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The president of the US uses Twitter to make statements to the public, and so do a lot of other officials. So the argument that it's a purely private platform
by avar 8y ago
The president of the US uses Twitter to make statements to the public, and so do a lot of other officials.
So the argument that it's a purely private platform is getting harder to make than just the Facebook use-case where "all my friends use it", which you could also say about iPhones, or Coca-Cola. Should a private company be allowed to ban you from what's becoming a de-facto platform for interacting with officials?
But the article lazily likes to pretend that this problem could be solved within the borders of the US with proposed FCC regulation. That still leaves the most interesting problem, which is how are we going to square the free and open Internet with the interests of nation states and their individual citizens.
There's complaints about Russian election interference. But right now US-sponsored election interference is happening in Venezuela via Twitter. What's to be done about cases like those? Is Venezuela's only recourse going to be to ban Twitter?
- datenhorst 8y ago> But right now US-sponsored election interference is happening in Venezuela via Twitter. Do you have a source for that?
- docbrown 8y agoNot sure on his source or argument but my guess would be accounts advocating for Maduro to be displaced by Guaido. If you look at it from that POV, you will clearly see how Twitter is playing a vital part in an US-backed coup against the Venezuelan people because currently, Maduro still has support from some of his allies and from his own military. [1] These are mucky waters to wonder through. 1: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-aid-idUSKCN1Q325K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-aid-id...
- Mirioron 8y agoThis problem isn't social media specific either. Google and Facebook banned ads on abortion ahead of Ireland's referendum on the topic, but I'm sure not all ad networks did the same. Affecting the rankings of search results on sites such as Google and YouTube can also interfere with elections in another country. I wonder if we're eventually going to have a global internet and then smaller nation or region-based "internets" that people use for most of their daily internet-use. It certainly seems like the internet is fracturing right now and this topic is another reason for it.