5 ms·

It's not just Twitter, it's also Facebook. (I believe Facebook was actually the first to take action.) What if Google does it too? In the past few years, we've

by _qulr 6y ago

It's not just Twitter, it's also Facebook. (I believe Facebook was actually the first to take action.) What if Google does it too? In the past few years, we've seen these big tech companies operate in a manner that seems collusive. They follow each other's cues. One company is the first to censor, and then the other companies follow very quickly with the exact same censorship. (The quick collective action tends to dilute the criticism against any single one of those companies.) It's not just one company doing what it wants, it's all the major players doing the same form of censorship.

riffic 6y ago
I don't really care about Twitter or Facebook to be honest. It's not the only game in town. I'd be more concerned if I bought server hosting from AWS, stood up a WordPress blog about my thoughts on capitalism, socialism, sports, and dogs, and Amazon decides to suspend my account due to my writings.
- free_rms 6y ago
  You should have done that instead of posting this comment on hacker news, then. Entry 1, "a reply to lapcatsoftware". Why use social media?
  - riffic 6y ago
    While referring to a hypothetical blog, you wrote: >You should have done that In a way, the New York Post can do exactly this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24781812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24781812 These media corporations really should be paying attention to the changing landscape of open web standards. Their entanglement with corporate social platforms for eyeballs will be their own undoing.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      I'd love to see open standards proliferate for that reason. In our current world, they haven't, and you're responding here on a corporate social platform. Because that's where the people are. What if it were your ox being gored?
- spoopyskelly 6y ago
  They will do that if your postings are wrongthink enough. And your registrar will fuck your domain too. See: stormer, 8chan, etc.
  - riffic 6y ago
    you know what, that's absolutely true. But you have a better chance of remaining online with your wrongthink than by remaining on a platform such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. See: stormer, 8chan, etc.
- Solvitieg 6y ago
  Even if you opt-out from Twitter, etc. Your political leaders and journalists are tuned in. Thus your life is still affected.
  - riffic 6y ago
    that's precisely why I think journalists and the public sector ought to put their money where their mouth is. Open web standards can be adopted today with the effect of turning any of these groups into their own Twitter. That particular genie is impossible to push back into its own bottle. They had better catch up or get left behind. The audience will follow. Trust me, I know audiences move around. They've moved around so many times in recent history and since the conception of the Internet.
    - _jal 6y ago
      Never going to happen. Journalists and politicians couldn't care less about open web standards. They care about where the audience is. Many pols actually prefer single points of, ah, influence, so they're going to fight you.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Even if you stop subscribing to (National Review|Atlantic|NYT|Reason|New Yorker|...) your political leaders and journalists are tuned in. Thus your life is still affected. Ergo, we should .... ???
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      We should make sure that the media landscape contains a wide range of political thought, including ideas that you or I might individually find wrong-headed and offensive. That's how we ended up with the Fairness Doctrine from the 50s to the 80s, when broadcast media was monopolized to a comparable degree as social media today.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
- Jach 6y ago
  Another reply more or less had the same response I had, which is that it's entirely possible for you to start blogging about certain topics (some could be approached from a capitalism/socialism discussion starting point, even) and be shut down by AWS. I'd like to add a bit more though. Deplatforming is commonplace, by all parties with a platform, and its causes aren't just written comments but also artwork and legal commercial goods. More than the examples the other comment noted, though, I prefer the depressing/amusing history of Gab as they stepped on just about every single centralized service rake and had it hit them in the face for things some of its user base typed. Going through its wiki history page, I'm even seeing some I missed. Here's a list: Apple (iOS app store), Google (play store), Twitter (API), Asia Registry (domain name), Microsoft (Azure), Stripe, PayPal, GoDaddy, Medium, Joyent (hosting), Backblaze, Coinbase, Square, most Mastodon instances (federation won't necessarily save you) and popular Mastodon mobile apps, Mozilla (Firefox addon), Google again (Chrome addon), Visa. At the end of the day, yes, anyone can spin up Tor or I2P or Freenet or whatever to talk unhindered, they can participate in commerce with decentralized crypto-coins. And despite the struggles one can still find Gab/4chan/the others on the clearnet and participate in the subset of things that got them in trouble for hosting. It only takes a very moderate amount of active will, and you'll have all you want. That it's not exposed passively to people on other platforms is probably no great loss. Still I think it's worth caring a bit about these things as indicators of changes in culture and, following culture, law, even if you like me don't particularly care much if you're reduced to keeping a private journal because no one will host any of your thoughts because of a subset of your thoughts at some point in time.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    I will add one more thing, although not directly related to your comment about deplatforming being commonplace. In banking, we call it derisking ( closing customer's account due to <reason> ).
- mapgrep 6y ago
  There’s already been a test case. Wikileaks. Former AWS customer, they were kicked off for releasing the state department cables.
  - anonymousiam 6y ago
    That was a completely different situation. The Wikileaks cables contain marked classified government information that is still considered classified by the US government. (I will not debate whether or not the basis for their classification is valid.) AWS provides service to the USG, and having unsecured classified anywhere on their servers likely violates the terms of service (between the USG and AWS). The leaked emails from Hunter Biden's computer were not classified. (Well, at least they weren't marked as classified by a USG entity.) The computer was not "hacked" to obtain the emails either. It was left unclaimed in a computer service shop.
tzs 6y ago
> In the past few years, we've seen these big tech companies operate in a manner that seems collusive. They follow each other's cues. One company is the first to censor, and then the other companies follow very quickly with the exact same censorship. Or they are using similar criteria to decide what is allowed, and so independently arrive at the same decision when the same thing is posted to them all.
- _qulr 6y ago
  "Twitter will ban posts that deny the Holocaust, a company spokesperson confirmed today. The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes two days after Facebook implemented the same policy." https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/14/21516468/twitter-holocaust-denial-banned-facebook-policy https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/14/21516468/twitter-holocau... The Holocaust happened 75 years ago. Twitter's decision came 2 days after Facebook's. Q.E.D.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Sounds like competitor A does something and competitor B decides to keep up, or both of them responded to market conditions. If airline A decides to offer free checked bags, and then a couple days later airline B does the same thing, would you think they're colluding?
    - _qulr 6y ago
      I was responding to "Or they are using similar criteria to decide what is allowed, and so independently arrive at the same decision when the same thing is posted to them all." If airline A decides to offer free checked bags, and then a couple days later airline B does the same thing, I would not think they arrived independently at the same decision. Whether they're "colluding" is of course controversial, but there should be no controversy that B did it because A did it. Is there a "market for censorship"? Perhaps there is. That would be an interesting discussion. But it's not interesting to entertain the idea that Facebook and Twitter independently and totally coincidentally decided to ban Holocaust deniers within days of each other.
geofft 6y ago
If they're really being collusive, then you investigate them for violations of antitrust law or otherwise figure out what they're doing that's breaking the free market, and you fix it. Alternatively, if every company in a free market seems to believe that X is objectionable, then X is considered objectionable by all of society, and it's not the place of the government to override that. If Facebook bans 419 scams, and Twitter bans 419 scams, and Reddit bans 419 scams, and Craigslist bans 419 scams, a fake Nigerian prince shouldn't be able to lobby Congress for a Constitutional right to force these private companies to host his content. They're allowed to be "collusive" in establishing shared, society-wide norms - that's how society works. (Or we could conclude that we cannot make the free market so fair as to fairly represent all of society, but as far as the Overton window in the US is concerned, that's an absurdum, and so one of our propositions must be wrong.)
- _qulr 6y ago
  This is not the scenario described. The scenario is that all of these web sites allow 419 scams for years, and then all of the sudden in the same week they all decide to ban 419 scams. That would be really strange, don't you think?

by _qulr 6y ago

riffic 6y ago

I don't really care about Twitter or Facebook to be honest. It's not the only game in town. I'd be more concerned if I bought server hosting from AWS, stood up a WordPress blog about my thoughts on capitalism, socialism, sports, and dogs, and Amazon decides to suspend my account due to my writings.

free_rms 6y ago
You should have done that instead of posting this comment on hacker news, then. Entry 1, "a reply to lapcatsoftware". Why use social media?
- riffic 6y ago
  While referring to a hypothetical blog, you wrote: >You should have done that In a way, the New York Post can do exactly this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24781812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24781812 These media corporations really should be paying attention to the changing landscape of open web standards. Their entanglement with corporate social platforms for eyeballs will be their own undoing.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    I'd love to see open standards proliferate for that reason. In our current world, they haven't, and you're responding here on a corporate social platform. Because that's where the people are. What if it were your ox being gored?
spoopyskelly 6y ago
They will do that if your postings are wrongthink enough. And your registrar will fuck your domain too. See: stormer, 8chan, etc.
- riffic 6y ago
  you know what, that's absolutely true. But you have a better chance of remaining online with your wrongthink than by remaining on a platform such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. See: stormer, 8chan, etc.
Solvitieg 6y ago
Even if you opt-out from Twitter, etc. Your political leaders and journalists are tuned in. Thus your life is still affected.
- riffic 6y ago
  that's precisely why I think journalists and the public sector ought to put their money where their mouth is. Open web standards can be adopted today with the effect of turning any of these groups into their own Twitter. That particular genie is impossible to push back into its own bottle. They had better catch up or get left behind. The audience will follow. Trust me, I know audiences move around. They've moved around so many times in recent history and since the conception of the Internet.
  - _jal 6y ago
    Never going to happen. Journalists and politicians couldn't care less about open web standards. They care about where the audience is. Many pols actually prefer single points of, ah, influence, so they're going to fight you.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Even if you stop subscribing to (National Review|Atlantic|NYT|Reason|New Yorker|...) your political leaders and journalists are tuned in. Thus your life is still affected. Ergo, we should .... ???
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    We should make sure that the media landscape contains a wide range of political thought, including ideas that you or I might individually find wrong-headed and offensive. That's how we ended up with the Fairness Doctrine from the 50s to the 80s, when broadcast media was monopolized to a comparable degree as social media today.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Jach 6y ago
Another reply more or less had the same response I had, which is that it's entirely possible for you to start blogging about certain topics (some could be approached from a capitalism/socialism discussion starting point, even) and be shut down by AWS. I'd like to add a bit more though. Deplatforming is commonplace, by all parties with a platform, and its causes aren't just written comments but also artwork and legal commercial goods. More than the examples the other comment noted, though, I prefer the depressing/amusing history of Gab as they stepped on just about every single centralized service rake and had it hit them in the face for things some of its user base typed. Going through its wiki history page, I'm even seeing some I missed. Here's a list: Apple (iOS app store), Google (play store), Twitter (API), Asia Registry (domain name), Microsoft (Azure), Stripe, PayPal, GoDaddy, Medium, Joyent (hosting), Backblaze, Coinbase, Square, most Mastodon instances (federation won't necessarily save you) and popular Mastodon mobile apps, Mozilla (Firefox addon), Google again (Chrome addon), Visa. At the end of the day, yes, anyone can spin up Tor or I2P or Freenet or whatever to talk unhindered, they can participate in commerce with decentralized crypto-coins. And despite the struggles one can still find Gab/4chan/the others on the clearnet and participate in the subset of things that got them in trouble for hosting. It only takes a very moderate amount of active will, and you'll have all you want. That it's not exposed passively to people on other platforms is probably no great loss. Still I think it's worth caring a bit about these things as indicators of changes in culture and, following culture, law, even if you like me don't particularly care much if you're reduced to keeping a private journal because no one will host any of your thoughts because of a subset of your thoughts at some point in time.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  I will add one more thing, although not directly related to your comment about deplatforming being commonplace. In banking, we call it derisking ( closing customer's account due to <reason> ).
mapgrep 6y ago
There’s already been a test case. Wikileaks. Former AWS customer, they were kicked off for releasing the state department cables.
- anonymousiam 6y ago
  That was a completely different situation. The Wikileaks cables contain marked classified government information that is still considered classified by the US government. (I will not debate whether or not the basis for their classification is valid.) AWS provides service to the USG, and having unsecured classified anywhere on their servers likely violates the terms of service (between the USG and AWS). The leaked emails from Hunter Biden's computer were not classified. (Well, at least they weren't marked as classified by a USG entity.) The computer was not "hacked" to obtain the emails either. It was left unclaimed in a computer service shop.

tzs 6y ago

> In the past few years, we've seen these big tech companies operate in a manner that seems collusive. They follow each other's cues. One company is the first to censor, and then the other companies follow very quickly with the exact same censorship. Or they are using similar criteria to decide what is allowed, and so independently arrive at the same decision when the same thing is posted to them all.

_qulr 6y ago
"Twitter will ban posts that deny the Holocaust, a company spokesperson confirmed today. The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes two days after Facebook implemented the same policy." https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/14/21516468/twitter-holocaust-denial-banned-facebook-policy https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/14/21516468/twitter-holocau... The Holocaust happened 75 years ago. Twitter's decision came 2 days after Facebook's. Q.E.D.
- geofft 6y ago
  Sounds like competitor A does something and competitor B decides to keep up, or both of them responded to market conditions. If airline A decides to offer free checked bags, and then a couple days later airline B does the same thing, would you think they're colluding?
  - _qulr 6y ago
    I was responding to "Or they are using similar criteria to decide what is allowed, and so independently arrive at the same decision when the same thing is posted to them all." If airline A decides to offer free checked bags, and then a couple days later airline B does the same thing, I would not think they arrived independently at the same decision. Whether they're "colluding" is of course controversial, but there should be no controversy that B did it because A did it. Is there a "market for censorship"? Perhaps there is. That would be an interesting discussion. But it's not interesting to entertain the idea that Facebook and Twitter independently and totally coincidentally decided to ban Holocaust deniers within days of each other.

geofft 6y ago

If they're really being collusive, then you investigate them for violations of antitrust law or otherwise figure out what they're doing that's breaking the free market, and you fix it. Alternatively, if every company in a free market seems to believe that X is objectionable, then X is considered objectionable by all of society, and it's not the place of the government to override that. If Facebook bans 419 scams, and Twitter bans 419 scams, and Reddit bans 419 scams, and Craigslist bans 419 scams, a fake Nigerian prince shouldn't be able to lobby Congress for a Constitutional right to force these private companies to host his content. They're allowed to be "collusive" in establishing shared, society-wide norms - that's how society works. (Or we could conclude that we cannot make the free market so fair as to fairly represent all of society, but as far as the Overton window in the US is concerned, that's an absurdum, and so one of our propositions must be wrong.)

_qulr 6y ago
This is not the scenario described. The scenario is that all of these web sites allow 419 scams for years, and then all of the sudden in the same week they all decide to ban 419 scams. That would be really strange, don't you think?