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You are being intellectually honest to admit that we can not have one set of rules of ISPs and another set of rules for Twitter. I think both of them should ha

You are being intellectually honest to admit that we can not have one set of rules of ISPs and another set of rules for Twitter. I think both of them should have the discretion to do whatever they want while the government should constantly work hard to ensure there is always more competition. It is the government which has made it impossible to create credible alternatives to Google, Facebook or Twitter. Firstly, US government will try to kill any foreign competitor in the name of national security or some other straw-man. Domestic level the regulation is darn too complex for anyone to succeed with reasonable capital.

mattnewton 6y ago
I disagree- I can trivially move between social networks and in fact have done so recently. As a renter I have exactly one hardwired ISP available to me; AT&T cellular based service is not comparable where I live. It’s the same way we have different rules for your electric bill and Amazon.
- WClayFerguson 6y ago
  If some news network moves from Twitter (from being censored, or banned) to a Mastodon, for example, their 'reach' would drop by a factor of millions. Six orders of magnitude. That makes them basically invisible. Do you really want nose-ring kids in Silicon Valley who're still mad at their parents having the power to shut down Presidents, Heads of State, and Media organizations? Come on man.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    I don’t follow your example. Heads of state and media weren’t dependent on “nose-ring kids” working on social media before and they certainly aren’t now just because Trump has shown a proclivity to communicate via Tweet. It’d be ridiculous to ossify twitter as a government communication platform through regulation, instead of continuing to invest in existing government-owned communication channels. Re: the change in reach that happens, I don’t see how this is different from a television network canceling a host.
    - WClayFerguson 6y ago
      It's just a matter of objective fact that the world does now have a kind of 'public square' and it happens to be Twitter. Thru a series of events no one planned we just evolved into a situation where a public figure's main way of reaching out directly to their audience is over Twitter. The correct analogy here is the phone (not TV networks). When the telephone system was originally a monopoly (or even today) imagine if the phone company had started disconnecting lines or censoring calls? Alexander Graham Bell would've been hanged from the nearest tree. But if you want to use a TV Network analogy it's not like canceling an Anchor, it's like canceling a 'viewer'. It would be like if CNN had the power to stop any individual from either consuming CNN content or creating CNN content. Total Godlike control over the individual.
      - mattnewton 6y ago
        In this case it is like canceling an anchor, because the people are complaining that their speech is being moderated under section 230. Whether a network like facebook can ban someone is a separate issue of tech company power, this regulation protects them to moderate content while not being legally responsible for the content they don't moderate.
        WClayFerguson 6y ago
        I think Section 230 is a distraction from the real issue. Here's the crux: Q) Can AT&T censor texts or cut service if an AT&T employee gets triggered by the content of speech? A) Not just no, but hell no. The same applies to Twitter for precisely all the same reasons.
        mattnewton 6y ago
        Can Twitter remove a tweet because advertisers don't want to appear next to it? Can Twitter remove a tweet because it suspects it is an action from a bot? Is it censorship to rank a post lower on someone else's feed? Section 230 is absolutely the crux here because it's about what we expect from internet platforms. Do we expect them to be moderated or not? If we expect them to be unmoderated entirely they would look nothing like the current platforms.
  - cinquemb 6y ago
    At some point, people have to terms with the downsides if they want to organize around non public entities that have the power to censor and banned wholesale when there are other alternatives; their 'reach' today may drop, but if people decided to abandon platforms because they are either locked out/censured/etc for those where they are not, their 'reach' will only grow in time. But hey, easy for me to say since I've pretty much abandoned twitter/facebook/etc nearly a decade ago and avoid things like snap/insta/etc for things like a mastodon instance.
    - WClayFerguson 6y ago
      And when the phone was invented Alexander Graham Bell could have started listening in on phone calls and banning service to individuals who had differing opinions to his own right? Sounds like you'd be cool with that. Ya know. "non public entities" and all. And your reply about that would've been: "Hey people can still send information using radio and telegraph, so they should just come to terms with that and stop trying to rely on phone systems that belong to Bell?"
      - cinquemb 6y ago
        I'm not ok with it, so I actively chose not to be on those platforms, like everyone else could. If people want to be useds, that's their choice.
        WClayFerguson 6y ago
        I agree with your actual sentiment there. I've actually built a platform myself that has 10x the features of Twitter, in some regards (although a different set of similar features) I'm a huge fan of decentralized social media, web3.0, IPFS, ActivityPub, Mastodon, Pleroma, and the Fediverse, and all that is the FUTURE to replace Twitter. However for today Twitter needs to stop censoring.
        cinquemb 6y ago
        > However for today Twitter needs to stop censoring. Yeah, well that's not a battle I want to fight. Id rather twitter/fb keep pushing people off their platforms and kill themselves via death by 1000 cuts.

mattnewton 6y ago

I disagree- I can trivially move between social networks and in fact have done so recently. As a renter I have exactly one hardwired ISP available to me; AT&T cellular based service is not comparable where I live. It’s the same way we have different rules for your electric bill and Amazon.

WClayFerguson 6y ago
If some news network moves from Twitter (from being censored, or banned) to a Mastodon, for example, their 'reach' would drop by a factor of millions. Six orders of magnitude. That makes them basically invisible. Do you really want nose-ring kids in Silicon Valley who're still mad at their parents having the power to shut down Presidents, Heads of State, and Media organizations? Come on man.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  I don’t follow your example. Heads of state and media weren’t dependent on “nose-ring kids” working on social media before and they certainly aren’t now just because Trump has shown a proclivity to communicate via Tweet. It’d be ridiculous to ossify twitter as a government communication platform through regulation, instead of continuing to invest in existing government-owned communication channels. Re: the change in reach that happens, I don’t see how this is different from a television network canceling a host.
  - WClayFerguson 6y ago
    It's just a matter of objective fact that the world does now have a kind of 'public square' and it happens to be Twitter. Thru a series of events no one planned we just evolved into a situation where a public figure's main way of reaching out directly to their audience is over Twitter. The correct analogy here is the phone (not TV networks). When the telephone system was originally a monopoly (or even today) imagine if the phone company had started disconnecting lines or censoring calls? Alexander Graham Bell would've been hanged from the nearest tree. But if you want to use a TV Network analogy it's not like canceling an Anchor, it's like canceling a 'viewer'. It would be like if CNN had the power to stop any individual from either consuming CNN content or creating CNN content. Total Godlike control over the individual.
    - mattnewton 6y ago
      In this case it is like canceling an anchor, because the people are complaining that their speech is being moderated under section 230. Whether a network like facebook can ban someone is a separate issue of tech company power, this regulation protects them to moderate content while not being legally responsible for the content they don't moderate.
      - WClayFerguson 6y ago
        I think Section 230 is a distraction from the real issue. Here's the crux: Q) Can AT&T censor texts or cut service if an AT&T employee gets triggered by the content of speech? A) Not just no, but hell no. The same applies to Twitter for precisely all the same reasons.
        mattnewton 6y ago
        Can Twitter remove a tweet because advertisers don't want to appear next to it? Can Twitter remove a tweet because it suspects it is an action from a bot? Is it censorship to rank a post lower on someone else's feed? Section 230 is absolutely the crux here because it's about what we expect from internet platforms. Do we expect them to be moderated or not? If we expect them to be unmoderated entirely they would look nothing like the current platforms.
- cinquemb 6y ago
  At some point, people have to terms with the downsides if they want to organize around non public entities that have the power to censor and banned wholesale when there are other alternatives; their 'reach' today may drop, but if people decided to abandon platforms because they are either locked out/censured/etc for those where they are not, their 'reach' will only grow in time. But hey, easy for me to say since I've pretty much abandoned twitter/facebook/etc nearly a decade ago and avoid things like snap/insta/etc for things like a mastodon instance.
  - WClayFerguson 6y ago
    And when the phone was invented Alexander Graham Bell could have started listening in on phone calls and banning service to individuals who had differing opinions to his own right? Sounds like you'd be cool with that. Ya know. "non public entities" and all. And your reply about that would've been: "Hey people can still send information using radio and telegraph, so they should just come to terms with that and stop trying to rely on phone systems that belong to Bell?"
    - cinquemb 6y ago
      I'm not ok with it, so I actively chose not to be on those platforms, like everyone else could. If people want to be useds, that's their choice.
      - WClayFerguson 6y ago
        I agree with your actual sentiment there. I've actually built a platform myself that has 10x the features of Twitter, in some regards (although a different set of similar features) I'm a huge fan of decentralized social media, web3.0, IPFS, ActivityPub, Mastodon, Pleroma, and the Fediverse, and all that is the FUTURE to replace Twitter. However for today Twitter needs to stop censoring.
        cinquemb 6y ago
        > However for today Twitter needs to stop censoring. Yeah, well that's not a battle I want to fight. Id rather twitter/fb keep pushing people off their platforms and kill themselves via death by 1000 cuts.