointed out by some other commentators, but I think native is where the action is, and it'd be nice to have web-levels of freedom there, too.)
- lgleason 9y ago
  And given that the corporations have bought the Government, it is really VERY similar to what is happening in China.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- facetube 9y ago
  How to jump the shark on Hacker News: compare a private US corporation who has ample competition to communist China, where people are literally imprisoned for posting "politically-unacceptable ideas".
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.

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.)
  - facetube 9y ago
    Sounds more like an antitrust issue than a censorship issue to me. My local grocery store doesn't carry Daily Stormer magazine, but I doubt that'd be cast as "corporate censorship" by anyone.
    - dilap 9y ago
      Yeah, I agree. Without the monopoly, the censorship isn't hugely important (except maybe important to you as a site user, or as an interesting cultural trend). I do think app platforms are natural monopolies, so I wonder if the best thing to do is regulate them somehow to ensure openness. E.g., require any app to be installable that does not actually do illegal things. It's seems kind of heavy-handed, but the current situation of Apple heavily restricting the kinds of apps we can have seems very non-ideal to me, too... (The web is a great escape hatch for all of this, as pointed out by some other commentators, but I think native is where the action is, and it'd be nice to have web-levels of freedom there, too.)
lgleason 9y ago
And given that the corporations have bought the Government, it is really VERY similar to what is happening in China.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
facetube 9y ago
How to jump the shark on Hacker News: compare a private US corporation who has ample competition to communist China, where people are literally imprisoned for posting "politically-unacceptable ideas".

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.