4 ms·

Television. Online and paper news. Literally beaming messages directly to the cellphones of every American.

by baddox 6y ago

ALittleLight 6y ago
He can and does use television now. Television takes longer to setup and doesn't reach the same people. You can't go on TV to share a one sentence thought but you can easily do that on Twitter. So long as you think there's at least one person who he reaches by social media that he wouldn't reach with traditional media, it seems you are obligated to conclude that banning him from social media would reduce his reach, or in other words, trouble him getting his message out. I'm sure he could still easily get huge messages out, but would have much more trouble getting out minor messages of the kind he uses Twitter for.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  The President of the United States could set up a Mastodon or Pleroma instance or what-have-you. It's not like Twitter and Facebook are the only entities with the ability to put short messages on the Internet. And yes, this would reduce his reach. So would a newspaper or TV channel not publishing something he said, and yet we'd be incredibly weirded out if newspapers and TV channels were required to publish every mundane thing the President sends their way.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Twitter and Facebook are clearly not like newspapers though. So long as you agree that it would reduce his reach, you agree with the point I've made here.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      It would reduce his reach but it would not prevent him from writing these messages and publishing them, or interested people from finding them (pretty much everyone would know they can follow @donaldtrump@whitehouse.gov from one of the free speech Mastodon instances or whatever within a day), so I don't really see what the problem is. It's just that he wouldn't be promoted by Twitter.
- kthxbye123 6y ago
  Who the fuck cares?
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  No one is claiming that it wouldn’t reduce his reach, just that a “small group of Silicon Valley engineers” cannot unilaterally “control and censor” his communication. He would still be perfectly able to have his message heard by literally any citizen who wanted to hear it — in fact, he is the US least susceptible to censorship.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    The claim I'm responding to asks if the President would have trouble getting a message out, and obviously the answer is yes for some types of messages.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    But this is a very dangerous argument, because those same tech companies also control web browsers, operating systems and even DNS hierarchies. You're assuming that the convention of neutrality in these programs would be upheld, but it's just a convention and iOS already violated it a long time ago in the mobile space. It was after all, once a convention that tech platforms didn't attempt to decide the correctness of what people said, on the grounds that they were just platforms and not publishers. Additionally the issue here isn't specific to some vague category of tech companies. This is happening because of activist employees like those at Facebook. They can and do crop up anywhere, they can and do impose very nasty demands. It's not merely about de-platforming their opponents, but also forcibly platforming their allies. For example, Kickstarter's employees unionised in order to force Kickstarter to keep supporting a fundraising project that was openly advocating violence against conservatives. This broke all the rules of the site, which is why it got taken down, but such details didn't matter to Kickstarter's activist workforce - who via unionisation were successful in their goal of converting Kickstarter into a fundraising platform for leftist violence. There's a clear pattern in which hard left employees seek to both erase their enemies and also make their allies immune to the usual rules. This behaviour is tribalistic and destructive. Judging from history it ends in total cultural cold war, and possibly even hot war. At some point people have to say enough is enough, and that not every company has to get into every fight because a few employees walked out. I guess tech executives are hamstrung by Californian law and can't simply fire employees who don't turn up to work. This is just one more factor making Silicon Valley unattractive as a place to set up new businesses: set up shop in California and before you know it, you'll have ended up with some hyper-aggressive leftist employees trying to take over your company.
- baddox 6y ago
  I’m okay with a nominal reduction in anyone’s reach.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I don't agree with "nominal". The President has reached huge numbers with his tweets and it's not clear how he would've reached the same numbers with same frequency otherwise. The problem here is in letting a handful of social media companies have an outsized impact in our democracy. That's not worth booting Trump off Twitter.

Television. Online and paper news. Literally beaming messages directly to the cellphones of every American.

by baddox 6y ago

Television. Online and paper news. Literally beaming messages directly to the cellphones of every American.

He can and does use television now. Television takes longer to setup and doesn't reach the same people. You can't go on TV to share a one sentence thought but you can easily do that on Twitter. So long as you think there's at least one person who he reaches by social media that he wouldn't reach with traditional media, it seems you are obligated to conclude that banning him from social media would reduce his reach, or in other words, trouble him getting his message out. I'm sure he could still easily get huge messages out, but would have much more trouble getting out minor messages of the kind he uses Twitter for.

vertex-four 6y ago
The President of the United States could set up a Mastodon or Pleroma instance or what-have-you. It's not like Twitter and Facebook are the only entities with the ability to put short messages on the Internet. And yes, this would reduce his reach. So would a newspaper or TV channel not publishing something he said, and yet we'd be incredibly weirded out if newspapers and TV channels were required to publish every mundane thing the President sends their way.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Twitter and Facebook are clearly not like newspapers though. So long as you agree that it would reduce his reach, you agree with the point I've made here.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    It would reduce his reach but it would not prevent him from writing these messages and publishing them, or interested people from finding them (pretty much everyone would know they can follow @donaldtrump@whitehouse.gov from one of the free speech Mastodon instances or whatever within a day), so I don't really see what the problem is. It's just that he wouldn't be promoted by Twitter.
kthxbye123 6y ago
Who the fuck cares?
jakelazaroff 6y ago
No one is claiming that it wouldn’t reduce his reach, just that a “small group of Silicon Valley engineers” cannot unilaterally “control and censor” his communication. He would still be perfectly able to have his message heard by literally any citizen who wanted to hear it — in fact, he is the US least susceptible to censorship.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  The claim I'm responding to asks if the President would have trouble getting a message out, and obviously the answer is yes for some types of messages.
- thu2111 6y ago
  But this is a very dangerous argument, because those same tech companies also control web browsers, operating systems and even DNS hierarchies. You're assuming that the convention of neutrality in these programs would be upheld, but it's just a convention and iOS already violated it a long time ago in the mobile space. It was after all, once a convention that tech platforms didn't attempt to decide the correctness of what people said, on the grounds that they were just platforms and not publishers. Additionally the issue here isn't specific to some vague category of tech companies. This is happening because of activist employees like those at Facebook. They can and do crop up anywhere, they can and do impose very nasty demands. It's not merely about de-platforming their opponents, but also forcibly platforming their allies. For example, Kickstarter's employees unionised in order to force Kickstarter to keep supporting a fundraising project that was openly advocating violence against conservatives. This broke all the rules of the site, which is why it got taken down, but such details didn't matter to Kickstarter's activist workforce - who via unionisation were successful in their goal of converting Kickstarter into a fundraising platform for leftist violence. There's a clear pattern in which hard left employees seek to both erase their enemies and also make their allies immune to the usual rules. This behaviour is tribalistic and destructive. Judging from history it ends in total cultural cold war, and possibly even hot war. At some point people have to say enough is enough, and that not every company has to get into every fight because a few employees walked out. I guess tech executives are hamstrung by Californian law and can't simply fire employees who don't turn up to work. This is just one more factor making Silicon Valley unattractive as a place to set up new businesses: set up shop in California and before you know it, you'll have ended up with some hyper-aggressive leftist employees trying to take over your company.
baddox 6y ago
I’m okay with a nominal reduction in anyone’s reach.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I don't agree with "nominal". The President has reached huge numbers with his tweets and it's not clear how he would've reached the same numbers with same frequency otherwise. The problem here is in letting a handful of social media companies have an outsized impact in our democracy. That's not worth booting Trump off Twitter.