4 ms·

Do we want Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever) to "carry any authority"? Nobody in US politics has benefited more from Twitter and Facebook than Trump himself.

Do we want Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever) to "carry any authority"? Nobody in US politics has benefited more from Twitter and Facebook than Trump himself. Anything that makes us stop relying on those as sources of fact or reasoned political discussion sounds like it has a high chance of being a good thing to me.

onionisafruit 6y ago
Presumably twitter wants to carry some authority no matter what we want. What they did is in service if their own goals.
- riffic 6y ago
  require interconnection/adversarial interoperability then as a condition of that authority.
  - pas 6y ago
    Require by who? How? Why? That authority is given by users basically. And users don't really care about media health.
    - lmm 6y ago
      Twitter gets a lot of their value from all sorts of official accounts, many of which are government agencies. E.g. the last time I applied for a passport, Twitter was the only support channel available (they had a "live chat" page on their website as well, but it was broken). That's not right - what if I'd been subject to one of Twitter's arbitrary bans?
      - pas 6y ago
        Is there a requirement to only use platforms that are available to all citizens? I imagine people can be blacklisted by ISPs and/or mobile carriers. Even a landline contract is not guaranteed, right? What they can't do is turn people away at various offices. That said, I agree this kind of selective platform favoritism is (currently very minimally, but still) discriminatory. For example some people might not want to use Twitter for ideological reasons. (Let's say because it's a fucking cesspool that just generates tension.)
paganel 6y ago
I've said it in another comment, this is a very dangerous move by Twitter. The next Trump (and there probably will be a next Trump) will know from the very beginning in his mandate to neutralise companies like Twitter.
- Duralias 6y ago
  If you mean by removing section 230, then wouldn't that just make everything much worse? When reading up about it, it seems like websites like twitter would have to either completely remove all types of moderation or get strict enough moderation that user comments would be unfeasible to allow. I don't see how that would accomplish anything but remove the social media sector from USA. Although I have yet to hear anyone's theory on what it could be replaced with.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > If you mean by removing section 230 No, I think the next Trump will do what Putin did with VKontakte and will take the company directly from the owners' hands (there are numerous ways to do that even in a Western democracy, the hostile takeover has practically been invented in the US). Of course he (most probably will be a "he") won't do that directly, one of his business friends will help. Things like "removing section 230" are just syntactic sugar that keep us programmers/geeks busy by barking at the wrong tree.

onionisafruit 6y ago

Presumably twitter wants to carry some authority no matter what we want. What they did is in service if their own goals.

riffic 6y ago
require interconnection/adversarial interoperability then as a condition of that authority.
- pas 6y ago
  Require by who? How? Why? That authority is given by users basically. And users don't really care about media health.
  - lmm 6y ago
    Twitter gets a lot of their value from all sorts of official accounts, many of which are government agencies. E.g. the last time I applied for a passport, Twitter was the only support channel available (they had a "live chat" page on their website as well, but it was broken). That's not right - what if I'd been subject to one of Twitter's arbitrary bans?
    - pas 6y ago
      Is there a requirement to only use platforms that are available to all citizens? I imagine people can be blacklisted by ISPs and/or mobile carriers. Even a landline contract is not guaranteed, right? What they can't do is turn people away at various offices. That said, I agree this kind of selective platform favoritism is (currently very minimally, but still) discriminatory. For example some people might not want to use Twitter for ideological reasons. (Let's say because it's a fucking cesspool that just generates tension.)

paganel 6y ago

I've said it in another comment, this is a very dangerous move by Twitter. The next Trump (and there probably will be a next Trump) will know from the very beginning in his mandate to neutralise companies like Twitter.

Duralias 6y ago
If you mean by removing section 230, then wouldn't that just make everything much worse? When reading up about it, it seems like websites like twitter would have to either completely remove all types of moderation or get strict enough moderation that user comments would be unfeasible to allow. I don't see how that would accomplish anything but remove the social media sector from USA. Although I have yet to hear anyone's theory on what it could be replaced with.
- paganel 6y ago
  > If you mean by removing section 230 No, I think the next Trump will do what Putin did with VKontakte and will take the company directly from the owners' hands (there are numerous ways to do that even in a Western democracy, the hostile takeover has practically been invented in the US). Of course he (most probably will be a "he") won't do that directly, one of his business friends will help. Things like "removing section 230" are just syntactic sugar that keep us programmers/geeks busy by barking at the wrong tree.