4 ms·

Because Twitter lets through an infinite amount of fake news and garbage, constantly. Clearly their actions with NY Post are politically-motivated.

shadowgovt 6y ago
That's consistent with their past behavior. Remember when the US elected a Twitter troll as President and Twitter modified the TOS to include a "newsworthiness" carve-out so they didn't have to follow their own policies to ban him?
hackinthebochs 6y ago
Not all misinformation can equally be quarantined, and not all misinformation has a time sensitive effect as being near an election. So no, it is not reasonable to expect that all misinformation be treated the same before one can act on a specific instance.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  That would be a good point if Twitter/Facebook had once quarantined so-called misinformation about Trump. As far as I know, that has never happened. Not a single time. It seems fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that their actions were politically-motivated and have been for quite some time.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    What's a good example of this misinformation? Oh, and Trump is a serial liar who has spread really damaging lies via twitter ... numerous times.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      Curious if any downvoters believe the President isn’t a serial liar?
- esja 6y ago
  How did they treat the “suckers and losers” story? What about the (criminally) leaked tax returns? What about the Melania phone call that was leaked by a “friend”? And last time around, how did they handle the claims that were leaked from the Steele dossier? The problem is that this sort of censorship is almost impossible to apply fairly. When your workforce is dominated by one political viewpoint, you are inevitably going to be biased in a way that a “platform” should not be.
intended 6y ago
That argument puts all platforms in an impossible bind. 1) all platforms are acting against misinformation- singularly around the US elections mind you - 2) misinformation will be political, since it will impact one party or the other. 3) making a decision to remove it will therefore be a political decision So to avoid being labeled political, platforms should not remove misinformation? Not sure how that computes. Leaving misinformation up for people to beat with better info, empirically doesn’t work. Social media has proven that at least, COVID and mask wearing is notable but only the most recent illustrative example. So what should platforms do? Or maybe someone can outline a way to depoliticize such decisions?
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- arkh 6y ago
  > So to avoid being labeled political, platforms should not remove misinformation? Well yes. If you want to edit what your user post, you're not a platform anymore but an editor.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    That’s a very slippery slope. Scams and spam are a thing
    - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
      As with everything, intent matters, but in spirit I agree with you. As much as I despise what Twitter did, I've been thinking about it for a couple of days and feel that the best option is a large number of strong Twitter competitors, rather than specific regulation. The slippery slope going the other way (silencing platforms) is just as bad as the one we're on. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. Problem is you run into a physical limit at that point, there's only so many social media platforms we can be on, so creating such competition would be... hard... at this point.

shadowgovt 6y ago

That's consistent with their past behavior. Remember when the US elected a Twitter troll as President and Twitter modified the TOS to include a "newsworthiness" carve-out so they didn't have to follow their own policies to ban him?

hackinthebochs 6y ago

Not all misinformation can equally be quarantined, and not all misinformation has a time sensitive effect as being near an election. So no, it is not reasonable to expect that all misinformation be treated the same before one can act on a specific instance.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
That would be a good point if Twitter/Facebook had once quarantined so-called misinformation about Trump. As far as I know, that has never happened. Not a single time. It seems fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that their actions were politically-motivated and have been for quite some time.
- adamsea 6y ago
  What's a good example of this misinformation? Oh, and Trump is a serial liar who has spread really damaging lies via twitter ... numerous times.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Curious if any downvoters believe the President isn’t a serial liar?
esja 6y ago
How did they treat the “suckers and losers” story? What about the (criminally) leaked tax returns? What about the Melania phone call that was leaked by a “friend”? And last time around, how did they handle the claims that were leaked from the Steele dossier? The problem is that this sort of censorship is almost impossible to apply fairly. When your workforce is dominated by one political viewpoint, you are inevitably going to be biased in a way that a “platform” should not be.

intended 6y ago

That argument puts all platforms in an impossible bind. 1) all platforms are acting against misinformation- singularly around the US elections mind you - 2) misinformation will be political, since it will impact one party or the other. 3) making a decision to remove it will therefore be a political decision So to avoid being labeled political, platforms should not remove misinformation? Not sure how that computes. Leaving misinformation up for people to beat with better info, empirically doesn’t work. Social media has proven that at least, COVID and mask wearing is notable but only the most recent illustrative example. So what should platforms do? Or maybe someone can outline a way to depoliticize such decisions?

deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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arkh 6y ago
> So to avoid being labeled political, platforms should not remove misinformation? Well yes. If you want to edit what your user post, you're not a platform anymore but an editor.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  That’s a very slippery slope. Scams and spam are a thing
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    As with everything, intent matters, but in spirit I agree with you. As much as I despise what Twitter did, I've been thinking about it for a couple of days and feel that the best option is a large number of strong Twitter competitors, rather than specific regulation. The slippery slope going the other way (silencing platforms) is just as bad as the one we're on. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. Problem is you run into a physical limit at that point, there's only so many social media platforms we can be on, so creating such competition would be... hard... at this point.