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ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook
- quelsolaar 6y agoJack and Mark, have every right to kick Trump off their platforms, and maybe I would have done the same. I still don't like that its up to them to decide for us all.
- alisonkisk 6y agoThey decided nothing for you. You are still free to have conversations with Trump. It's not to you to decide who they do business with.
- thraway12 6y agoACLU Counsel's actual statement was equivocal af. They aren't the standard bearer on this issue. They just aren't.
- mcshicks 6y agoYes that's right. There are 5 things they ask Biden for on the ACLU website for speech, privacy and technology. Moderation policy is not on the list. I think this article needs to understood in the scope of the ACLU overall priorities. Ban the federal use of, and funding for, facial recognition technology Support the introduction and passage of federal comprehensive consumer privacy legislation Expand access to broadband internet access services Restore net neutrality rules Reinstate broadband privacy rules https://www.aclu.org/news/topic/our-asks-bidens-civil-liberties-and-civil-rights-to-do-list/ https://www.aclu.org/news/topic/our-asks-bidens-civil-libert...
- miles 6y agoWhere was the ACLU's handwringing when these platforms were used to disseminate lies and sow dissension?
- yuliyp 6y agoI think you're misunderstanding the ACLU's arguments here. They're fairly consistently pro free-speech, mostly regardless of what that means. There's not much handwringing from them about "bad" speech because they're OK with bad speech being out there. I don't think they're fans of Trump, as their statement makes clear, but they're worried about the precedent that banning him sets.
- miles 6y ago> they're OK with bad speech being out there Might be time for a bit more nuanced view: Facebook admits it was used to 'incite offline violence' in Myanmar https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 Four dead in Bangladesh riot over offensive Facebook post https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/21/asia/riot-deaths-facebook-post-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/21/asia/riot-deaths-facebook-pos... A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/world/asia/facebook-sri-lanka-riots.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/world/asia/facebook-sri-l...
- rayiner 6y agoNo. The ACLU was built on rejecting social harm arguments to free speech.
- miles 6y ago> The ACLU was built on rejecting social harm arguments to free speech. So they're OK with yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater? Or having a president incite a riot or a war?
- bhupy 6y ago> So they're OK with yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater? Assuming that the ACLU generally supports the Brandenburg v Ohio standard, which overturned the US v Schenck standard, I'd say the answer to that question is "yes". https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- zadokshi 6y agoI don’t care what side your politics are. When corporations can so easily control the voice of the elected leader of a country (one who has genuine legitimate support or about half of the country), I become very scared for the future. Corporations should not have more power than the elected officials.
- beezle 6y agoThere is nothing to prevent any politician from doing what was done before Twitter/FB - holding a press conference and inviting the press/TV. Or putting out public statements which are widely disseminated over news/pr wires.
- zadokshi 6y agoYes and anyone can make a website. I was referring to using the platform normal people use here.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThen there's not much concern with the Twitter ban, since the vast majority of Americans don't use it. The platform most used by normal people is Youtube, where Trump is not banned.
- michaelsbradley 6y agoThat's a good point. I'm a little surprised a blog hasn't already sprung up on whitehouse.gov.
- yoav 6y agoThere’s literally no one left in the room with him who’s able or willing to suggest or execute on this idea.
- bobbobb54444 6y agoDon’t waste your time here, half these people work for the tech giants responsible for the censorship.
- beezle 6y agoIf they want to see 'unchecked power' just repeal 230.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoIf section 230 is repealed, American Internet companies would die and the ones in Europe and Asia would take over. Think again.
- Animats 6y agoIt's a problem. We're getting too much online censorship. Muzzling Trump was quite a step. Probably justified, though, because he finally reached the inciting to riot point.
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- cblconfederate 6y ago> decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices. They have it backwards: After years of progressively suspending increasingly important voices, they believe there is nothing they can't control, and every escalation means worse outcomes for those lower in the pecking order. Plus compaines aren't abstract objects so it matters who the individual persons who make these decisions are.
- Helloworldboy 6y agoPretty interesting how the ACLU becomes an enemy when they go after the employers of a sizable chunk of the users on this website.
- nostromo 6y ago“Start your own Twitter then!” ... they do. “Google bans Parler, conservative Twitter. Apple gives them 24 hour notice to moderate more speech or be banned.”
- bebopcowboy 6y agoThey are trying to get Parler kicked off of AWS too. Anyone who uses “start your own X” is a disingenuous moron.
- courtf 6y agoThat's funny, it seems they were perfectly happy to try starting their own country a couple days ago.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nostromo 6y agoAutonomous zones for me but not for thee. Listen, I’m center left and oppose all this craziness. But the tech giants banning these accounts is counterproductive. Violence will increase not decrease as extremists are pushed out of the public square and into echo chambers and non-public Signal groups. “A riot is the language of the unheard” remember?
- TulliusCicero 6y agoSo in the interest of balance, conservative leaning apps can get away with doing whatever they want now? If left leaning apps permit the kind of violent talk that Parler does, by all means, ban those too.
- zadokshi 6y agoSo we are banning twitter then as well?
- gumby 6y agoThe man literally has a press office and a press staff. There are any number of outlets who will cling to his every word in order to praise or criticize it. I don't use twitter and seem to learn what is said. It is difficult to see what the problem is.
- mech422 6y agoI don't do social media at all (well, HN and imgur) and unfortunately, still hear it all. Crap is all over the news, its here on HN...it's everywhere. Also, I tend to think a lot of this has to do with avoiding wrongful death suits for not policing their platforms.. edit: formatting, don't post before coffee
- ballenf 6y agoThat was kind of the point of the article — the precedent once set is hard to limit to those with press offices. There was no argument with the particular action in this case.
- jmull 6y agoI wonder what the precedent is supposed be here? Twitter and facebook have been banning people all along, for all kinds of reasons. I thought the precedent set for Trump was the high level of leeway given to a government leader compared to regular people. I think if he weren’t the President he would have had more tweets removed and been suspended earlier and more often.
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 6y agoWere any laws broken by Twitter? Don’t businesses in the US have nearly every right to arbitrarily deny service to people (with a few exceptions when it’s explicitly denying on the basis of race, etc.)? Twitter literally didn’t exist 15 years ago. How can a lack of access to Twitter be an an infringement on free speech then?
- iijlasdjkfj 6y agoThe internet literally didn't exist 50 years ago. How can a lack of access to internet be an infringement on free speech then? Television literally didn't exist 100 years ago. How can a lack of access to television be an infringement of free speech then? Written language literally didn't exist ~5000 years ago. How can a lack of access to written language be an infringement of free speech then?
- rayiner 6y agoI really appreciate the ACLU stepping up to bat here. The organization once defended the right of Nazis to march. As progressivism replaces liberalism on the left, it has faced a lot of internal pressure to compromise on its free speech commitment: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-expression-1529533065 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-exp.... Glad there are some old school speech absolutists left at the ACLU.
- karaterobot 6y agoMaybe it would help if someone on the internet condescendingly pointed out to them that the first amendment doesn't apply to private platforms. I mean I know that's not what they're talking about at all, but it's what always seems to happen in these discussions.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoAt what point do these massive corporations effectively become a government? They govern what you can say, think and buy.
- Grimm1 6y agoI don't want businesses to be forced to do business with people it doesn't want to there are many avenues to address grievances with that already. For instance in this case, the Trump admin can sue and have the concern addressed in court. No business in the world can currently stand up to a government that wants to curtail it by the way.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoThis is not just "we don't want to do business with you". This is "we don't you want to have a platform anywhere". I start caring when several tech monopolies co-ordinate to take down alternative platforms like parler.
- zepto 6y agoParler can be sideloaded on Android.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoWhat happens when Amazon drops them from AWS?
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- nijave 6y agoHaven't newspaper been cherry picking what to publish for years? How is this different than the top editor/president/ceo biasing writing or television?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WalterSear 6y agoIt's not. The uproar about this is primarily ideological dissembly.
- keyme 6y agoTo the people here who are happy about these companies banning Trump, his supporters, and their respective conspiracy theorists: you are nothing but useful idiots. Beware. When it's your turn to be dissatisfied with their unchecked power, it'll be much too late.
- courtf 6y agoIt's not that I'm happy, it's that I just don't give a fuck. Your doom and gloom falls completely flat because being banned from Twitter is the mildest possible consequence these people will ever face.
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago> It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone. The trouble is rules need to be interpreted. Not inciting violence means calling for a valid protest might not be legal, or raising issues about a truly rigged election is not allowed. There’s too many people talking hot air on social media for rules to to be argued over by lawyers and review boards against every grievance.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoEvery single one of these actions will have the opposite effect. You cannot ban people into submission. Instead, you’ll only get more extremists and more fracturing of culture. This seems like psychology 101 to me, but apparently the bright minds in Silicon Valley know what’s best for us more than we do. After all, they have been spying on us and collecting data for years. Maybe they do.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoWhen you do something sufficiently idiotic, like sending a mob of radicalized trigger happy lunatics that believe in alternate reality games (namely Q) to attack the capitol, which is full of elected officials (just like Trump) representing every state, then you fucking DESERVE to be deplatformed. In fact, not only he deserves to be banned, he deserves to be outed by his own cabinet then sent to jail.
- neogodless 6y agoThere are probably variances among polls, but this sample from 2000 shows 18% of Americans believed the election was stolen[0] (and it heavily leans Democratic). Before the 2020 election, we see "record low" confidence, particularly among Republicans[1]. After the election, this poll shows 34% believe the win was not legitimate[2], nearly double from 20 years earlier. There are several differences between 2000 and 2020[3], the biggest being that 2020 was not a close Election. Biden won 306-232 in the Electoral College, and 81,281,502 (51.3%) to 74,222,593 (46.9%) in popular votes. Yet the disbelief is double. Donald Trump has been claiming election fraud even when he won in 2016, but his own task force found little evidence[4]. What explains such a change in belief? In my opinion, this is where amplifying voices that espouse opinions further from the mainstream and center of the political spectrum (extremism) causes that to spread, for culture to fracture, or in a word, polarization. So given the options of making it easy to reach everyone on mainstream social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Reddit vs pushing extremes out of the mainstream megaphone, it seems that the better option is the latter. Extremism (and polarization) will likely happen either way, but it seems like amplifying and accelerating it is actually the worse option. [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/2188/black-americans-feel-cheated-election-2000.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/2188/black-americans-feel-cheat... [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/321665/confidence-accuracy-election-matches-record-low.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/321665/confidence-accuracy-elec... [2] https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3685 https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3685 [3] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/934190243/fact-check-whats-happening-in-this-election-is-not-like-florida-in-2000 https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/934190243/fact-check-whats-ha... [4] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/02/low-rates-of-fraud-in-vote-by-mail-states-show-the-benefits-outweigh-the-risks/#page-content https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/02/low-rates-o...
- mudil 6y agoHow did antifa continued to get organized in the last 6 months? Did they have a purge of accounts? Any apps got banned from app stores?
- alisonkisk 6y agoStrange to see ACLU advocating for an authoritarian leader over civil rights of private organizations.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoAmong the "protesters" (insurrectionists) there multiple people in military gear carrying zip-tie handcuffs. They made it to the Senate Chamber. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/08/zip-ties-tn-thin-blue-line-patch-riot-terrorism-experts/6605206002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/08/zip-... I think these companies have done the right thing. Enough is enough.
- yibg 6y agoWhat’s the alternative? Force private companies to do business with people they don’t want to regardless of their behavior? Should an ad agency have to work with every client that walks in the door?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- technick 6y agoI generally agree private businesses are free to do what they want. However, when private businesses have so much control over how society communicates and operates, like Twitter, limits need to be put in place over what should be allowed. Twitter, Google, Reddit... all of them have become virtue echo chambers, if you don't agree with the main conversation or how the leaders of the company feel, your silenced by being banned, voted down, and hidden. Something needs to change.
- neogodless 6y agohttps://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-i/interps/266 https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte... > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. In what way is anything Twitter doing an act of Congress? Any law made forcing Twitter to be used by an agent of the government would be a direct violation of the Constitution. Being allowed to moderate your own platform, and for users to vote on the amplification of your message is their own exercise of free speech.
- PeterStuer 6y agoThe Social Media conglomerate has become an essential utility, they should be regulated as one.
- TheGrim-999 6y agoThese companies have near monopoly control on the flow of information. Like it or not, they are the new public square. Just telling someone that's banned from Twitter, Facebook, etc., "but oh don't worry, you're still free to go downtown and hold up a sign and spread your message!", while everyone else is able to reach millions of people instantly, is not a solution, and you all know it isn't. Telling someone they can start their own website and not use Twitter, and then de-platforming the website they start, is not a solution, and you all know it isn't. Seriously, look at the state of things. The left has decided to censor the President of the United States. They routinely censor and de-platform anyone that has differing political opinion, and they use disgusting tactics to do so, by just calling anyone that disagrees with them racist, evil, inciting violence etc., no matter how remotely those labels actually apply. Not to mention that the words no longer have any meaning and have been constantly redefined to mean whatever they want it to mean. Anyone with different politics are banned from their platforms. If they try to start their own platforms then DNS providers ban them, payment providers ban them, companies drop them, app stores ban them. Like someone mentioned elsewhere, what's next? Does anyone not a leftist need to create their own mobile networks? Lay their own fiber? When the left puts an end to this too, what's next? It's already gone to an unacceptable level of censorship and destruction. You really want to see how evil starts? This is it. A group of people so convinced that they're morally just, better than everyone else, just like every evil regime that ever existed, that have justified to themselves that everyone else is evil, that it's fine to do evil things to them, that's it's fine to literally burn books because the knowledge conflicts with their ideology, that it's OK to do evil things to those that they've deemed to be evil, and that, conversely, nothing they do is evil. That everything they do is "fighting for Democracy!", yet everything anyone else does is the literal death of Democracy. The supreme irony being that of course complete censorship and destruction of any opposing ideas is so obviously the death of democracy. Always getting your way is not democracy. It's evil, pure and simple, from top to bottom. If you ever wondered how an evil regime forms, how people support it and cheer it on and let it happen, you're witnessing it right here and now.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoTwitter just does not have anywhere close to monopoly control on the flow of information. Only 20% of the country uses it at all.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yegle 6y agoI find it strange the statement is a screenshot from a third-party twitter account. Where's the official statement from ACLU?
- buckybuck 6y agoIts not a question of who they banned, but the power these companies wield is unprecedented. They literally have the power to destroy companies and "win" elections because of who they chose to portray via their mediums.
- buckybuck 6y agoEspecially the combined ban on Parler, Apple, Google, and Amazon together just destroyed that company. In that same tune its like twitter being blamed for any crime committed or planned on facebook and the ISP just dropping twitter. It is insane, Google, Twitter, Facebook pretty much control most of the information that is on the www. Furthermore, the have AI designed to get the most reactions out of people. "Reactions" in the case of the last few years has been anger and hatered on both sides.