4 ms·

> Facebook and Twitter are not. Facebook and Twitter are also claiming they're not subject to the same rules as traditional broadcast outlets or newspapers. B

> Facebook and Twitter are not. Facebook and Twitter are also claiming they're not subject to the same rules as traditional broadcast outlets or newspapers. Broadcast media outlets are not monopolies either, and they can't wantonly censor election speech like this by law. If CBS was to decide that all their outlets were going to cover only one candidate's speeches, they would be electioneering, and be afoul of the law. CBS is not even as close to a monopoly as Facebook or Twitter is. We have a case here were two providers took it upon themselves to block references to a newspaper article, relating very directly to speech which would need equal access under any other medium.

patagurbon 6y ago
They're not doing that though. They blocked an article which contained PII, and info derived from a hack (by the articles own admissions), at least for Twitter I believe that was just policy. I think they should've just flagged it. But I imagine you and many others would've had the same problem there. More importantly, you just know any new interpretation will be broad as well? What is your proposed replacement?
tynpeddler 6y ago
> Broadcast media outlets are not monopolies either, and they can't wantonly censor election speech like this by law. You should clarify your argument here. News media can "censor" election speech by simply not covering it. In addition, if a speaker makes factual errors, the news station is under no obligation to refrain from commenting on those errors, nor are they prevented from providing correction. Most importantly, no newspaper is required to cover the same stories as another newspaper. CNN for example, is not required to cover the the particular story you're referencing. Even with the equal-time rule, media outlets have broad discretion about how they choose to cover candidates. For example, Trump benefited enormously in 2016 from an incredibly lopsided distribution of coverage. And all of this ignores that the particular story you seem to be referring to has serious newsworthiness issues.
abernard1 6y ago
> You should clarify your argument here. News media can "censor" election speech by simply not covering it. They, actually, legally cannot if they are public broadcast and not cable [1]. In this case, they blocked a campaign trying to publish on the platforms. It's as close of an analog as possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  If a candidate swore during an interview, the network would be within their rights to prevent that candidate from speaking on the network until they promised to not violate network policies. "equivalent opportunity" does not mean that they are free to do anything, as long as the rules that twitter has are enforced evenly, it's fine. We just haven't seen the BidenForPresident twitter account tweet Barron's texts with his girlfriend.
  - abernard1 6y ago
    > We just haven't seen the BidenForPresident twitter account tweet Barron's texts with his girlfriend. If those tweets said that daddy met with a foreign government and got him a job, would Twitter take it down?
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      What was the point of asking this question? It's (firstly) a mischaracterization of what happened, and secondly, when I say "yes", you're going to either not respond, or say "yeah right" and right off my response as misinformed or propaganda. There's no point in having the discussion if you assume your conclusions.
      - abernard1 6y ago
        The emails in question have an eminently unqualified son of the Vice President of the United States making $50K a month from a Ukranian energy company. And that company thanking him for meeting with his father. If Donald Trump Jr. did this exact thing and his father was the person in the email, would he get a Twitter removal? Would there have been an army of Twitter moderators in the wings to protect his privacy? Would they ban the Biden campaign from even mentioning the article existed? And yes, you know what I'm going to say. "Yeah right." Because the reasons Twitter gave for the takedown happened quite a while afterwards and they had to change their policy to justify it. Currently, acquired knowledge of Trump's taxes is PII, and it's illegal. That hasn't stopped Twitter from doing absolutely nothing about it, along with hundreds of other high-profile examples over the years.

patagurbon 6y ago

They're not doing that though. They blocked an article which contained PII, and info derived from a hack (by the articles own admissions), at least for Twitter I believe that was just policy. I think they should've just flagged it. But I imagine you and many others would've had the same problem there. More importantly, you just know any new interpretation will be broad as well? What is your proposed replacement?

tynpeddler 6y ago

> Broadcast media outlets are not monopolies either, and they can't wantonly censor election speech like this by law. You should clarify your argument here. News media can "censor" election speech by simply not covering it. In addition, if a speaker makes factual errors, the news station is under no obligation to refrain from commenting on those errors, nor are they prevented from providing correction. Most importantly, no newspaper is required to cover the same stories as another newspaper. CNN for example, is not required to cover the the particular story you're referencing. Even with the equal-time rule, media outlets have broad discretion about how they choose to cover candidates. For example, Trump benefited enormously in 2016 from an incredibly lopsided distribution of coverage. And all of this ignores that the particular story you seem to be referring to has serious newsworthiness issues.

abernard1 6y ago

> You should clarify your argument here. News media can "censor" election speech by simply not covering it. They, actually, legally cannot if they are public broadcast and not cable [1]. In this case, they blocked a campaign trying to publish on the platforms. It's as close of an analog as possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule

joshuamorton 6y ago
If a candidate swore during an interview, the network would be within their rights to prevent that candidate from speaking on the network until they promised to not violate network policies. "equivalent opportunity" does not mean that they are free to do anything, as long as the rules that twitter has are enforced evenly, it's fine. We just haven't seen the BidenForPresident twitter account tweet Barron's texts with his girlfriend.
- abernard1 6y ago
  > We just haven't seen the BidenForPresident twitter account tweet Barron's texts with his girlfriend. If those tweets said that daddy met with a foreign government and got him a job, would Twitter take it down?
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    What was the point of asking this question? It's (firstly) a mischaracterization of what happened, and secondly, when I say "yes", you're going to either not respond, or say "yeah right" and right off my response as misinformed or propaganda. There's no point in having the discussion if you assume your conclusions.
    - abernard1 6y ago
      The emails in question have an eminently unqualified son of the Vice President of the United States making $50K a month from a Ukranian energy company. And that company thanking him for meeting with his father. If Donald Trump Jr. did this exact thing and his father was the person in the email, would he get a Twitter removal? Would there have been an army of Twitter moderators in the wings to protect his privacy? Would they ban the Biden campaign from even mentioning the article existed? And yes, you know what I'm going to say. "Yeah right." Because the reasons Twitter gave for the takedown happened quite a while afterwards and they had to change their policy to justify it. Currently, acquired knowledge of Trump's taxes is PII, and it's illegal. That hasn't stopped Twitter from doing absolutely nothing about it, along with hundreds of other high-profile examples over the years.