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clearly it’s more than that. these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. and might be regulated as such in the future. that’

by tempsy 6y ago

clearly it’s more than that. these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. and might be regulated as such in the future. that’s my point.

dannyw 6y ago
I’ve been sitewide banned from Reddit twice. It’s always been this way.
- valvar 6y ago
  You're not the president of the United States.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    There really shouldn’t be any distinction. The President, while a very powerful figure, is still a citizen. If we’re going to complain about rich people having privileges that poorer people don’t, then Trump is no different in that respect. Regardless, if Trump wants to, he has official means (through whitehouse.gov) to issue statements. He choose Twitter when he had other options.
  - rustyminnow 6y ago
    If anything, the president should be held to a higher standard.
- hiimtroymclure 6y ago
  you aren't the president. Any future elected official now has to consider if these social media companies are a good medium to communicate with the people. If that elected official doesn't play big tech's rules, the looming threat of a ban might change their mind. It's crazy naive to not see the implications of this
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    The President has access to TV (this one mainly uses it to go on long winded rambling call-ins to Fox and Friends), not to mention a fairly comprehensive web platform of his own to communicate. This is a President who wouldn't even use the designated @potus account because he is so narcissistic he wanted the follower count for himself.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    the implications being??? that it's not a great idea for the POTUS (or equivalent) to consider a private communications platform as their official "channel to the people"? well, duh! who'd have thunk?
  - lame-robot-hoax 6y ago
    The president has to follow the TOS just like any other user. They aren’t a king.
  - fuzxi 6y ago
    What good reason is there for the president to not simply communicate via whitehouse.gov or equivalent? You might argue that it has lesser reach compared to a major social media site, but there are countless individuals and organizations that would jump to be the first one posting a link to a presidential address on social media sites.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    It's almost as if there are official channels to communicate information. Ones that aren't private companies.
  - mac01021 6y ago
    Twitter and the like were never a good medium to communicate with the people. Seldom can you say anything serious in 140 characters.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  That statement is incoherent.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    If you say things big tech doesn’t like, you get deplatformed. This applies to everyone.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      If you got banned the first time you couldn't get banned a second time. Which is more than just semantics. Suspending an account and the associated momentum without actually banning the person might be a good mechanism to have in place.
- newguy1234 6y ago
  I get banned all the time from reddit. So much so that I have like 10 alt accounts premade so I can just slowly shift from one to the next. Sometimes I don't even know why I get banned.
1propionyl 6y ago
No. Right now, they are in fact just private companies. They are not de jure social utilities, even if they act as if they are de facto. Now, maybe they should be, and should be regulated as such. Maybe we should have a conversation about delegating services which are key to our social fabric to what are just private companies. But that's somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand. Additionally, should be noted: if the government attempted to coerce or strong-arm Twitter to keep Donald Trump's account online, that would absolutely be a textbook 1st Amendment violation. Corporations are legal persons, and have constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment. Coerced speech is not free speech.
- tempsy 6y ago
  I didn’t say that they were social utilities right now, I’m saying this could very well spark interest in regulating social media as more than just any old private business with zero regulatory framework attached to them.
  - 1propionyl 6y ago
    > ...these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. They are not though. They are just private companies. We can argue until the cows come home about how people see them, how they use them, how they feel about them... but at the end of the day they are just private companies. I agree that we should consider whether that should remain the case. But right now... it is the case.
wwright 6y ago
I think this is an instance of the biggest, most disastrous fallacy of the last half century: that a company is a social utility. It’s not. It’a a bunch of rich people in California. If you want a public utility for communication and socializing, go help build one. Contribute to Mastodon or the rest of the fediverse. Write to representatives (or become one yourself) and propose legislation to fund a public tool that is actually owned by the people. It could even be part of the fediverse! But asking Twitter to do any random thing someone wants because they are a big company is insane and is going to cause us nothing but pain.
- tempsy 6y ago
  how is it crazy to want to apply a regulatory framework to certain industries? we do that for cable companies, ISPs, banks, publishers, food producers, restaurants, etc etc. So why not social media? The only reason is these companies are “new” and were not viewed as much more than a toy until a few years ago and now we’re seeing the consequences of that.
  - wwright 6y ago
    I don’t think wanting a regulatory framework is bad at all (though I think in the last few decades, we have naïvely tried to regulate companies into doing things that are simply counter to their nature rather than solving problems directly, eg minimum wage vs UBI). A utility is different than a regulated company.
- Bakary 6y ago
  But these are the services that people actually use. On Mastodon you end up with... well the sort of person who uses Mastodon. Which means that the people that run those services have some degree of de facto influence, which in turn means that they are likely to end up regulated and constrained by other powerful actors. Today it's rich people in California, once it was rich people building railroads and pumping oil.
Fifer82 6y ago
You put it more eloquently than I could. It is a private company but it also hosts world leaders as a dispatch service. Something feels off about a single company being able to indiscriminately terminate voices at a whim.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Should the New York Times be allowed to indiscriminately decline publication of OpEds?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- AgentME 6y ago
  Trump has no shortage of places that he can speak his voice and people will hear him. He can call any news station right now. He could make an account on Parler or many other social media sites. No specific company is obligated to broadcast his messages. The government can't obligate anyone who doesn't want it to run his propaganda.
  - Fifer82 6y ago
    I do not have any interest in Trump. I trust my American friends will do whatever is best for them and I respect that. This is bigger than that for me. Everyone uses Twitter, news corportations across the divides reference it. If it is being edited from the top, that seems scary is all. In 10 years, maybe no one will remember Trump, but maybe the person who is right for your vote will not have a voice to reference.
    - AgentME 6y ago
      Twitter edits their site from the top all the time. It would look like your spam folder if they didn't. They remove spam, harassment, calls to violence, etc. It would not be popular if they didn't do any of this.
decebalus1 6y ago
> these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. No, no they're not. If you or others personally perceive them as utilities, you have skewed perception of reality. I mean not even the ISP you're using to access them aren't considered utilities. It's funny that the same people who applauded Pai for the net neutrality thing are the ones complaining about 'big tech censorship'.
karaterobot 6y ago
I see there's a wikipedia entry about social media as public utility (which I take to be what you mean by 'social utilities' in the sense of regulation). To my knowledge, though, this is just a theoretical construct, not a legal one, yet in this thread it's seems to be taken for granted that treating Twitter as a utility is just another tool in the (U.S.) government's toolbox. Is there any reason to think it actually is? Seems offhand like a stretch, but I'm no legal scholar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_public_utili...

by tempsy 6y ago

clearly it’s more than that. these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. and might be regulated as such in the future. that’s my point.

dannyw 6y ago

I’ve been sitewide banned from Reddit twice. It’s always been this way.

valvar 6y ago
You're not the president of the United States.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  There really shouldn’t be any distinction. The President, while a very powerful figure, is still a citizen. If we’re going to complain about rich people having privileges that poorer people don’t, then Trump is no different in that respect. Regardless, if Trump wants to, he has official means (through whitehouse.gov) to issue statements. He choose Twitter when he had other options.
- rustyminnow 6y ago
  If anything, the president should be held to a higher standard.
hiimtroymclure 6y ago
you aren't the president. Any future elected official now has to consider if these social media companies are a good medium to communicate with the people. If that elected official doesn't play big tech's rules, the looming threat of a ban might change their mind. It's crazy naive to not see the implications of this
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  The President has access to TV (this one mainly uses it to go on long winded rambling call-ins to Fox and Friends), not to mention a fairly comprehensive web platform of his own to communicate. This is a President who wouldn't even use the designated @potus account because he is so narcissistic he wanted the follower count for himself.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  the implications being??? that it's not a great idea for the POTUS (or equivalent) to consider a private communications platform as their official "channel to the people"? well, duh! who'd have thunk?
- lame-robot-hoax 6y ago
  The president has to follow the TOS just like any other user. They aren’t a king.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  What good reason is there for the president to not simply communicate via whitehouse.gov or equivalent? You might argue that it has lesser reach compared to a major social media site, but there are countless individuals and organizations that would jump to be the first one posting a link to a presidential address on social media sites.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  It's almost as if there are official channels to communicate information. Ones that aren't private companies.
- mac01021 6y ago
  Twitter and the like were never a good medium to communicate with the people. Seldom can you say anything serious in 140 characters.
maxerickson 6y ago
That statement is incoherent.
- dannyw 6y ago
  If you say things big tech doesn’t like, you get deplatformed. This applies to everyone.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    If you got banned the first time you couldn't get banned a second time. Which is more than just semantics. Suspending an account and the associated momentum without actually banning the person might be a good mechanism to have in place.
newguy1234 6y ago
I get banned all the time from reddit. So much so that I have like 10 alt accounts premade so I can just slowly shift from one to the next. Sometimes I don't even know why I get banned.

1propionyl 6y ago

No. Right now, they are in fact just private companies. They are not de jure social utilities, even if they act as if they are de facto. Now, maybe they should be, and should be regulated as such. Maybe we should have a conversation about delegating services which are key to our social fabric to what are just private companies. But that's somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand. Additionally, should be noted: if the government attempted to coerce or strong-arm Twitter to keep Donald Trump's account online, that would absolutely be a textbook 1st Amendment violation. Corporations are legal persons, and have constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment. Coerced speech is not free speech.

tempsy 6y ago
I didn’t say that they were social utilities right now, I’m saying this could very well spark interest in regulating social media as more than just any old private business with zero regulatory framework attached to them.
- 1propionyl 6y ago
  > ...these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. They are not though. They are just private companies. We can argue until the cows come home about how people see them, how they use them, how they feel about them... but at the end of the day they are just private companies. I agree that we should consider whether that should remain the case. But right now... it is the case.

wwright 6y ago

I think this is an instance of the biggest, most disastrous fallacy of the last half century: that a company is a social utility. It’s not. It’a a bunch of rich people in California. If you want a public utility for communication and socializing, go help build one. Contribute to Mastodon or the rest of the fediverse. Write to representatives (or become one yourself) and propose legislation to fund a public tool that is actually owned by the people. It could even be part of the fediverse! But asking Twitter to do any random thing someone wants because they are a big company is insane and is going to cause us nothing but pain.

tempsy 6y ago
how is it crazy to want to apply a regulatory framework to certain industries? we do that for cable companies, ISPs, banks, publishers, food producers, restaurants, etc etc. So why not social media? The only reason is these companies are “new” and were not viewed as much more than a toy until a few years ago and now we’re seeing the consequences of that.
- wwright 6y ago
  I don’t think wanting a regulatory framework is bad at all (though I think in the last few decades, we have naïvely tried to regulate companies into doing things that are simply counter to their nature rather than solving problems directly, eg minimum wage vs UBI). A utility is different than a regulated company.
Bakary 6y ago
But these are the services that people actually use. On Mastodon you end up with... well the sort of person who uses Mastodon. Which means that the people that run those services have some degree of de facto influence, which in turn means that they are likely to end up regulated and constrained by other powerful actors. Today it's rich people in California, once it was rich people building railroads and pumping oil.

Fifer82 6y ago

You put it more eloquently than I could. It is a private company but it also hosts world leaders as a dispatch service. Something feels off about a single company being able to indiscriminately terminate voices at a whim.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Should the New York Times be allowed to indiscriminately decline publication of OpEds?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
AgentME 6y ago
Trump has no shortage of places that he can speak his voice and people will hear him. He can call any news station right now. He could make an account on Parler or many other social media sites. No specific company is obligated to broadcast his messages. The government can't obligate anyone who doesn't want it to run his propaganda.
- Fifer82 6y ago
  I do not have any interest in Trump. I trust my American friends will do whatever is best for them and I respect that. This is bigger than that for me. Everyone uses Twitter, news corportations across the divides reference it. If it is being edited from the top, that seems scary is all. In 10 years, maybe no one will remember Trump, but maybe the person who is right for your vote will not have a voice to reference.
  - AgentME 6y ago
    Twitter edits their site from the top all the time. It would look like your spam folder if they didn't. They remove spam, harassment, calls to violence, etc. It would not be popular if they didn't do any of this.

decebalus1 6y ago

> these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. No, no they're not. If you or others personally perceive them as utilities, you have skewed perception of reality. I mean not even the ISP you're using to access them aren't considered utilities. It's funny that the same people who applauded Pai for the net neutrality thing are the ones complaining about 'big tech censorship'.

karaterobot 6y ago

I see there's a wikipedia entry about social media as public utility (which I take to be what you mean by 'social utilities' in the sense of regulation). To my knowledge, though, this is just a theoretical construct, not a legal one, yet in this thread it's seems to be taken for granted that treating Twitter as a utility is just another tool in the (U.S.) government's toolbox. Is there any reason to think it actually is? Seems offhand like a stretch, but I'm no legal scholar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_as_a_public_utili...