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That's a poor equivalence. 1) The content of calls is not pushed to a dashboard mixed in with things you want to hear algorithmically. This core discovery feat

That's a poor equivalence. 1) The content of calls is not pushed to a dashboard mixed in with things you want to hear algorithmically. This core discovery feature of Twitter means that the content of the messages from people you are not subscribed to must meet some basic criteria of acceptability, or no one would use it. 2) We had common-carrier status applied to ISPs for a few short years before Ajit Pai got that rolled back for Verizon. You might have been able to extend that logic to Twitter and then I could see that as a fair comparison if that was how they were operating. But Twitter would never acquiesce to such an onerous mandate and would lobby hard against it.

imgabe 6y ago
> This core discovery feature of Twitter means that the content of the messages from people you are not subscribed to must meet some basic criteria of acceptability, or no one would use it. If "This is a message from the President of the United States" does not meet the criteria of being something that a user might want to hear, what the hell does? And if the President is saying something completely insane then it's even more important that the people can hear exactly what he says! What would you prefer - you hear the President say an insane thing and you can say "yep, that guy is insane we need to get rid of him" or Twitter tells you "look, uh, just trust us this guy is insane, don't listen to him". In the second scenario, Twitter has all the power, and makes all the decisions about who gets to be an elected official, not you. > We had common-carrier status applied to ISPs for a few short years before Ajit Pai got that rolled back for Verizon. You might have been able to extend that logic to Twitter and then I could see that as a fair comparison if that was how they were operating. But Twitter would never acquiesce to such an onerous mandate and would lobby hard against it. "That's not currently how it is" and "Twitter wouldn't like it" don't strike me as particularly good reasons for not having a neutral carrier that accurately tells people the things their elected officials say.
- fl0wenol 6y ago
  Echoing the sentiments elsewhere in the thread, the office of the President has official avenues such as the White House Press Corps and EAS. I don't think Twitter has a particular duty to preserve or distribute the content of any user no matter who they are. It might be different if this was in the terms of service, or if it was something the executive branch was paying for. If they changed their business practices to the model used by other network service providers commonly afforded neutral carrier status (i.e. SaaS, ISPs), then I think there might be a case for your second point.

imgabe 6y ago

> This core discovery feature of Twitter means that the content of the messages from people you are not subscribed to must meet some basic criteria of acceptability, or no one would use it. If "This is a message from the President of the United States" does not meet the criteria of being something that a user might want to hear, what the hell does? And if the President is saying something completely insane then it's even more important that the people can hear exactly what he says! What would you prefer - you hear the President say an insane thing and you can say "yep, that guy is insane we need to get rid of him" or Twitter tells you "look, uh, just trust us this guy is insane, don't listen to him". In the second scenario, Twitter has all the power, and makes all the decisions about who gets to be an elected official, not you. > We had common-carrier status applied to ISPs for a few short years before Ajit Pai got that rolled back for Verizon. You might have been able to extend that logic to Twitter and then I could see that as a fair comparison if that was how they were operating. But Twitter would never acquiesce to such an onerous mandate and would lobby hard against it. "That's not currently how it is" and "Twitter wouldn't like it" don't strike me as particularly good reasons for not having a neutral carrier that accurately tells people the things their elected officials say.

fl0wenol 6y ago
Echoing the sentiments elsewhere in the thread, the office of the President has official avenues such as the White House Press Corps and EAS. I don't think Twitter has a particular duty to preserve or distribute the content of any user no matter who they are. It might be different if this was in the terms of service, or if it was something the executive branch was paying for. If they changed their business practices to the model used by other network service providers commonly afforded neutral carrier status (i.e. SaaS, ISPs), then I think there might be a case for your second point.