9 ms·

I love the theoretical situation that doesn't exist as a justification for not doing the right thing. This isn't a "different points of view" - this is the lea

by tw04 6y ago

I love the theoretical situation that doesn't exist as a justification for not doing the right thing. This isn't a "different points of view" - this is the leader of the United States LYING on their platform, and them choosing to provide a link to FACTUAL INFORMATION. There is no "contradictory point of view" - he claimed there was massive voter fraud and there's literally 0 proof to back up his claim and mountains of evidence to counter it.

mc32 6y ago
I think the claim is an exaggeration, but I don’t think that the method is fraud proof. Let’s see fact checks on diet claims, exercise, claims about social solutions, claims about the economy, etc., etc. Let’s see fact checks on their own advertisers.
- dangoljames 6y ago
  Their advertisers are not operating from the office of the chief executive of one of the largest and most successful of nations.
  - mc32 6y ago
    So some forms of disinformation are more acceptable than others even if they have more immediate effects on people?
    - D-Coder 6y ago
      This is the "Doesn't cure cancer!" response. They don't have to be perfect. They don't have to save the world. They don't have to cure cancer. Any improvement is an improvement.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Yes. There are degrees of disinformation. Some are worse than others. Life is not binary.
      - serf 6y ago
        where does twitter draw the line, and how does that line affect the usage of the platform? If twitter created some arbitrary rule like "We're going to fact-check all state/government personnel.", then the state/government personnel would just change platforms. it's a real issue -- it's potentially more dangerous to push politicians to lie on platforms that fact-checkers can't respond and provide feedback towards, and if twitter starts playing hardball against politicians that's exactly what will happen. A ton of small echo-chamber communities that splinter off as a result of perceived hostility or discrimination from twitter (but really any social media group) and the general public may be more hostile/dangerous than having these groups of people being vetted by the public at large constantly on twitter or other popular platforms.
        kelnos 6y ago
        So... don't do any fact-checking because the people you're fact-checking might go to a platform where there's no fact checking? I hope you recognize how absurd that idea is.
        greendesk 6y ago
        If these echo chambers move elsewhere, Twitter might be a more sought-after media. Meanwhile, I make the claim that the echo chambers will stagnate rapidly outside a big platform. The echo chambers need constant exposure to gain new ideological members. If left to a private-club-platform, they will not showcase themselves. Note that there is a strong adherence to the YCombinator’s code of conduct on the current platform - but we come back to discuss ideas here, not to a not-vetted forum. By making the level of adherence to fact checks, discussions will improve.
- dagnabbit 6y ago
  We get it: you are supportive of Trump's planned coup. He knows he is likely to lose. He does not plan to peacefully transition power after that loss. He counts on people like you to enable his destruction of democracy. He knows that you love Trump more than America or democracy, and that you will happily sacrifice centuries of hard work to get yourself more fascist rule.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Yes, please, let's definitely see fact checking on all those things. I hope that's Twitter's longer-term plan. But I think starting with politicians, especially POTUS, is a pretty good place to start.
dangoljames 6y ago
Thank you.
belorn 6y ago
I look for the perspective here and Sweden, and if its an established fact that the mail-in ballot system used by California can not be abused, why does Sweden then have a significant more restrictive and expensive rules around mail-in ballots? To be specific, here you can only use mail-in ballots as an exception if you live outside the border of Sweden, and you can only make a request to use the mail-in ballot if you visit an embassy first or use the digital identity system through one of the Swedish banks, which then operate similar to the embassy in its role in identification processing. Naturally using less security does not mean fraud has happened in the past, but it should be relevant to the question if fraud may happen in the future. If we have factually evidence it won't happen then Sweden should change it rules to make it easier for people to vote and reduce costs to embassies. If we are uncertain, well, then the question is a fair game to ask what is good enough security and what isn't.
- pstuart 6y ago
  The election infrastructure is vulnerable in multiple ways. The fact that there's a new conservative talking point about the dangers of voting by mail (and no other aspects of voting security) shows that this message is bullshit. The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power. Well, that's the tactical reason. Bigger picture, conservativism is about narrowing and liberalism about broadening and equalizing access to the levers of power; conservatives for narrowing the franchise both because of immediate tactical advantage and because of fundamental ideological reasons.
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      This feels a weird position to be in as a liberal, but: You're ascribing to conservativism what should belong to a particular political party at a particular time. Yes, the current Republican party does intend to limit franchise by minorities, and this has literally been stated ala Hofeller. That is not a conservative position and many things the Republican party does are not actually conservative. Just as Democrats at their worse can be about finding equality by restricting rights and treating people like zoo animals, the Republicans at their worse are about winning the power grab ethics be damned. And at those extremes, neither party represents the values of liberalism or conservativism.
ethagnawl 6y ago
It's even worse than just spreading his usual distract-from-the-day's-real-news nonsense. He's actively dissuading _some number_ of people from voting. As always with him, the proof is in the projection: he's accusing others of interfering in the election (states expanding mail in voting, Twitter, etc.) while he's actively doing it himself.
- lordvon 6y ago
  I think news organizations are unfortunately choosing to do non-news for ratings, though. And how is Trump interfering with the election? In principle, there are real risks with unjustified mail-in voting, and I think restrictions would protect the integrity of my vote. Do you have evidence Trump is doing this to interfere with the 2020 election?
  - knodi123 6y ago
    Yes. He is throwing this particular tantrum specifically in order to influence the 2020 election. As with most of Trump's dumber scandals, he has already literally confessed to his impure motives. https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-mail-voting-ballots-20200410-qfnxhakicve3ndpxz64lcsqzr4-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-mail-v...
    - lordvon 6y ago
      Hmm. I don’t think that is evidence. He is not admitting to trying to unfairly influence The 2020 election, but stating a symptom of his belief (incorrect or not) that fraudulent votes tend to be for the party opposing his, which is a legitimate, provable view.
      - DarthDobber 6y ago
        I agree with you that his view fraud tends to be committed by Democrats is something that can be determined to be true or false. Unfortunately for our president, most fraud is committed by Republicans and not democrats. The single largest case of voter fraud in this countries history happened in North Carolina in 2018. That was committed by a Republican. If you investigate the voter fraud instances in Trumps own listing you will find that the majority of them are committed by Republicans. Combine this information with the efforts by Republicans to suppress the vote and you can see the problem. In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that required all citizens to have a physical mailing address to be able to vote. Sounds resonible right? Well, this was after a Democrat won a Senate election in that state thanks in large part to the Native American population. Most Native Americans live on reservations in that state and part of living on the reservations is a lack of physical mailing addresses. Nothing about having a physical address is going to make voter fraud less likely. It's plain as day that Republicans are just interested in suppressing the votes of people who vote against them.
marzell 6y ago
There was plenty of voter fraud, like when he was 'elected' but all the ballots were destroyed in an unreasonable quick time frame. Then there were the precincts with more than 100% voter turnout. Free speech means you have the right to express yourself. It does not mean a private company is at all required to give you a platform... They can moderate content as they choose. As far as tagging an individual user account in this way, I'm sure there are provisions for that in the TOS that Trump agreed to in order to use the site. On a legal level, I can't imagine anything has been done wrong. On an ethical level, the only problem I see so far might be that Twitter is taking it upon themselves to be fact checkers, and personally I don't mind so far, I think the public benefit probably far outweighs any negatives.
lordvon 6y ago
Is Trump lying though? Here’s a list of tons of convictions on fraudulent use of absentee ballots (and other forms of voter fraud): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
- magicalist 6y ago
  > Here’s a list of tons of convictions on fraudulent use of absentee ballots (and other forms of voter fraud): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p.. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p.... wait, 938 convictions over what looks like is over two decades? Just in the presidential election years that's something like 625 million votes. That's very little fraud. (and there's some nonsense in there if it's trying to present itself as voter fraud...like the California cases of candidates misrepresenting their home address. What does that have to do with any voters?)
  - lordvon 6y ago
    As a US citizen, I would prefer to have 0 such convictions. I would not belittle these results, as these may not be all convictions, and these are just the ones that got caught. And of course even if the sheer number of votes is not on the same order of magnitude as all votes cast, we should still worry because a relatively small number of votes can have an outsized effect when placed appropriately. Edit: as the first page states, this is not a comprehensive list, but a ‘sampling’.
    - magicalist 6y ago
      > As a US citizen, I would prefer to have 0 such convictions great, but what does that have to do with providing evidence that > There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent." is not substantial nonsense based on zero evidence, but more importantly (given that this thread is about "lying"), that > The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. isn't at all true?
BobbyJo 6y ago
I think he was just pointing to the larger problem. If we accept the premise that these companies are unable to be unbiased and accurate with the application of their rules at scale, which we have every reason to believe, then the problem is the platform itself.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
>I love the theoretical situation that doesn't exist as a justification You must love philosophy. Is this really the first you have heard someone use a hypothetical in an ethical argument?
lenkite 6y ago
WHY do you say he is lying ? He has sufficient evidence that there is indeed voter/absentee ballot fraud going on. Saying that he has ZERO proof is the REAL lie. The below is just a snapshot. Just a teensy-weensy bit of research will give you hundreds of articles like the below. Report from Government Accountability Institute: http://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Voter-Fraud-Final-with-Appendix-1.pdf http://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Voter-Fraud-... https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-investigation-deepens-in-dallas-county-targeting-grand-prairie-candidate/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-inves... https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2019/09/23/southfield-city-clerk-charged-six-felonies-november-2018-election/2416101001/ https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2... https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-skid-row-voter-fraud-20181120-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-skid-row-voter-... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/central-figure-north-carolina-absentee-ballot-fraud-indicted-multiple-counts-n976991 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/central-figur... https://www.dothaneagle.com/news/crime_court/fourth-person-connected-to-amos-newsome-campaign-guilty-of-absentee/article_e723ecbe-b8a4-11e5-9bec-5bc9ccad9885.html https://www.dothaneagle.com/news/crime_court/fourth-person-c... https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-investigation-deepens-in-dallas-county-targeting-grand-prairie-candidate/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-inves... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-09/duplicate-voter-records-audit-california-motor-voter-system https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-09/duplicat...

by tw04 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

I think the claim is an exaggeration, but I don’t think that the method is fraud proof. Let’s see fact checks on diet claims, exercise, claims about social solutions, claims about the economy, etc., etc. Let’s see fact checks on their own advertisers.

dangoljames 6y ago
Their advertisers are not operating from the office of the chief executive of one of the largest and most successful of nations.
- mc32 6y ago
  So some forms of disinformation are more acceptable than others even if they have more immediate effects on people?
  - D-Coder 6y ago
    This is the "Doesn't cure cancer!" response. They don't have to be perfect. They don't have to save the world. They don't have to cure cancer. Any improvement is an improvement.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    Yes. There are degrees of disinformation. Some are worse than others. Life is not binary.
    - serf 6y ago
      where does twitter draw the line, and how does that line affect the usage of the platform? If twitter created some arbitrary rule like "We're going to fact-check all state/government personnel.", then the state/government personnel would just change platforms. it's a real issue -- it's potentially more dangerous to push politicians to lie on platforms that fact-checkers can't respond and provide feedback towards, and if twitter starts playing hardball against politicians that's exactly what will happen. A ton of small echo-chamber communities that splinter off as a result of perceived hostility or discrimination from twitter (but really any social media group) and the general public may be more hostile/dangerous than having these groups of people being vetted by the public at large constantly on twitter or other popular platforms.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        So... don't do any fact-checking because the people you're fact-checking might go to a platform where there's no fact checking? I hope you recognize how absurd that idea is.
      - greendesk 6y ago
        If these echo chambers move elsewhere, Twitter might be a more sought-after media. Meanwhile, I make the claim that the echo chambers will stagnate rapidly outside a big platform. The echo chambers need constant exposure to gain new ideological members. If left to a private-club-platform, they will not showcase themselves. Note that there is a strong adherence to the YCombinator’s code of conduct on the current platform - but we come back to discuss ideas here, not to a not-vetted forum. By making the level of adherence to fact checks, discussions will improve.
dagnabbit 6y ago
We get it: you are supportive of Trump's planned coup. He knows he is likely to lose. He does not plan to peacefully transition power after that loss. He counts on people like you to enable his destruction of democracy. He knows that you love Trump more than America or democracy, and that you will happily sacrifice centuries of hard work to get yourself more fascist rule.
kelnos 6y ago
Yes, please, let's definitely see fact checking on all those things. I hope that's Twitter's longer-term plan. But I think starting with politicians, especially POTUS, is a pretty good place to start.

dangoljames 6y ago

Thank you.

belorn 6y ago

I look for the perspective here and Sweden, and if its an established fact that the mail-in ballot system used by California can not be abused, why does Sweden then have a significant more restrictive and expensive rules around mail-in ballots? To be specific, here you can only use mail-in ballots as an exception if you live outside the border of Sweden, and you can only make a request to use the mail-in ballot if you visit an embassy first or use the digital identity system through one of the Swedish banks, which then operate similar to the embassy in its role in identification processing. Naturally using less security does not mean fraud has happened in the past, but it should be relevant to the question if fraud may happen in the future. If we have factually evidence it won't happen then Sweden should change it rules to make it easier for people to vote and reduce costs to embassies. If we are uncertain, well, then the question is a fair game to ask what is good enough security and what isn't.

pstuart 6y ago
The election infrastructure is vulnerable in multiple ways. The fact that there's a new conservative talking point about the dangers of voting by mail (and no other aspects of voting security) shows that this message is bullshit. The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power. Well, that's the tactical reason. Bigger picture, conservativism is about narrowing and liberalism about broadening and equalizing access to the levers of power; conservatives for narrowing the franchise both because of immediate tactical advantage and because of fundamental ideological reasons.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    This feels a weird position to be in as a liberal, but: You're ascribing to conservativism what should belong to a particular political party at a particular time. Yes, the current Republican party does intend to limit franchise by minorities, and this has literally been stated ala Hofeller. That is not a conservative position and many things the Republican party does are not actually conservative. Just as Democrats at their worse can be about finding equality by restricting rights and treating people like zoo animals, the Republicans at their worse are about winning the power grab ethics be damned. And at those extremes, neither party represents the values of liberalism or conservativism.

ethagnawl 6y ago

It's even worse than just spreading his usual distract-from-the-day's-real-news nonsense. He's actively dissuading _some number_ of people from voting. As always with him, the proof is in the projection: he's accusing others of interfering in the election (states expanding mail in voting, Twitter, etc.) while he's actively doing it himself.

lordvon 6y ago
I think news organizations are unfortunately choosing to do non-news for ratings, though. And how is Trump interfering with the election? In principle, there are real risks with unjustified mail-in voting, and I think restrictions would protect the integrity of my vote. Do you have evidence Trump is doing this to interfere with the 2020 election?
- knodi123 6y ago
  Yes. He is throwing this particular tantrum specifically in order to influence the 2020 election. As with most of Trump's dumber scandals, he has already literally confessed to his impure motives. https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-mail-voting-ballots-20200410-qfnxhakicve3ndpxz64lcsqzr4-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-mail-v...
  - lordvon 6y ago
    Hmm. I don’t think that is evidence. He is not admitting to trying to unfairly influence The 2020 election, but stating a symptom of his belief (incorrect or not) that fraudulent votes tend to be for the party opposing his, which is a legitimate, provable view.
    - DarthDobber 6y ago
      I agree with you that his view fraud tends to be committed by Democrats is something that can be determined to be true or false. Unfortunately for our president, most fraud is committed by Republicans and not democrats. The single largest case of voter fraud in this countries history happened in North Carolina in 2018. That was committed by a Republican. If you investigate the voter fraud instances in Trumps own listing you will find that the majority of them are committed by Republicans. Combine this information with the efforts by Republicans to suppress the vote and you can see the problem. In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that required all citizens to have a physical mailing address to be able to vote. Sounds resonible right? Well, this was after a Democrat won a Senate election in that state thanks in large part to the Native American population. Most Native Americans live on reservations in that state and part of living on the reservations is a lack of physical mailing addresses. Nothing about having a physical address is going to make voter fraud less likely. It's plain as day that Republicans are just interested in suppressing the votes of people who vote against them.

marzell 6y ago

There was plenty of voter fraud, like when he was 'elected' but all the ballots were destroyed in an unreasonable quick time frame. Then there were the precincts with more than 100% voter turnout. Free speech means you have the right to express yourself. It does not mean a private company is at all required to give you a platform... They can moderate content as they choose. As far as tagging an individual user account in this way, I'm sure there are provisions for that in the TOS that Trump agreed to in order to use the site. On a legal level, I can't imagine anything has been done wrong. On an ethical level, the only problem I see so far might be that Twitter is taking it upon themselves to be fact checkers, and personally I don't mind so far, I think the public benefit probably far outweighs any negatives.

lordvon 6y ago

Is Trump lying though? Here’s a list of tons of convictions on fraudulent use of absentee ballots (and other forms of voter fraud): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...

magicalist 6y ago
> Here’s a list of tons of convictions on fraudulent use of absentee ballots (and other forms of voter fraud): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p.. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p.... wait, 938 convictions over what looks like is over two decades? Just in the presidential election years that's something like 625 million votes. That's very little fraud. (and there's some nonsense in there if it's trying to present itself as voter fraud...like the California cases of candidates misrepresenting their home address. What does that have to do with any voters?)
- lordvon 6y ago
  As a US citizen, I would prefer to have 0 such convictions. I would not belittle these results, as these may not be all convictions, and these are just the ones that got caught. And of course even if the sheer number of votes is not on the same order of magnitude as all votes cast, we should still worry because a relatively small number of votes can have an outsized effect when placed appropriately. Edit: as the first page states, this is not a comprehensive list, but a ‘sampling’.
  - magicalist 6y ago
    > As a US citizen, I would prefer to have 0 such convictions great, but what does that have to do with providing evidence that > There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent." is not substantial nonsense based on zero evidence, but more importantly (given that this thread is about "lying"), that > The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. isn't at all true?

BobbyJo 6y ago

I think he was just pointing to the larger problem. If we accept the premise that these companies are unable to be unbiased and accurate with the application of their rules at scale, which we have every reason to believe, then the problem is the platform itself.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

>I love the theoretical situation that doesn't exist as a justification You must love philosophy. Is this really the first you have heard someone use a hypothetical in an ethical argument?

lenkite 6y ago

WHY do you say he is lying ? He has sufficient evidence that there is indeed voter/absentee ballot fraud going on. Saying that he has ZERO proof is the REAL lie. The below is just a snapshot. Just a teensy-weensy bit of research will give you hundreds of articles like the below. Report from Government Accountability Institute: http://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Voter-Fraud-Final-with-Appendix-1.pdf http://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Voter-Fraud-... https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-investigation-deepens-in-dallas-county-targeting-grand-prairie-candidate/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-inves... https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2019/09/23/southfield-city-clerk-charged-six-felonies-november-2018-election/2416101001/ https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2... https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-skid-row-voter-fraud-20181120-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-skid-row-voter-... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/central-figure-north-carolina-absentee-ballot-fraud-indicted-multiple-counts-n976991 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/central-figur... https://www.dothaneagle.com/news/crime_court/fourth-person-connected-to-amos-newsome-campaign-guilty-of-absentee/article_e723ecbe-b8a4-11e5-9bec-5bc9ccad9885.html https://www.dothaneagle.com/news/crime_court/fourth-person-c... https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-investigation-deepens-in-dallas-county-targeting-grand-prairie-candidate/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/07/11/voter-fraud-inves... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-09/duplicate-voter-records-audit-california-motor-voter-system https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-09/duplicat...