5 ms·
All because Twitter dared to fact check him.
by chasing 6y ago
All because Twitter dared to fact check him.
- onetimemanytime 6y agodevil's advocate: why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone? Twitter is picking sides on a comment made by a user so they should be held liable for that content
- ddoolin 6y agoTwitter isn't a public right. He chooses to use their platform so they choose to annotate his lies. I don't see how this executive order would even change exactly what started the whole thing.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoIIRC, they are not liable if they just host the comments, not if they endorse them. I guess every comment without a "fake /dubious" label is true? (Cause I'm about to drink a gallon of bleach and eat 2 lbs of raw garlic to ward off Covid as per a tweet's instruction ;) (joking) )
- ddoolin 6y agoEven if they were the publisher in this scenario and were liable for his comment AND their annotation, there is nothing illegal about it.
- elpool2 6y agoTwitter could put "Everything trump says is false!" underneath every Trump tweet and it would still be perfectly legal.
- jklein11 6y agoI don't think the executive action targets the fact check label on Trump's tweet specifically. I think Twitter did something that really pissed Trump off and Trump is using Section 230 as leverage and a way to extend the narrative of "Twitter is plotting against me so don't believe everything you read." This is neither here nor there but I have considered my self a republican for the last 28 years of my life. This president's actions make me feel physically ill.
- friedman23 6y agoPeople have a right to communicate, if a few platforms have the power to block all communication maybe they should be.
- ddoolin 6y agoSo, some kind of socialized national communication place?
- evan_ 6y agoHow does adding a link prevent anyone, let alone the most powerful person in history, from communicating?
- komali2 6y ago> People have a right to communicate, if a few platforms have the power to block all communication maybe they should be. Hm.... I don't see how Twitter is preventing anyone from the right to communicate, nor do I sense that Twitter has the power, even if it worked with the next 3 largest social media platforms, to "block all communications." Last I checked, the internet would still exist if Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin shut down.
- HPsquared 6y agoEither they're a public utility or they have control (and thus should have some degree of liability) for what is transmitted/published on their platform. They can't eat their cake and have it too!
- Barrin92 6y agoPlatforms have removed harmful content, for example terrorist propaganda or child pornography with 230 protections intact and governments appeared to welcome it so I think you can actually have your cake and eat it too, or at least you could until you fact checked Republicans I suppose Platforms both enjoy first amendment protection to moderate their platforms as they see fit as well as protection from liability under 230. They are not mutually exclusive, and platforms have been moderating their content for decades. In fact most online communities could not even function if they had no right to moderate. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-not-require-platforms-be-neutral https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no...
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoNice job moving goalposts. Terrorism and child porn are criminal activities. Expressing an opinion , no matter how unsavory, is not Therefore systematically editioralizing of the latter constitutes control which means you own all content on your site ... Including the aforementioned criminal content
- ddoolin 6y agoThey _are_ liable for many things published on their platform. And they are also allowed to moderate content in whatever way they want. I don't see a problem as you are free to go start your own platform and presumably it would be popular if this many people have a problem with the existing censorship. This honestly seems to be the model that Republicans have been pining for all along, they just don't like that they or their supporters are falling victim to its design.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoPredictably you are being downvoted. Yet no one dares to answer this straightforward question. Is twitter a public utility, or are they an editor? They are behaving like an editor. Therefore they should lose their public utility S230 exception. Its as simple as that
- spiderfarmer 6y agoClassic Trump. He does nothing, claims he’s victorious and his fans eat it up.
- kube-system 6y agoI think the obvious answer is limited manpower. It makes logical sense to prioritize fact checking efforts on a tweet viewed by a million people above a tweet viewed by 10 people.
- eiji 6y agoDoes it? Is one "lie" by a public figure worth more than another "lie" repeated a billion times by main-street users? Lets fact check "God exists".
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoPublic figures speak with authority - and like it or not, most of the world’s population has an underdeveloped ability to think critically (it isn’t taught in schools because it “undermines parental authority”, apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/vo26x/texas_gop_we_oppose_the_teaching_of_higher_order/ https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/vo26x/texas_gop_w... ).
- kube-system 6y ago> Lets fact check "God exists". Easy, it's the same answer as the opposite assertion: Undetermined. This statement is not agreed upon and is an ongoing subject of debate among both experts and in popular culture.
- fach 6y agoOne could argue the one lie by a public figure, given a large enough following, can translate into a lie repeated a billion times by main street users. It's certainly less probable when the lie is sourced in the other direction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vkou 6y agoBecause there's a difference between me lying to you, and your government lying to you.
- alexithym 6y agoWell, Trump is the President. On the list of people worth fact checking, he's probably at the top. Also, they are fact checking other people - for example, they've fact checked Chinese politicians tweeting propaganda about COVID starting in the US.
- elpool2 6y agoWell the fact check they added is their own content, so of course they would be liable for it. But it's still constitutionally protected speech.
- jedberg 6y ago> why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone? They fact check everyone who represents more than 10% of their total traffic. It just so happens that only one of those people tweets information that needs fact checking.
- panpanna 6y agoBrazilian president has been "fact checked" multiple times. Same for Venezuelan dito.
- t0mas88 6y agoI'm not sure it's a good thing to be in the "Bolsonaro, Maduro, Trump" list together but they seem to have a lot in common.
- apostacy 6y agoIf I remember correctly, there was never any conclusive proof that voting fraud happened with the insecure Diebold voting machines in 2004.[1] Those machines stored voting tallies on unencrypted compact flash cards, and there were massive other flaws in their security. But those machines were so insecure, that it would be difficult to prove fraud even happened if it had occurred. Twitter chose a the wrong tweet to fact check. They are now asserting that a black-box mail voting system that has never been tried on this scale is secure, and we should just stop asking questions. If I said that I was skeptical of the outcome of the elections that were conducted with voting machines made by Dick Cheney's company, in swing states, running Windows 98, am I going to be fact checked? I'm really amazed at amount of trust people on HN are putting in mail in ballots. Voting by mail can be done securely, but there are major problems with the current proposals. Just because Trump said it doesn't mean it is not true. My understanding is that the current proposals do not meet international requirements of transparency to qualify as truly fair. [1]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/diebolds-political-machine/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/diebolds-politi...
- artificial 6y agoIn a similar vein here's Jerry Nadler discussing paper ballots susceptibility in NY circa 2004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3zxnnJHKu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3zxnnJHKu8
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoBecause fact checking all of their users would be impossible. I'd say fact-checking your top-50 users is a good idea, for statements which are completely and unarguably false beyond all doubt.
- andrewxdiamond 6y agoVisibility is a good metric to use when targeting false information. If an account with 0 followers is sputtering garbage, not much harm is done. But if an account with millions of followers is sputtering garbage, maybe it's more worth the effort. Beyond that, YouTube has been heavily moderating content on covid. They display labels very similar to the ones Twitter is under fire for now. The only fundemental distinction is everybody agrees the virus is a plague.
- cbsks 6y agoThey also added a fact check to a tweet insinuating that the virus originated in the US: https://www.axios.com/twitter-fact-checks-chinese-official-27762aac-153b-4b77-ad63-75826fe04eb3.html https://www.axios.com/twitter-fact-checks-chinese-official-2... Here's the tweet: https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823?s=20 https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823?s=20
- smilebot 6y agoOr at least people with a critical mass of followers.
- angst_ridden 6y agoBecause for lesser mortals, Twitter just bans people who violate their terms of service. The President is "too big to ban," but violates the TOS. This was a "compromise" solution, which obviously is not going to work.
- netsharc 6y agoI've grown to hate Twitter's complicity in... whatever the hell we should call the political world we live in right now, but right now I'm just amused. Because I'd like to think the people who created Twitter or are working there probably have a conscience and Anti-Trump leanings, but they've let him get away so much that they are now part of the scum they probably despise. You know how people can be reserved in the real world but say the weirdest shit on Twitter? Honestly, Trump is such a coward, I think without Twitter he wouldn't have dared spit the venom he's been spitting left and right, because he would've had to go in front of a lectern to be heard instead.
- rsynnott 6y agoFor normal (high profile) people engaging in this sort of thing, they'd just delete their accounts. A while back, presumably due to questions over Trump, they said they weren't going to delete world leader accounts, but they might fact-check harmful lies.
- ardy42 6y ago> devil's advocate: why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone? They're fact checking more than just Trump: https://twitter.com/icecube/status/1265623592764534784 https://twitter.com/icecube/status/1265623592764534784 https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238269193427906560 https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238269193427906560
- ReptileMan 6y agoIt is impossible to fact check a prediction. Fact check "The sun is going to turn red supergiant in 9 days" ...
- HeroOfAges 6y agoThis is the point that most people seem to be missing and this is where Jack Dorsey seemingly made a huge mistake. I don't know if he did it on purpose to force his company to do something he knows should be done, but he doesn't have the will to see it through, or if it was just a really bad decision.
- kube-system 6y agoYes, it is. Mankind's amassed knowledge of physics, chemistry, and astronomy has lots of evidence to demonstrate why that would not happen, and when it probably will. That can be compared to the evidence you have to show for your claim, which is nothing.
- HeroOfAges 6y agoBut that's entirely his point. Facts can be backed up by evidence. As you rightly pointed out, he can provide no evidence as proof of his wild prediction. We can make predictions based on scientific facts, but a prediction itself is not a fact.
- kube-system 6y agoSome predictions are known with enough certainty that they would be very accurately called facts. Example: Fact: The sun will rise at 5:50am in San Francisco tomorrow. False: The sun will rise at 10:00am in San Francisco tomorrow.
- aianus 6y agoIt certainly seems that mail-in voting is more easily corrupted than going in person and showing ID and voting in secret. There are tradeoffs with accessibility, of course, but it seems depressingly easy to sell a mail-in ballot to someone else or to be verifiably coerced by a boss or family member into voting a certain way. All-in-all Trump tweets worse, dangerous lies on a daily basis so it's bizarre they're pushing back now on this.
- jjcon 6y agoThis has been in the works since last summer - it has little to do with the recent twitter spat. Edit: I find it funny someone claiming it was due to fact checking downvotes me because I fact checked them.
- kingnight 6y agoSource?
- jjcon 6y agohttps://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/politics/trump-twitter-social-media-executive-order/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/politics/trump-twitter-social... > consistent with a draft order whose text CNN first reported last summer
- Zecar 6y agoThey didn't fact check him either, they editorialized his public policy dispute.
- _-david-_ 6y agoThis was not because of Twitter fact checking him. Trump had signaled he was looking into social media bias prior to yesterday. From 5 days ago: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump-conservative-bias-social-media-twitter-facebook-google https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump-...
- ww520 6y agoTwitter can fact check him behind door all they want. As long as Twitter does not alter the published content of specific users by adding editorial annotations, they deserve the Section 230 protection. As soon as they modified or editorialized user content, they are a publisher. Media publishing companies don’t have Section 230 protection.