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I am always impressed when people make these kinds of absolute statements about the primacy of private property rights. Now, let's consider: * Alice should be

by nanis 6y ago

I am always impressed when people make these kinds of absolute statements about the primacy of private property rights. Now, let's consider: * Alice should be able to choose without restriction to whom she is going to rent * Bob should be able to choose without restriction who's allowed to play golf at his club * Carlos should be able to choose without restriction to whom his bank is going to lend money etc. I am not saying I agree with those statements. I am saying when you say "Twitter is a private company. They can choose without restriction who's allowed to use their platform," you are not saying anything substantively different than those statements. In a universe where the ability to put your speech in front of other people depends on being able to post it online in a place where they might be able to see, there are trade-offs involved that seem to be conveniently shoved aside when it is about news you do not like. I prefer the cacophonous chaos of everyone being able to tell me about stuff they deem important. One step further, I prefer to live a society that can learn to live with that without falling apart.

Spooky23 6y ago
Your analogy is broken. Clever to try to compare Twitter to discrimination though. In all of the situations, the principals have broad discretion to make choices about their property. Alice can turn away people with credit problems. Bob can require a specific handicap to play. Carlos can choose to not loan money to high risk professions. They cannot say “no black people at my apartment complex”, “no golf if you are Jewish” or “no loan if you’re gay”. You may prefer chaos, most people do not.
- tomp 6y ago
  Agreed, these aren’t good analogies. Twitter and Facebook are getting closer to: the post not delivering your mail, or the power company turning off your electricity despite paying your bill, or the phone company cutting you off after you say the wrong thing...
- abnry 6y ago
  But isn't the sort of sneaky racism exactly what people claim is such a problem today? There's not overt claim of inferiority or an explicit denial of opportunity, but yet there is still "systemic racism". The analogy is that Twitter can't censor stories that benefit republicans, but if the "reasons" for censoring always seem to work against republicans and are applied inconsistently, then perhaps things aren't as they seem.
  - objectivetruth 6y ago
    Republicans aren't a "race" and political preference isn't a "protected class" in the US (with a couple minor exceptions).
    - abnry 6y ago
      It is an analogy, and it's already established we aren't discussing law. The question is the principles, causes, and reasons at play and how they relate to other principles, causes, and reasons.
    - nanis 6y ago
      I think it would be helpful to forget about the "Republicans" and think about other people who might hold other opinions which may not be shared by the owners of one of the dominant platforms for announcing your views. No one is saying that New York Times has to publish the story. However, if someone wants to publish a story and announce it to their followers on a platform, citizens need to think long and hard before agreeing to "whatever the shareholders want goes." The fact that they do not have a product they sell to the recipients of information at a positive price makes it harder for competitive alternatives to gain any traction at all. So, the fact that once a platform like this achieves a certain reach it is unlikely to be effectively challenged means we need to think hard about how much power we want them to have in terms of shaping the conversation: Both conversation we like and conversation we do not like ... It is not sufficient to think in terms of your affinity to the dominant forces. You have to think about what kind of society you want to be in when you are in the minority.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    It can be, and the line may move. Sometimes “systematic racism” or similar arguments are thrown about without context, or with a local context that doesn’t make sense to others. The republicans have a serious problem, and it isn’t Twitter. Blaming media outlets for not paying attention to things is a well worn if dubious path. It’s hard to give credence to with this story given the provenance of the information and obvious problems.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  One person’s chaos is another’s vitality. Every human on earth, by living the natural world, has chosen chaos/vitality at some level. We also “moderate” that entropy in lots of convenient and comforting ways. Cybernature is a new experience. As a species, we are working out what level of moderation we would like. Explorers tends to be rough-and-ready sorts, and so veer towards the vitality side of things. They know how to make the chaos work for them. For good and/or evil. Since there isn’t the downside of “instadeath” of the physical world, more risk-taking, and thus more chaos, may be justified. Settlers tend to like fences, highways, channel markings, flight corridors...structure. There are usually eventually more settlers in any area, so their view prevails in the long run. (You can be an explorer in one area and a settler in another...it’s not some permanent psychological feature. You can demand political content freedom from de facto pseudocarrier monopolies while being happy with a locked-down OS for self-driving cars.) In computing, the barrier to entry for exploration is so low and it is so new (in the long view) that the percentage of settlers is pretty low, hence the cultural bias toward freedom (including content) rather than control in these forums. [Personally, I trust the American people to curate their own content. I expect the educational system to educate the citizenry to be skilled enough in critical thinking to be able to curate the content presented. But I expect the marketplace of ideas to police itself against systematic biases and inaccuracies, either with effective editing of its own content and/or in actively and effectively supporting a “loyal opposition” to its views. Twitter seems to be doing neither, because it’s much closer to being a de facto common carrier monopoly than a media channel. Common carrier monopolies had been accepted and successful for a hundred years in the US, but only with heavy Federal regulation. The hip, cool alternative: break them up. Great truths from Gen X, the generation to which you can’t easily mass-market.]
timoth3y 6y ago
> I am saying when you say "Twitter is a private company. They can choose without restriction who's allowed to use their platform," That's a straw man. I never said anything like what you are pretending I said. They obviously could not ban users on the basis of race or religion or a number of other criteria. But that's not really what's under discussion. The question is should Twitter (or other platforms) lose their right to moderate content when they become successful? I don't think they should.
scoot_718 6y ago
Then fuck off to 4chan

by nanis 6y ago

Spooky23 6y ago

Your analogy is broken. Clever to try to compare Twitter to discrimination though. In all of the situations, the principals have broad discretion to make choices about their property. Alice can turn away people with credit problems. Bob can require a specific handicap to play. Carlos can choose to not loan money to high risk professions. They cannot say “no black people at my apartment complex”, “no golf if you are Jewish” or “no loan if you’re gay”. You may prefer chaos, most people do not.

tomp 6y ago
Agreed, these aren’t good analogies. Twitter and Facebook are getting closer to: the post not delivering your mail, or the power company turning off your electricity despite paying your bill, or the phone company cutting you off after you say the wrong thing...
abnry 6y ago
But isn't the sort of sneaky racism exactly what people claim is such a problem today? There's not overt claim of inferiority or an explicit denial of opportunity, but yet there is still "systemic racism". The analogy is that Twitter can't censor stories that benefit republicans, but if the "reasons" for censoring always seem to work against republicans and are applied inconsistently, then perhaps things aren't as they seem.
- objectivetruth 6y ago
  Republicans aren't a "race" and political preference isn't a "protected class" in the US (with a couple minor exceptions).
  - abnry 6y ago
    It is an analogy, and it's already established we aren't discussing law. The question is the principles, causes, and reasons at play and how they relate to other principles, causes, and reasons.
  - nanis 6y ago
    I think it would be helpful to forget about the "Republicans" and think about other people who might hold other opinions which may not be shared by the owners of one of the dominant platforms for announcing your views. No one is saying that New York Times has to publish the story. However, if someone wants to publish a story and announce it to their followers on a platform, citizens need to think long and hard before agreeing to "whatever the shareholders want goes." The fact that they do not have a product they sell to the recipients of information at a positive price makes it harder for competitive alternatives to gain any traction at all. So, the fact that once a platform like this achieves a certain reach it is unlikely to be effectively challenged means we need to think hard about how much power we want them to have in terms of shaping the conversation: Both conversation we like and conversation we do not like ... It is not sufficient to think in terms of your affinity to the dominant forces. You have to think about what kind of society you want to be in when you are in the minority.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  It can be, and the line may move. Sometimes “systematic racism” or similar arguments are thrown about without context, or with a local context that doesn’t make sense to others. The republicans have a serious problem, and it isn’t Twitter. Blaming media outlets for not paying attention to things is a well worn if dubious path. It’s hard to give credence to with this story given the provenance of the information and obvious problems.
onecommentman 6y ago
One person’s chaos is another’s vitality. Every human on earth, by living the natural world, has chosen chaos/vitality at some level. We also “moderate” that entropy in lots of convenient and comforting ways. Cybernature is a new experience. As a species, we are working out what level of moderation we would like. Explorers tends to be rough-and-ready sorts, and so veer towards the vitality side of things. They know how to make the chaos work for them. For good and/or evil. Since there isn’t the downside of “instadeath” of the physical world, more risk-taking, and thus more chaos, may be justified. Settlers tend to like fences, highways, channel markings, flight corridors...structure. There are usually eventually more settlers in any area, so their view prevails in the long run. (You can be an explorer in one area and a settler in another...it’s not some permanent psychological feature. You can demand political content freedom from de facto pseudocarrier monopolies while being happy with a locked-down OS for self-driving cars.) In computing, the barrier to entry for exploration is so low and it is so new (in the long view) that the percentage of settlers is pretty low, hence the cultural bias toward freedom (including content) rather than control in these forums. [Personally, I trust the American people to curate their own content. I expect the educational system to educate the citizenry to be skilled enough in critical thinking to be able to curate the content presented. But I expect the marketplace of ideas to police itself against systematic biases and inaccuracies, either with effective editing of its own content and/or in actively and effectively supporting a “loyal opposition” to its views. Twitter seems to be doing neither, because it’s much closer to being a de facto common carrier monopoly than a media channel. Common carrier monopolies had been accepted and successful for a hundred years in the US, but only with heavy Federal regulation. The hip, cool alternative: break them up. Great truths from Gen X, the generation to which you can’t easily mass-market.]

timoth3y 6y ago

> I am saying when you say "Twitter is a private company. They can choose without restriction who's allowed to use their platform," That's a straw man. I never said anything like what you are pretending I said. They obviously could not ban users on the basis of race or religion or a number of other criteria. But that's not really what's under discussion. The question is should Twitter (or other platforms) lose their right to moderate content when they become successful? I don't think they should.

scoot_718 6y ago

Then fuck off to 4chan