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I think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- bu

• prox 6y ago
  Because that would be the territory of authoritarian kings, the ideological reason the US was founded. Trump sees himself king, not president.
  • briefcomment 6y ago
    Can you read his mind? If not, how can you tell the difference between a tyrant and a troll (and even a savvy negotiator)? One way is to see what actually happens. My bet is that no social media company will be shut down because of this.
    • paulgb 6y ago
      Making threats to use your power as commander-in-chief against the free speech of a private company is not "trolling" or "negotiation", it's creating a chilling effect on speech whether he goes through with it or not. I doubt he would shut Twitter down (if only because he needs it more than it needs him), but I don't doubt for a second that he would use the executive branch to retaliate against them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
      • timsneath 6y ago
        To add to that, Twitter shares dropped significantly on opening and ended the day down -2.75%. By contrast, the S&P rose 1.5% today. In the absence of other confounding variables, this would suggest investors see a material effect of his words.
        • nwienert 6y ago
          I dropped Twitter stock not because I think they will be regulated (they may) but because I think this was just a stupid move, and shows they aren’t making good business decisions.
          • paulgb 6y ago
            > shows they aren’t making good business decisions. I mean, I could have told you that when the already part-time CEO announced he'd move to Africa for a year :)
            • echelon 6y ago
              Africa is going to be the next {China, India, Vietnam, ...} in terms of manufacturing, industrial growth, smart phone and payments penetration, etc. Dorsey is being incredibly smart by trying to figure out how to break into the African market. He probably wants to do payments there. Get in early, win the market. It's genius. Just look at what's happening with Belt and Road. Africa is going to be huge. If I had his money and influence, I would be doing the same.
          • 2019-nCoV 6y ago
            They excel at bad decisions. This person is the “head of site integrity” at Twitter: https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1265457578215124995 https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/126545757821512499...
        • simonsarris 6y ago
          That's silly, compare TWTR to other small cap tech and its pretty much in-line for the day (eg, PINS, CHWY, SHOP). It's also fairly in line for QQQ. There's no evidence that trump's tweet changed anything about Twitter's price movement today.
      • nwienert 6y ago
        I don’t see a chilling effect. If anything it’s a heating and dividing effect, but certainly this isn’t making people quieter about the debate.. see this comment thread for proof.
        • lazugod 6y ago
          It's not chilling random Internet commentators. It's chilling actions by large platforms to have or keep any principles.
        • bananabreakfast 6y ago
          This has nothing to do with people and their debate. This is a direct threat to a company to violate their free speech which, in itself, is a crime not unlike directly threatening violence against a person.
          • nwienert 6y ago
            It’s a threat to regulate them as a public utility certainly, but that’s been done before to phone companies (by the left) in the past. It’s definitely a threat. But I don’t see any people backing down, and using “chilling” to me is just pathos to try and make one side seem right. It’s a disagreement on what to do and how to run our big platforms.
            • Nevermark 6y ago
              Trump didn’t just disagree with Twitter’s opinion of his tweets, or how Twitter operates. He made threats to retaliate, clearly to chill speech he disagrees with. They are not the same thing. Not even close. And businesses will have to take his behavior into account, especially if some people give him a pass for this. Trump keeps moving the bar, or trying to, in terms of pushing back against any organizational or legal limits on himself. It has been both amazing and depressing to see how quickly people start making excuses for him, and declaring his behavior acceptable when it is clearly corruption.
      • briefcomment 6y ago
        That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that he's telling Twitter to "cut their crap". I would bet about half the country sees it that way, and agrees with him too.
      • nogabebop23 6y ago
        wait for tomorrow - he's already moving in this direction. THese are very concerning times...
    • favorited 6y ago
      Of course no social media company will be shut down over this. Trump couldn't shut down Twitter even if he wanted to.
      • adventured 6y ago
        The US Government could easily bankrupt Twitter. I doubt the Trump Administration is smart enough to figure out how to do this, but here is how easy it would be. Twitter frequently selectively enforces its own terms of service. They punish some users and then intentionally let other users get away with atrocious behavior with no consequences. I've witnessed this across hundreds of various Twitter accounts over the last several years, so the number of times this happens must be rather epic. Numerous agencies of the US Government can choose to pursue Twitter for that. Twitter will find it impossible to correct their chaotic, selective, biased approach to how they treat their users so very differently. Angency N from the government slaps Twitter with an increasing fine each time they fail to properly, equitably enforce their terms of service. Start at $100 million and double it with every violation. Twitter will be bankrupt before a month is out. Twitter would get on their knees and beg for mercy almost instantly. The US Government can break any corporation it wants to, anytime it wants to. If the Trump Admin wants to be really devious, Nixonian, they'll target the executives operating the companies. Sending the IRS & Co. to make their lives a living hell. These companies will capitulate instantly. Just ask the PRISM companies how this works in reality: you have no choice but to bow. It all depends on how nasty the Feds are prepared to get.
        • mthoms 6y ago
          The end result would be a non-US company taking Twitter's place. Then the US Gov't would be back at square one. Only worse.
        • gamblor956 6y ago
          And the courts would strike down all of that. Even the ultra conservative judges. And on top of that would force the government to pay for Twitter's legal fees. And probably also for economic damages.
        • 6y ago
    • dekhn 6y ago
      We can't read his mind but we can generate a fairly accurate model based on what he says. He has openly admired the powers of tyrants in multiple countries, and hinted that he would like to continue to be president after his term completes. Based on my read of his text, it seems like he sincerely believes things like "Kim Jong Un is a good guy and he deserves to continue running North Korea". Of course no social media company will be shut down over this- Trump has absolutely zero power in this regard (I think half of Trump's frustration is in realizing how little power a president truly has). Anyway, he doesn't think he is a king. He thinks he is an emperor.
      • tripzilch 6y ago
        > He thinks he is an emperor. .. and ultimately, it was Twitter who said he has no clothes. Weird times.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • joubert 6y ago
      “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
• mc32 6y ago
  Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward. Will they get into the business of fact checking everyone over certain number of followers? Will they do it impartially world-wide? How can they even be impartial world wide given the different contradictory points of view, valid from both sides? Cyprus? What’s the take there?
  • Talanes 6y ago
    What requires them to be impartial?
    • 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      Open a history book.
      • Talanes 6y ago
        A history book would seem an odd place to find legislation.
        • 2019-nCoV 6y ago
          A great place to see what lies ahead for a divisive society
          • pasquinelli 6y ago
            What is a divisive society?
            • Avicebron 6y ago
              A society that can't agree on what a divisive society is. In all seriousness, when actors with influence on public thought are having public arguments about politics, social roles, virus response plans. Now you can argue society has always been divisive, but instead of an Athenian public square with have platforms with millions of people getting involved. Amplified divisiveness.
• Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  > There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech There are forms of government where certain forms of speech cannot be challenged. Well, not safely anyway. I should know, I lived for 20 years in that sort of place (Eastern Bloc kid).
  • sillysaurusx 6y ago
    What was that like? I tried to make the question more precise, but I’m not quite sure what I’m asking. I guess I was hoping to hear more from you because normally I’ve only heard it from books, not from an actual person who lived under it. pg’s trick for getting interesting answers is to ask “What surprised you the most?” That may be relevant here — if you had to pick some surprising differences, what specifically would they be?
    • visarga 6y ago
      Not the GP poster, but I have also lived in the Eastern Block before 1989. I was surprised by the lies. Everyone had to lie with a straight face, otherwise risk being arrested. We had to lie that everything was great, the party wonderful, while in reality we needed heat, food, books, general shopping items, the right to travel and study abroad (outside the Eastern Block) and the right to speak freely.
      • mcny 6y ago
        My friend from China PR said something similar. I tried to get her in touch with another friend from China PR as I thought they’d be able to assist or at least understand her immigration problem. However, she explained strangers from China PR have to play this weird dance where each pledges allegiance to the Communist Party more in case the other person is a spy or something.
    • Florin_Andrei 6y ago
      But see, it was not surprising. It was just... life, and how can that be surprising? I guess what would shock you is how normal it felt for us, back then. I mean, when that's all you know, that's just how it is. You had to be careful with the general frame of the ideas that you expressed in public - but that was normal. You could not freely leave the country - but that was normal. Anything that had to do with the government was a bunch of lies - but that was normal. Yet life went on. People grew up, got married, got a job, etc. We used to tell a lot of jokes about the government - I guess as a way to cope. I miss those jokes.
• Khaine 6y ago
  I'm sorry that Rubicon was crossed a long time ago. When you told businesses who they must serve. Hilariously, many people want it both ways, they want it illegal for a bakery to not make gay wedding cakes, but also want twitter et all to stop people from saying bad things. I am not a free speech extremist, and recognise you need to balance the competing demands as these platforms are defacto digital town squares. There are several problems that currently exist. They are: 1) Who decides what is and isn't on the platform Now that the web has effectively been centralised into a handful of organisations, being locked out of a platform can be seriously harmful. There are no appeals, or arbitration on decisions made. No courts to provide an independent check. 2) Asymmetry of rule application The biggest issue is rules are not applied fairly. Certain types of people seem free to repeatedly break the rules on platforms without recourse.
  • geofft 6y ago
    There is a coherent distinction between the two cases (it's entirely fair not to think it's a distinction that you care about, but it's worth presenting the other side's argument right). The argument against Masterpiece Cakeshop was that gay people are a protected class in state anti-discrimination laws, and that the constitutional right to free speech (and free exercise of religion) does not include the ability to treat gay customers differently. "Being the president" is not a protected class. (If you want to argue that a platform is treating people differently because of political affiliation, then yes, I'd agree that the argument about Masterpiece Cakeshop would apply - but it's far from obvious that any platform is in fact treating people differently because of political affiliation.)
    • Khaine 6y ago
      Right, and they lost that argument because gays were not treated differently from other customers, since if a straight person asked for a gay wedding cake they would also be refused. My point was not on the merits of the case, but rather that many people on one side demand that this be made illegal, and yet on the other demand that twitter shut trump up. They demand free speech for themselves while silencing critics.