3 ms·

Most of the discussion seems to be centered around freedom of speech and enabling dissenting voices, no matter how violent, but I think we're missing the bigger

Most of the discussion seems to be centered around freedom of speech and enabling dissenting voices, no matter how violent, but I think we're missing the bigger picture here. This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well. edit: imagine trying to run for re-election without a social media presence. It's hard to imagine that anyone could mount a serious campaign without it, let alone win.

afavour 6y ago
I actually think that Trump, of all people, is the worst to try to make that case with. At the click of his fingers he’ll have cameras from every major news network and reporters from every newspaper in a room to listen to what he says. Inevitably whatever he does say will be on Twitter instantly. Not that it matters that much because the majority of the country aren’t even on Twitter. They read about his tweets in news reports. I don’t buy that Twitter is a source of power for Trump. It is his communication medium of choice, certainly. But his power has always been in making controversial statements that generate headlines. He doesn’t need Twitter for that.
- lr4444lr 6y ago
  I dunno. I think this is precisely an example of why hard cases can make good laws - not that were making laws here yet, but the OP definitely brings up a good point about the general matter.
- Laforet 6y ago
  Alex Jones got deplatformed a while ago and somehow he's still on the news every other week. I'm sure the current POTUS will just do fine.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Something really weird happened with Donald Trump. He had a tendency to say things like "I got twice as many votes as Obama did when he was reelected." (I don't think he actually said that one, but it's hard to find a real example when... they deleted his twitter account.) And then that isn't true. Trump got ~74M, in 2012 Obama got ~66M, that's not twice as much. But it's more. So if they run the story correcting it, they're running a story that tells people that Trump in 2020 got more votes than Obama did when he won in 2012. At some point the media got tired of this, but what are they supposed to do about it? If they don't correct it, the claim stands unopposed. If they do, they're still running the story Trump really wanted, telling people he got more votes than Obama. They eventually started omitting the context. So then the headline becomes "Trump lies that he got twice as many votes as Obama" and then that's the entire story. No mention of how many there actually were. But that didn't work, because then the first comment on the story is from some Trump supporter providing the actual numbers and you're back to having a story about Trump lying that still benefits Trump. So then they want to do something about the Trump supporters because they keep providing the inconvenient context that Trump's controversy generator left there on purpose. So they censor them in some way. But then the supporters feel wronged -- being punished for saying something true -- so they support Trump even harder and it backfires. The whole thing made them so angry that they're now willing to cross every line in order to destroy him. But the current strategy seems to be to censor him as much as possible so that nobody sees the rebuttal to the rebuttal because nobody sees the rebuttal because nobody sees the original claim. Which might actually work to destroy Trump, but only by destroying a structural pillar of the democratic process at the same time. And anybody who thinks that such a weapon, once used, will only be used once, is delusional.
sroussey 6y ago
Disagree that presidential power should bleed into private companies. He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side. I agree, and I'm not saying that Twitter acted in the wrong here. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. That's a pretty significant lever to have over POTUS. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
  - omarchowdhury 6y ago
    > Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. The threat would be a criminal offense.
    - geomark 6y ago
      Threatening to deplatform is a criminal offense? What a world we live in.
      - omarchowdhury 6y ago
        No, coercion of the POTUS is the criminal offense. > where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something
        salawat 6y ago
        Out of curiosity, what do you think makes it illegal: the coercive aspect, or that it's aimed at POTUS?
        6y ago
poulsbohemian 6y ago
>strips Trump of a major source of power for him I think you are trying to make a reasoned argument and engage in meaningful debate, but can we really make the argument that the person with the nuclear codes, in control of a budget of trillions of dollars, receives any power from a free online publishing tool?
- omarchowdhury 6y ago
  Right, it's more of a convenience.
- the_drunkard 6y ago
  > receives any power from a free online publishing tool i respectfully disagree. imagine FDR without his radio fireside chats, JFK without his television appearances, or even Trump without Twitter. the usage of media platforms and ability to communicate directly with constituents is a source of power.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    So, the first two examples are one-way broadcast mediums using the public airwaves. If you had said HBO and Sirius radio, I would agree.
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    As I noted, you realize the federal government has a nearly inexhaustible source of funding, right? I bet they could build a twitter clone if they were really worried about it.
rsynnott 6y ago
To some extent, it’s a problem Trump brought upon himself by relying so much on social media. If Twitter had banned Obama, well, people would barely have noticed, really. Most politicians just aren’t dependent on social media in the same way Trump is, and are generally much better behaved on it. And what’s the alternative? Force them to provide service to every crazy person?
alisonkisk 6y ago
He's the President. If he published somewhere else, such as his own government funded website, people would read him there.
Retric 6y ago
I sincerely doubt that Twitter actually significantly enhances presidential power. Unlike normal people presidents can get on national TV to directly communicate with the general public. He’s got plenty of ways to message millions of people like mass email, or even just sending a letter to news agencies etc. Twitter was useful politically, but it probably hurt as much as it helped. Further the president can literally call in air strikes or offer blanket pardons etc. They are often called the most powerful men in the world for good reason.
Ericson2314 6y ago
It's a good point, but the the solution is anti-trust and open standards, not presidential perks.
- zoobab 6y ago
  antitrust never worked.
eganist 6y ago
> This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well. This is the fourth estate in everything but name. It doesn't have the same protections as the press, but it's no different than it was decades or even centuries ago, when media moguls could focus the heat.
userbinator 6y ago
It's not just social media but Big Tech in general - Google is pretty much the only way the majority people look for information on the Internet, so I'd say it has an even larger amount of power in influencing what people see.
zoobab 6y ago
Jack Dorsey knows the future lies within uncensorable social networks. Guess what he has in mind with blockchain and al. If we would have kept all the tweets as 144 chars as text only, a full copy of all tweets would have been possible through a compressed distributed blockchain. Time to reboot social networks folks!
geofft 6y ago
The ability to use Twitter (or the newspaper) is not a presidential power. Certainly it is true that it is hard to run a campaign without a media presence. That has been true for hundreds of years. Competent candidates have entire teams, if not the vast majority of their campaign, figuring out how to effectively contract with private media entities (whose freedom is protected by the First Amendment) to get their message out. That incompetent candidates exist is not a reason to change this system.
kumarvvr 6y ago
Does presidential power come from social media? Presidents should not use social media, in my view. They have too much power and too much reach. A simple TV broadcast should be good enough.
sg47 6y ago
He has been using the platform for a long time and spreading all kinds of misinformation but Twitter did not take any action against him in the past. The platforms are available for anyone to behave in a civil manner and not cause unrest in the country.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Presidents and all officials should quit Twitter and use official channels for communication. We've stooped so low that the entire world has one communication channel for politicians: Twitter.
thr_120 6y ago
There are lot of comments like: 'I do not support him but...'. I'm not from the US so will use example from my country. I do not mind if my prime minister was banned from Facebook even though I'm ok with him (didn't vote for him, but we have more than two parties).Facebook is just some private company for me. It is monopoly in a way and pain that most of my social circle is locked there. But for any public figure? There is public broadcaster. It already is not good that he is not using his PR team that much. You have put too much power in to the hands of private companies. Public broadcaster can be (and often is) misused for propaganda of ruling government. But so can be private one (and often is). But at least there is stil this balance of public/private spaces. But I know this is irrelevant in the USA which tries to implement some utopias (like free speech) but others are considered as immanentization of the eschaton.

afavour 6y ago

I actually think that Trump, of all people, is the worst to try to make that case with. At the click of his fingers he’ll have cameras from every major news network and reporters from every newspaper in a room to listen to what he says. Inevitably whatever he does say will be on Twitter instantly. Not that it matters that much because the majority of the country aren’t even on Twitter. They read about his tweets in news reports. I don’t buy that Twitter is a source of power for Trump. It is his communication medium of choice, certainly. But his power has always been in making controversial statements that generate headlines. He doesn’t need Twitter for that.

lr4444lr 6y ago
I dunno. I think this is precisely an example of why hard cases can make good laws - not that were making laws here yet, but the OP definitely brings up a good point about the general matter.
Laforet 6y ago
Alex Jones got deplatformed a while ago and somehow he's still on the news every other week. I'm sure the current POTUS will just do fine.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Something really weird happened with Donald Trump. He had a tendency to say things like "I got twice as many votes as Obama did when he was reelected." (I don't think he actually said that one, but it's hard to find a real example when... they deleted his twitter account.) And then that isn't true. Trump got ~74M, in 2012 Obama got ~66M, that's not twice as much. But it's more. So if they run the story correcting it, they're running a story that tells people that Trump in 2020 got more votes than Obama did when he won in 2012. At some point the media got tired of this, but what are they supposed to do about it? If they don't correct it, the claim stands unopposed. If they do, they're still running the story Trump really wanted, telling people he got more votes than Obama. They eventually started omitting the context. So then the headline becomes "Trump lies that he got twice as many votes as Obama" and then that's the entire story. No mention of how many there actually were. But that didn't work, because then the first comment on the story is from some Trump supporter providing the actual numbers and you're back to having a story about Trump lying that still benefits Trump. So then they want to do something about the Trump supporters because they keep providing the inconvenient context that Trump's controversy generator left there on purpose. So they censor them in some way. But then the supporters feel wronged -- being punished for saying something true -- so they support Trump even harder and it backfires. The whole thing made them so angry that they're now willing to cross every line in order to destroy him. But the current strategy seems to be to censor him as much as possible so that nobody sees the rebuttal to the rebuttal because nobody sees the rebuttal because nobody sees the original claim. Which might actually work to destroy Trump, but only by destroying a structural pillar of the democratic process at the same time. And anybody who thinks that such a weapon, once used, will only be used once, is delusional.

sroussey 6y ago

Disagree that presidential power should bleed into private companies. He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side.

save_ferris 6y ago
> He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side. I agree, and I'm not saying that Twitter acted in the wrong here. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. That's a pretty significant lever to have over POTUS. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
- omarchowdhury 6y ago
  > Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. The threat would be a criminal offense.
  - geomark 6y ago
    Threatening to deplatform is a criminal offense? What a world we live in.
    - omarchowdhury 6y ago
      No, coercion of the POTUS is the criminal offense. > where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something
      - salawat 6y ago
        Out of curiosity, what do you think makes it illegal: the coercive aspect, or that it's aimed at POTUS?
        6y ago

poulsbohemian 6y ago

>strips Trump of a major source of power for him I think you are trying to make a reasoned argument and engage in meaningful debate, but can we really make the argument that the person with the nuclear codes, in control of a budget of trillions of dollars, receives any power from a free online publishing tool?

omarchowdhury 6y ago
Right, it's more of a convenience.
the_drunkard 6y ago
> receives any power from a free online publishing tool i respectfully disagree. imagine FDR without his radio fireside chats, JFK without his television appearances, or even Trump without Twitter. the usage of media platforms and ability to communicate directly with constituents is a source of power.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  So, the first two examples are one-way broadcast mediums using the public airwaves. If you had said HBO and Sirius radio, I would agree.
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  As I noted, you realize the federal government has a nearly inexhaustible source of funding, right? I bet they could build a twitter clone if they were really worried about it.

rsynnott 6y ago

To some extent, it’s a problem Trump brought upon himself by relying so much on social media. If Twitter had banned Obama, well, people would barely have noticed, really. Most politicians just aren’t dependent on social media in the same way Trump is, and are generally much better behaved on it. And what’s the alternative? Force them to provide service to every crazy person?

alisonkisk 6y ago

He's the President. If he published somewhere else, such as his own government funded website, people would read him there.

Retric 6y ago

I sincerely doubt that Twitter actually significantly enhances presidential power. Unlike normal people presidents can get on national TV to directly communicate with the general public. He’s got plenty of ways to message millions of people like mass email, or even just sending a letter to news agencies etc. Twitter was useful politically, but it probably hurt as much as it helped. Further the president can literally call in air strikes or offer blanket pardons etc. They are often called the most powerful men in the world for good reason.

Ericson2314 6y ago

It's a good point, but the the solution is anti-trust and open standards, not presidential perks.

zoobab 6y ago
antitrust never worked.

eganist 6y ago

> This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well. This is the fourth estate in everything but name. It doesn't have the same protections as the press, but it's no different than it was decades or even centuries ago, when media moguls could focus the heat.

userbinator 6y ago

It's not just social media but Big Tech in general - Google is pretty much the only way the majority people look for information on the Internet, so I'd say it has an even larger amount of power in influencing what people see.

zoobab 6y ago

Jack Dorsey knows the future lies within uncensorable social networks. Guess what he has in mind with blockchain and al. If we would have kept all the tweets as 144 chars as text only, a full copy of all tweets would have been possible through a compressed distributed blockchain. Time to reboot social networks folks!

geofft 6y ago

The ability to use Twitter (or the newspaper) is not a presidential power. Certainly it is true that it is hard to run a campaign without a media presence. That has been true for hundreds of years. Competent candidates have entire teams, if not the vast majority of their campaign, figuring out how to effectively contract with private media entities (whose freedom is protected by the First Amendment) to get their message out. That incompetent candidates exist is not a reason to change this system.

kumarvvr 6y ago

Does presidential power come from social media? Presidents should not use social media, in my view. They have too much power and too much reach. A simple TV broadcast should be good enough.

sg47 6y ago

He has been using the platform for a long time and spreading all kinds of misinformation but Twitter did not take any action against him in the past. The platforms are available for anyone to behave in a civil manner and not cause unrest in the country.

systemvoltage 6y ago

Presidents and all officials should quit Twitter and use official channels for communication. We've stooped so low that the entire world has one communication channel for politicians: Twitter.

thr_120 6y ago

There are lot of comments like: 'I do not support him but...'. I'm not from the US so will use example from my country. I do not mind if my prime minister was banned from Facebook even though I'm ok with him (didn't vote for him, but we have more than two parties).Facebook is just some private company for me. It is monopoly in a way and pain that most of my social circle is locked there. But for any public figure? There is public broadcaster. It already is not good that he is not using his PR team that much. You have put too much power in to the hands of private companies. Public broadcaster can be (and often is) misused for propaganda of ruling government. But so can be private one (and often is). But at least there is stil this balance of public/private spaces. But I know this is irrelevant in the USA which tries to implement some utopias (like free speech) but others are considered as immanentization of the eschaton.