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White House launches tool to report censorship on social media
- panarky 7y agoWhat's worse? Private companies making decisions about what appears on their privately funded platforms? Or bureaucrats, ideologues and partisans using government power to influence what appears on private sites?
- dx87 7y agoConsidering there's plenty of ideologues and partisans working at those private companies, I think it's pretty bad either way.
- hedora 7y agoAll of the above. I wish it were easy enough to run a web server that everyone just hosted their own content. A Raspberry Pi is already overkill for most pages, and one could easily imagine a content-agnostic (encrypted?) cache service that would handle load spikes.
- MarkMc 7y agoI suspect that the primary purpose here is not to uncover bias or censorship on social media platforms - it's to get people to identify more strongly as Trump supporters. This is the classic psychological 'consistency' principle at work. When someone takes the small step of "sharing their story with President Trump" it strengthens their self-image as a Trump supporter. This is then reinforced by receiving frequent emails "from President Trump" thanking them for their support to eliminate censorship. This makes the person more likely to get off the couch and vote for Trump in November 2020.
- justforyou 7y agoWould anyone care to articulate reasons for downvoting parent?
- redleggedfrog 7y agoThis shows lighter in my browser, like it's voted down, but it's by far the most insightful comment. Also, if you're a company and you have a platform like facebook and Twitter, and you're a private company, not the government, you can kick whomever you damned well please off your service, or delete their posts, or edit them to make them look stupid. It's not censorship if you're not the government. If facebook gets all progressive and the conservatives don't like it, let them make their own conservative platform. Too bad techies lean left, going to make that difficult. Freaking 'merica's biggest political activity is now whining.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFWIW, there is a precedent for treating monopolies differently than other companies. Utility companies, which are natural monopolies, are highly restricted in their ability to refuse service to customers, for instance. Social media companies seem to be natural monopolies.
- rbanffy 7y agoThese companies are providing services for free. Can you force a natural monopoly to provide free services to anyone who demands it?
- LyndsySimon 7y agoBased on what we’ve done with hospitals... yes.
- IOT_Apprentice 7y agoDo Hospitals provide their services for free? No. Are Hospitals and their staff subject to government regulation given the required license to practice medicine? Yes. I'm not sure your example applies here.
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
- creaghpatr 7y agoI think it's because Twitter has shown they will reverse bans for cases that get too much negative publicity rather than adhere to a consistent policy. This is a logical counterreaction to aggregate and lobby for banned accounts, conservative or otherwise.
- zaroth 7y agoOr alternatively, after a sufficient public outcry, will reverse themselves after improperly banning an account when they actually screw up.
- krapp 7y agoIt also reinforces the narrative that Trump and his supporters are under constant persecution by the organized conspiracy of leftists and globalists controlling all media and purging and all non-leftist speech from social media en masse. Nothing gets voters to the polls quite as effectively as a shared identity built around a persecution complex and the threat of an enemy at the gates.
- athroway 7y agoAh yes, the party that was in control of virtually all branches of the government in 2016-2018 and nearly all of them right now is somehow getting persecuted and witchhunted because people said mean things about them on Twitter. The media is perhaps the _only_ power they don't fully control and that's still too much for them. I mean, the gall of it is just astounding.
- JaimeThompson 7y agoI am totally confident that they will handle reports of censorship by media that supports them completely and totally the same way as reports against media that doesn't.........
- 420codebro 7y agoI'm totally confident that you're a royal faggot.
- giarc 7y ago>A later question asks the user what year the Declaration of Independence was signed “just to confirm you aren’t a robot.” This is an unorthodox anti-scripting technique, and a generally ineffective one, given the relative simplicity of automatically entering a number. A twitter user reported that any 4 digit number will be verified.
- scohesc 7y agoWell yeah, it's literally a survey and it can be any answer you want. It's not to verify anything other than the guise of "if you don't know when it was signed then you're not an informed american and your opinion doesn't matter"
- Balgair 7y agoIf you run the Big List of Naughty Strings against it, they almost all pass through. I'd wager that a Jimmy Drop Tables would also be effective. If it hasn't been black-hatted already, then someone will grey-hat it before Friday. Honestly, it seems it was built by people that knew that it was pointless anyways. Just like with the FCC comments scandal, it's not going to be reflective any reality we live in. It's political red-meat for Sean and Donny to make up whatever they want to make up and attack with so many manila folders of blank paper.
- throwayEngineer 7y agoWe are going to have the government deal with shitty Mods? Back when I was a kid, if the Mods sucked, you'd stop going to that website. Serious question, why do unhappy customers keep buying what bad companies sell? I stopped using Facebook and many subreddits. I have this self control. Is there anyone here that cannot stop visiting bad websites?
- mcfunk 7y ago>>Serious question, why do unhappy customers keep buying what bad companies sell? Many good convos have happened on this -- Facebook is de facto required for participating in some levels of society. I've heard of people being required to use Facebook to get information as vital as announcements about school for their kids. For those of us with poorly understood chronic illnesses, Facebook is the only place we can find people who share our condition and can trade information with. Many community events are only announced through Facebook events. Essentially, it's infiltrated so many aspects of life that it's become very difficult for many people to fully walk away from.
- athroway 7y agoIf Facebook disappeared overnight, my life and that of most of my social circle wouldn't change that much. I think the issue of Facebook penetrating everyone's aspects of life is perhaps unique to your side of the Atlantic. They only have the power people chose to give them. You could opt out any time you like, it's maybe not convenient but it's liberating. See Stallman on freedom etc.
- harimau777 7y agoI think part of the problem is that they have the power that OTHER people choose to give them. If my entire social circle uses Facebook then I don't have much of a choice.
- sandworm101 7y ago>> We are going to have the government deal with shitty Mods? Breitbart. >> Back when I was a kid, if the Mods sucked, you'd stop going to that website. If websites existed when you were a kid, you are not the target market for this tool. >>Serious question, why do unhappy customers keep buying what bad companies sell? That's how addiction works. >>I stopped using Facebook and many subreddits. I have this self control. Then they have won. Every time a reasonable person disconnects, the ratio of unreasonable people on a platform increases. Unreasonableness, extremism, creates greater engagement, generating more add revenue. >> Is there anyone here that cannot stop visiting bad websites? We are all here aren't we?
- SpikeDad 7y agoI wonder if you can use this to report censorship that the Trump administration is actively doing to scientific reports and scientists themselves who's results disagree with their business and extremist religious agenda?
- smpetrey 7y agoNot a good look for Typeform.
- DeusExMachina 7y ago> A Twitter spokesperson responded to the new tool saying, “We enforce the Twitter Rules impartially for all users, regardless of their background or political affiliation. We are constantly working to improve our systems and will continue to be transparent in our efforts.” In the discussion with Jack Dorsey on the Joe Rogan podcast, Tim Pool had a good point: some of the rules are intrinsically biased on one side of the political spectrum. An good example is the rule against misgendering. Twitter forbids referring to a person using a different gender than the one that person choses. E.g., you have to refer to a male-to-female transgender as a "she". But to conservatives, referring to someone using a gender other than their biological one is the definition of misgendering. This is a purely ideological take, and Twitter chose the definition of one side over the other. Then they can apply it "impartially to all users", but its the rule itself that is not impartial.
- techntoke 7y agoTim Pool and JRE are obnoxious. Twitter lets people call each other pedos with no evidence all day long and you think that they enforce calling someone a he/she when they go by the opposite gender? Get real.
- athroway 7y agoIn that case I guess it's up to Wheaton's law. It is much less distressing to accept designating people with pronouns one believes to be wrong, than to be designated with pronouns that mismatch one's inner identity. Purposefully distressing people is kind of being a dick, and the amount of dickishness should be curbed, so the conclusion naturally arises.
- makomk 7y agoThere's an even stronger argument that Twitter's misgendering rule is ideological, I reckon. See, it used to be that all the right-thinking, connected feminist and feminist-adjacent folks thought that referring to people using anything other than their biological gender at birth was not just misgendering, but misogynistic and patriarchal - and even once this shifted somewhat, folks were expected to defend the people who still held those views until around 2016 or so. For instance, when Wordpress banned someone using wordpress.com to outright dox and harass every prominent trans woman out there, there was a successful campaign to unban her and no counter-campaign, because all the left-leaning groups fighting to make Internet sites ideologically correct supported this back then. Twitter choosing to act against misgendering now isn't simply the result of some abstract belief about respecting people. It's a direct reflection of the changing views of activists in one particular slice of political spectrum.
- hedora 7y agoI wonder if this is running afoul of campaign finance laws. The Trump administration has been doing that a lot recently, and while this can easily be misconstrued as a “report to the government” tool, it is not hosted on a .gov site. Will the executive branch be acting on the information posted here? That also seems legally dubious. [edit: because there are security issues involving using non-government computers for government business. I think Hillary had some problems with that; maybe Trump didn’t hear about it?]
- KirinDave 7y agoIt's an extremely dangerous conflation of terms to suggest that private speech and private moderation are the same as censorship. But forcing a "fairness" doctrine onto the tech world is exactly what the current political parties, who feel like reporting for them has had insufficient deference and whatabout-ism, want to do. Uniformly across the center of the political spectrum most of the US government represents. Speech Rules enacted democratically by small communities are fine. Speech Rules imposed top down by the owners of infrastructure for communication are not great, but at least customers can make choices about them and it's not so unimaginable to find alternatives. Speech Rules enacted top-down by the executive are impossible to argue with and ultimately one of the most dangerous kinds of authoritarianism. The infosec community can tell you they've been fighting a slow, losing battle against going to jail for saying something that is not illegal to say out loud for some time now.
- int_19h 7y agoPrivate moderation is censorship. The definition of censorship is not restricted to government actors.
- KirinDave 7y agoI regret to inform you the dictionary definition of censorship generally does not include tweets, so a literalist reading invalidates both our positions.
- int_19h 7y agoI don't know which dictionary definition you're referring to, since there are many. But most define it in terms of speech or communication, and tweets are most certainly both. Colloquially, I think most people would agree that e.g. the Hollywood blacklist was an example of political censorship. And yet it was implemented entirely by private parties. ACLU also refers to this sort of thing as censorship in general, while also drawing the distinction between government and private censorship, e.g.: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebook-shouldnt-censor-offensive-speech https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebo...
- sehugg 7y agoIn separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/04/25/twitter-cant-ban-racism-because-theyd-have-to-ban-republicans-too/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/04/25/twitter-cant-ban-ra...
- kprjo 7y agoThat's what happens when "our country and people first" gets classified as white supremacism.
- caseyohara 7y agoPhrases like "our country and people first" get classified as white supremacy because they are used as dog whistles by white supremacists.
- kprjo 7y agoBut that's as silly as classifying the "ok hand" emoji as white supremacist too.
- thrower123 7y agoThe Streisand Effect when people try to pile on these things as being some kind of secret masonic handshake is insane. I don't think actual white supremacists could ever come up with propaganda anywhere near as effective.
- deogeo 7y agoHow would you phrase the sentiment differently? Or is it inherently white supremacist? What if the country isn't majority white?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- isk517 7y agoI find it kind of amusing that the same political party that believes internet service providers do not have obligation to neutrality believe internet content providers do. Edit: spelling mistake fixed
- luckylion 7y agoTrue, that's a weird thing. One side wants ISPs to be neutral, the other wants platforms to be neutral, but neither really want both to be neutral.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- katabasis 7y agoSo Net Neutrality constitutes unwelcome government interference in the internet, but it's okay to force private companies to tolerate extreme right-wing views? This is ridiculous.
- 1f60c 7y agoIt's outrageous. People think this is a good idea?
- andygates 7y agoThat's not creepy and McCarthyite at all. No sir.
- thex10 7y agoIt's only for social media censorship against USians. The form kicks you out once you tell it you're not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. https://twitter.com/typeform/status/1128993614250553344 https://twitter.com/typeform/status/1128993614250553344
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoI'm interested in the dichotomy of comments here between when Trump Admin releases a tool to report censorship and when Elizabeth Warren talks about how we need to break up Big Tech. Also, it's fascinating how many of the negative reaction comments want to pretend like there are actual alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon Marketplace. If the argument comes down to "it's a private business, do whatever you want"... Well, let's be at least partially honest this is a new problem and these are effective-monopolies.
- bediger4000 7y agoWhy? Censorship is quite a different issue from anti-trust. Censorship in the USA applies to the government, not to individuals (real humans or corporations), basically because the idea is that nobody wants to pay for someone else's sub-moronic "free speach". Anti-trust, in the USA, is related to harmful effects to consumers. Monopolies can charge monopoly rents, or slow innovations or change in the monopolized market. Absolutely two different issues. Also, lots of folks pretended there were actual alternatives to Microsoft in 2000. It's not a new problem.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago>Why? Censorship is quite a different issue from anti-trust. Is it in this case? The censorship here is only effective because of the failures in anti-trust to adapt to the modern internet tech giants. If you are pretending that these companies aren't monopolies in search, video delivery, messaging, and social media... Well, I disagree. So I get what you're saying, but let's not pretend Microsoft in 2000 was larger than Google or Facebook is now. The issue is that these companies are clearly pretending to be PLATFORM when it suits them, and PUBLISHER when it suits them.
- bediger4000 7y ago> So I get what you're saying, but let's not pretend Microsoft in 2000 was larger than Google or Facebook is now. Larger in terms of what? Cash flow? Probably not. Monopoly power? Microsoft had something like 95% of a market that didn't even have 3 major players. The 4-firm concentration ratio was ridiculous, as was the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. Microsoft owned so much of the market for PC operating systems that they loaned Apple money to avoid anti-trust issues. Google is at about 92% of the global share of searches, but Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex exist. DuckDuckGo actually entered the market not too long ago. Google now has nowhere near Microsoft's monopoly power.
- olliej 7y agoI can’t help but feel the GOP wouldn’t be running into this if they didn’t keep posting attacks on minorities. If you are saying some set of people don’t deserve the same basic rights as other people, simply because they exist, and are different, it’s hate speech. And if your platform is deliberately based on intolerance then there is not requirement for others to tolerate you. This isn’t a paradox - bigots love trying to say it is, but it’s not.