9 ms·

Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

68 points by spzb 6y ago

newacct583 6y ago
Absent everything else, I have to admit I find it hilarious that in four years the White House never figured out a way for the President to address the public via electronic means beyond the consumer app in his pocket. I mean, it's a banal and boring law, but his use of Twitter was always a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act. They couldn't have set up a dumb finger server or something and written him a junky app, then mirrored it to FB/Twitter/Parler whatever?
- detaro 6y ago
  They could have, but I presume getting a president to use something like that is tricky if he doesn't want to, and I get the impression that using Twitter (and not using it through something some backstabbing staffer could access) was very much the point for Trump.
  - notretarded 6y ago
    It's far less nuanced than that. It's the "old man shouts at cloud" meme, grumpy, lazy, old man wants to communicate to the word using methods he already knows.
    - blunte 6y ago
      I suspect it's also about being visibly popular compared to other people on the platform. What good are "ratings" if you are the only person on a given rating system.
    - spaced-out 6y ago
      He also likes to retweet, probably likes to doom scroll as well. He won't get the same endorphin rushes from some boring government app.
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  Perhaps they set up something that hooks into Trump's account to make a record of his tweets?
- h2odragon 6y ago
  If the US Government employs someone who could set up a `finger` server; they're a contractor. I dont think they even have the ability to talk to anyone who could make that into a twitter bot.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  You don't decide where you can reach your audience, they do.
grenoire 6y ago
My thinking right now is that the status quo is the symptom and not the cause. Were we as the human race simply not ready for this? Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning? If it wasn't Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. it would simply be something else in their place who had to perform the job of the gatekeeper. We were on course to enabling global communication at an unprecedented scale regardless of these companies establishing themselves, it wasn't news that we'd get here. Did we just discount the discourse on this that it's 'suddenly' a concern?
- konjin 6y ago
  The people got too much of a voice and the powers that be are now reigning that back. Decentralization, encryption and anonymity is the only way to deal with this. Aether is a good first draft: multi part app with a back end that can live on a single board computer in your closet and costs $4 to run for a year and a front end that you can use on your phone.
  - rational_indian 6y ago
    Link to Aether?
    - konjin 6y ago
      https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/ Be prepared that it's a distributed system, it takes a while for posts to show up when you first run it.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  I'd much rather we all man up and learn to live with the fact that people say things we disagree with on the internet, instead of assuming that we need gatekeeping.
  - andy_ppp 6y ago
thinkingemote 6y ago
The logic is that by banning and moderating they are taking editorial decisions which mark them out as being a "publisher" as opposed to an impartial "platform". It's a bit of a stretch. For these big companies I think governments gave them the choice to censor or be broken up, so they chose censorship. Now the governments are wanting more regulation. I don't know how they all are responding but could Facebook be handling this dilemma better than Twitter, or would Facebook also be under their sights? How could Amazon etc be targeted?
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  I'd rather fancy a system where such platforms can choose between being a publisher and a platform. If they be a publisher, they may take editorial control but the also become liable for anything that escaped their control and can no longer claim “The views expressed here are not our own.”. In the alternative, they can be a platform, and may not take editorial control and only be required and allowed to remove content they are legally required to remove. The current situation is that they want their cake and eat it too.
  - spaced-out 6y ago
    >In the alternative they can be a platform, and may not take editorial control and only be required and allowed to remove content they are legally required to remove. Any platform that tries to do this will quickly fill up with spam.
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      This is what 8chan does and it did not fill up with it. They're permitted to implement restrictions on that only humans and not bots may post, not on content, provided that it be legal. 8chan had a system where one had to solve a captcha every day and where one was not permitted to post more than one message per minute.
- dgellow 6y ago
  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
amelius 6y ago
Just a random idea: perhaps we should extend democracy to the spreading of information. I.e. you can spread information but only if the majority of people agree with it. (A post is evaluated/moderated by a small group, then a bigger group, etc., until perhaps it reaches the entire population). Moderation is not limited to groups, so echo chambers would not have a chance. EDIT: minorities still have a chance in two ways: (1) they can have discussion groups which can be large but still limited (2) the majority will have some tolerance and thus will only suppress the ideas of minorities if they find them objectionable.
- spzb 6y ago
  That seems like it would just silence minority voices.
  - roflc0ptic 6y ago
    Right. How would anyone argue for the repeal of popular, unjust laws? Having free speech tied to current moral fashions seems disastrous.
    - amelius 6y ago
      > Having free speech tied to current moral fashions seems disastrous. Well, the entire point is that free speech is not the same as broadcasting rights. You can still have free speech. You just don't get a "free platform".
  - amelius 6y ago
    Not if the majority would allow them. Minorities can still have discussion groups. It's just that their ideas never achieve mass broadcasting if the majority finds those ideas objectionable.
    - rhexs 6y ago
      I’m amazed how a large portion of the Internet can hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their heads like this as the same time. Really bodes well for the next decade. “You still have freedom of speech, but can only talk about subjects I approve of”.
blunte 6y ago
What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? [edit: I would think the UK Health Secretary should be pretty specifically focused on the growing health crisis at home rather than interviewing on topics outside his current role.] In any case, regardless of who you are, if you violate the terms of service of platform, you can be terminated on that platform. The platform makes the rules, within the context of the legal systems with which it is governed by. When it comes to "free speech", that is a very tricky subject. More significantly, if even the local population cannot agree on whether certain speech should be allowed or not, then the government has no hope of regulating it either.
- spzb 6y ago
  > What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? Nothing in terms of his day job but he is known as a fan of technology (not a particularly well-informed one) so he’s likely to have an opinion on the matter. More to the point, though, the government usually nominate a minister to go round all the Sunday morning political TV shows and answer questions on whatever is in the news.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  > What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? He was being interviewed on a general politics show >> Mr Hancock, a former culture secretary, told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show It's usual on these shows for the interviewer to treat the the politician as a representative of the wider government and to ask general questions as well as those about the politician's own area of responsibility.
- eplanit 6y ago
  On the basis of (mental) health concerns, one could conceivably and justifiably ban Twitter altogether.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > I would think the UK Health Secretary Minor nit, but he's not UK health secretary. Health is devolved so he only has responsibility for England.
- 6y ago
jokethrowaway 6y ago
Threatening social media platforms with regulations sounds like a good plan to get them to act as impartial platforms. Still, I fear they will just accept being publishers and deal with regulations while still being considered impartial platforms by the public.
- snicker7 6y ago
  Social media platforms are already happy with acting as publishers without taking responsibility for its content.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rubymamis 6y ago
Nietzsche predicted the current course of events: "Step by step, private companies incorporate state businesses; even the most stubborn vestige of the old work of governing (for example, that activity which is supposed to secure private parties against other private parties) will ultimately be taken care of by private contractors..."
- 1MachineElf 6y ago
  Source, for anyone interested: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human-all-too-human/aphorism-472-quote_3ab47a619.html http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human...
rdxm 6y ago
One the one hand, I laugh at the fools in government who make such pronouncements. The big social platforms are *Private Companies*, NOT public utilities. They can do whatever they want. On the other hand, these platforms have amplified voices that would otherwise not even attain local coverage. Being coldly objective, they also make it possible for State Actors to punch way, way above their weight in an information warfare perspective (see Russia). It's also very important to remember that social media and modern 24 hour WWF-style "Journalism" WOULD NOT EXIST without near constant levels of conflict content to drive engagement. So there are entire very large business domains where there is existential threat were there to be regulation of content. Net-net, the best possible outcome of all of this would be the demise of platforms like FB, Twitter, FoxNews, CNN, BBC, et. al as they really only serve to rapidly diminish the IQ's of the electorate/culture.... Of course that won't happen because culturally we are beyond weak and have long since surrendered our future to a small group of people with the wealth to supersede most if not all Government controls (including the UK of course, I mean do you really think Boris Johnson has the stones for doing anything other than running his pie-hole like Trump has for the last 4 years??).
abridgett 6y ago
We shouldn't need to even be discussing the ethics of regulating statements made by those in government (or opposition). It's due to the unbelievable amount of manipulative statements and outright lies (e.g. many of the statements made by the current UK government and the "Brexiteers" - not just Trump) that this is even an issue. A platform labelling or blocking repeated offenders seems sensible to me - however I do think the rules they are enforcing should be fair and equally applied.
DanBC 6y ago
Hancock is a lack-talent idiot. It takes real skill to be a worse secretary of health than both Hunt and Lansley, but he's somehow managed it. He'll say whatever he thinks is popular at the time. Here he is calling for tighter regulation of social media: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/internet-laws-social-media-child-safety-terrorism-facebook-twitter-matt-hancock-a8360081.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/internet-laws... > New laws will be introduced aimed at tackling the internet “wild west” and making Britain the “safest place in the world” to be online, the culture secretary has said. > The largest social media companies could be fined billions of pounds if they do not take steps to protect users, Matt Hancock warned. > A new code of practice to tackle online bullying, stricter age verification requirements, and a regular internet safety transparency report to keep tabs on online abuse could also be included in new legislation. > Measures to tackle online harm could be funded through an industry-wide levy on firms such Facebook and Twitter.
- jackjeff 6y ago
  Nice to see he’s got some free time. It’s not like the Pandemic is out of control and should keep him busy... oh wait.
  - notassigned 6y ago
    It's not...
- sockjuice 6y ago
  He's also a very strange man aside from that. For example, have you seen that video of him standing uncomfortably close to a lady he's being interviewed with, and staring at her? Weird as fuck.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    Yes. Here's a twitter thread of him being odd. https://twitter.com/Emcharlotte10/status/1341334691035623425 https://twitter.com/Emcharlotte10/status/1341334691035623425
- 6y ago
jacquesm 6y ago
UK government minister belatedly finds out that adopting US based companies as pseudo official channels may be a mistake. Worrisome to see how far elected officials can be out of touch with reality. I never understood why my own government seems to feel the need to jump on every social medium out there. It gives those legacy, leverage and goes against many years of tradition.
d0100 6y ago
Companies are now shielded from the government when it comes to user generated content with Section 230. They are not, however, shielded from social justice. And there lies the problem. Social spaces and infrastructure should be regulated so that they can be shielded from social justice and the government regarding user generated content. No one will boycott twitter if they know twitter can't just press a button to ban. No one will ask for demonetization of a YouTube channel if they know that has to come from the legal system. Or pressure companies buying ads that show on channels you don't like
- sockjuice 6y ago
  Companies should be shielded from ... the fair treatment of all people in a society? What is your comment even saying? Don't dogwhistle please, write what you really mean.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Of course people will boycott twitter if the company cannot easily ban content. They will label twitter as a network that promote right wing propaganda and push people to move to other places if they don’t want to be associated with that group.
  - due7rurhdu 6y ago
    There's a very obvious fix for this which is to simply acknowledge that social media platforms are operating with too much editorial bias to avoid being considered publishers rather than platforms. This acknowledgement creates an environment where the safest strategy to maintain the legal protections that make social media platforms possible is one of minimal censorship.
    - dgellow 6y ago
      Maybe read this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
villgax 6y ago
Lol Govts around the world are stupidly starting to think that they have a say in how private companies can regulate users on it. Lol users don't even pay for the bulk of social media & its mostly Govts/politicians/celebs who pay PR firms to manage their 'free'/ToS attached accounts. Talk about SelfAwareWolves
LatteLazy 6y ago
I don't see what questions are raised by twitters Liberal and Permissive minimal actions that haven't been raised already by Foxx's pure propaganda model...
jackjeff 6y ago
To what extent could the UK regulate a US company? Especially if they don’t have a UK subsidiary. Last I checked I publish a blog site and I did not get the necessary permission from Chinese authorities to do so... and I don’t care, I have no link to China.
- dgellow 6y ago
  The EU has regulations, such as GDPR, that applies to any company serving EU citizens, even US companies. The UK has regulations that companies have to follow to serve UK citizens. It’s not that strange and is quite common.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Extra-territorial enforcement is a different matter, though. A government on the far side of the world can say whatever it likes in its own laws, but if a business has no presence there, why would that business be under the foreign government's jurisdiction? The EU's strategy with the GDPR, in attempting to make it viral so that businesses it could reach within its own jurisdiction could be penalised if they dealt with businesses it couldn't reach elsewhere, is a dangerous path to be following. Taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of strategy becomes a significant barrier to international trade and can leave businesses in impossible positions. A better way to address these issues is for governments to make proper international agreements with each other on matters where they agree on the principles, so that businesses in any state that is party to those agreements know what the rules are, and the rules are consistent and enforceable throughout the states making the agreement. Without such agreements, one would hope that governments of states that have not implemented some rule would protect their own businesses, including actively intervening to support those businesses if they were being "leaned on" to enforce the rules of other states extra-territorially. We really don't want a world where any sufficiently large political power -- the US, EU, China, India, whoever -- can unilaterally set rules that apply to everyone else as well.
pjc50 6y ago
Reminder to everyone especially Hancock: the US is not the UK. We don't have "section 230". We don't have US-style free speech. We have, at best, ECHR-style free speech, which comes with slightly more caveats. Here in recent memory is the UK dealing with elected politicians who were silenced by force of law: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm (mind you, they were also members of a terrorist organisation, so all the arguments about promoting violence apply ...)
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Curiously, elected politicians have unrestricted speech within the UK parliament. For example, they are able to breach legal injunctions against publication, in such a way that a report of the breach can then be legally published. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-parliaments-46071159 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-parliaments-46071159
  - Traster 6y ago
    And it's important to understand that's the one exception - MPs have freedom from prosecution only when they're speaking in parliament, and that freedom is moderated by the fact the house can have a majority to suspend that MP from parliament.
jmull 6y ago
Fortunately, in the US, the constitution prevents the government from forcing private companies or individuals to promote/broadcast/display the messages of government leaders. It’s a little weird he tries to characterize Twitter exercising their ability to choose who has a voice on their platform as a new thing. That’s not new. They’ve been doing this all along. If you only promote free speech in defense of authoritarian sedition, you aren’t promoting free speech. You’re promoting authoritarian sedition.
- tomatotomato37 6y ago
  Unfortunately, Twitter has decided to eagerly toss themselves into 18 other countries too, including the UK, each with different interpretations of what rights their citizens are entitled too. Their Dubai office is especially spicy, considering that countries stance regarding woman and LGBT rights.
  - jmull 6y ago
    Waddabout Dubai?
techsin101 6y ago
It seems to me concerns regarding censorhips are all gone. Now we have everyone at every level of internet banning people left and right. From DNS provider, hosting, name servers, to social media, youtube, to even blogs.

68 points by spzb 6y ago

Absent everything else, I have to admit I find it hilarious that in four years the White House never figured out a way for the President to address the public via electronic means beyond the consumer app in his pocket. I mean, it's a banal and boring law, but his use of Twitter was always a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act. They couldn't have set up a dumb finger server or something and written him a junky app, then mirrored it to FB/Twitter/Parler whatever?

detaro 6y ago
They could have, but I presume getting a president to use something like that is tricky if he doesn't want to, and I get the impression that using Twitter (and not using it through something some backstabbing staffer could access) was very much the point for Trump.
- notretarded 6y ago
  It's far less nuanced than that. It's the "old man shouts at cloud" meme, grumpy, lazy, old man wants to communicate to the word using methods he already knows.
  - blunte 6y ago
    I suspect it's also about being visibly popular compared to other people on the platform. What good are "ratings" if you are the only person on a given rating system.
  - spaced-out 6y ago
    He also likes to retweet, probably likes to doom scroll as well. He won't get the same endorphin rushes from some boring government app.
gwbas1c 6y ago
Perhaps they set up something that hooks into Trump's account to make a record of his tweets?
h2odragon 6y ago
If the US Government employs someone who could set up a `finger` server; they're a contractor. I dont think they even have the ability to talk to anyone who could make that into a twitter bot.
PeterStuer 6y ago
You don't decide where you can reach your audience, they do.

grenoire 6y ago

My thinking right now is that the status quo is the symptom and not the cause. Were we as the human race simply not ready for this? Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning? If it wasn't Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. it would simply be something else in their place who had to perform the job of the gatekeeper. We were on course to enabling global communication at an unprecedented scale regardless of these companies establishing themselves, it wasn't news that we'd get here. Did we just discount the discourse on this that it's 'suddenly' a concern?

konjin 6y ago
The people got too much of a voice and the powers that be are now reigning that back. Decentralization, encryption and anonymity is the only way to deal with this. Aether is a good first draft: multi part app with a back end that can live on a single board computer in your closet and costs $4 to run for a year and a front end that you can use on your phone.
- rational_indian 6y ago
  Link to Aether?
  - konjin 6y ago
    https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/ Be prepared that it's a distributed system, it takes a while for posts to show up when you first run it.
bondarchuk 6y ago
I'd much rather we all man up and learn to live with the fact that people say things we disagree with on the internet, instead of assuming that we need gatekeeping.
- andy_ppp 6y ago

thinkingemote 6y ago

The logic is that by banning and moderating they are taking editorial decisions which mark them out as being a "publisher" as opposed to an impartial "platform". It's a bit of a stretch. For these big companies I think governments gave them the choice to censor or be broken up, so they chose censorship. Now the governments are wanting more regulation. I don't know how they all are responding but could Facebook be handling this dilemma better than Twitter, or would Facebook also be under their sights? How could Amazon etc be targeted?

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I'd rather fancy a system where such platforms can choose between being a publisher and a platform. If they be a publisher, they may take editorial control but the also become liable for anything that escaped their control and can no longer claim “The views expressed here are not our own.”. In the alternative, they can be a platform, and may not take editorial control and only be required and allowed to remove content they are legally required to remove. The current situation is that they want their cake and eat it too.
- spaced-out 6y ago
  >In the alternative they can be a platform, and may not take editorial control and only be required and allowed to remove content they are legally required to remove. Any platform that tries to do this will quickly fill up with spam.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    This is what 8chan does and it did not fill up with it. They're permitted to implement restrictions on that only humans and not bots may post, not on content, provided that it be legal. 8chan had a system where one had to solve a captcha every day and where one was not permitted to post more than one message per minute.
dgellow 6y ago
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

amelius 6y ago

Just a random idea: perhaps we should extend democracy to the spreading of information. I.e. you can spread information but only if the majority of people agree with it. (A post is evaluated/moderated by a small group, then a bigger group, etc., until perhaps it reaches the entire population). Moderation is not limited to groups, so echo chambers would not have a chance. EDIT: minorities still have a chance in two ways: (1) they can have discussion groups which can be large but still limited (2) the majority will have some tolerance and thus will only suppress the ideas of minorities if they find them objectionable.

spzb 6y ago
That seems like it would just silence minority voices.
- roflc0ptic 6y ago
  Right. How would anyone argue for the repeal of popular, unjust laws? Having free speech tied to current moral fashions seems disastrous.
  - amelius 6y ago
    > Having free speech tied to current moral fashions seems disastrous. Well, the entire point is that free speech is not the same as broadcasting rights. You can still have free speech. You just don't get a "free platform".
- amelius 6y ago
  Not if the majority would allow them. Minorities can still have discussion groups. It's just that their ideas never achieve mass broadcasting if the majority finds those ideas objectionable.
  - rhexs 6y ago
    I’m amazed how a large portion of the Internet can hold two diametrically opposed ideas in their heads like this as the same time. Really bodes well for the next decade. “You still have freedom of speech, but can only talk about subjects I approve of”.

blunte 6y ago

What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? [edit: I would think the UK Health Secretary should be pretty specifically focused on the growing health crisis at home rather than interviewing on topics outside his current role.] In any case, regardless of who you are, if you violate the terms of service of platform, you can be terminated on that platform. The platform makes the rules, within the context of the legal systems with which it is governed by. When it comes to "free speech", that is a very tricky subject. More significantly, if even the local population cannot agree on whether certain speech should be allowed or not, then the government has no hope of regulating it either.

spzb 6y ago
> What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? Nothing in terms of his day job but he is known as a fan of technology (not a particularly well-informed one) so he’s likely to have an opinion on the matter. More to the point, though, the government usually nominate a minister to go round all the Sunday morning political TV shows and answer questions on whatever is in the news.
KineticLensman 6y ago
> What does the "Health Secretary" have to do with tech regulation? He was being interviewed on a general politics show >> Mr Hancock, a former culture secretary, told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show It's usual on these shows for the interviewer to treat the the politician as a representative of the wider government and to ask general questions as well as those about the politician's own area of responsibility.
eplanit 6y ago
On the basis of (mental) health concerns, one could conceivably and justifiably ban Twitter altogether.
DanBC 6y ago
> I would think the UK Health Secretary Minor nit, but he's not UK health secretary. Health is devolved so he only has responsibility for England.
6y ago

jokethrowaway 6y ago

Threatening social media platforms with regulations sounds like a good plan to get them to act as impartial platforms. Still, I fear they will just accept being publishers and deal with regulations while still being considered impartial platforms by the public.

snicker7 6y ago
Social media platforms are already happy with acting as publishers without taking responsibility for its content.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

rubymamis 6y ago

Nietzsche predicted the current course of events: "Step by step, private companies incorporate state businesses; even the most stubborn vestige of the old work of governing (for example, that activity which is supposed to secure private parties against other private parties) will ultimately be taken care of by private contractors..."

1MachineElf 6y ago
Source, for anyone interested: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human-all-too-human/aphorism-472-quote_3ab47a619.html http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/human...

rdxm 6y ago

One the one hand, I laugh at the fools in government who make such pronouncements. The big social platforms are *Private Companies*, NOT public utilities. They can do whatever they want. On the other hand, these platforms have amplified voices that would otherwise not even attain local coverage. Being coldly objective, they also make it possible for State Actors to punch way, way above their weight in an information warfare perspective (see Russia). It's also very important to remember that social media and modern 24 hour WWF-style "Journalism" WOULD NOT EXIST without near constant levels of conflict content to drive engagement. So there are entire very large business domains where there is existential threat were there to be regulation of content. Net-net, the best possible outcome of all of this would be the demise of platforms like FB, Twitter, FoxNews, CNN, BBC, et. al as they really only serve to rapidly diminish the IQ's of the electorate/culture.... Of course that won't happen because culturally we are beyond weak and have long since surrendered our future to a small group of people with the wealth to supersede most if not all Government controls (including the UK of course, I mean do you really think Boris Johnson has the stones for doing anything other than running his pie-hole like Trump has for the last 4 years??).

abridgett 6y ago

We shouldn't need to even be discussing the ethics of regulating statements made by those in government (or opposition). It's due to the unbelievable amount of manipulative statements and outright lies (e.g. many of the statements made by the current UK government and the "Brexiteers" - not just Trump) that this is even an issue. A platform labelling or blocking repeated offenders seems sensible to me - however I do think the rules they are enforcing should be fair and equally applied.

DanBC 6y ago

Hancock is a lack-talent idiot. It takes real skill to be a worse secretary of health than both Hunt and Lansley, but he's somehow managed it. He'll say whatever he thinks is popular at the time. Here he is calling for tighter regulation of social media: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/internet-laws-social-media-child-safety-terrorism-facebook-twitter-matt-hancock-a8360081.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/internet-laws... > New laws will be introduced aimed at tackling the internet “wild west” and making Britain the “safest place in the world” to be online, the culture secretary has said. > The largest social media companies could be fined billions of pounds if they do not take steps to protect users, Matt Hancock warned. > A new code of practice to tackle online bullying, stricter age verification requirements, and a regular internet safety transparency report to keep tabs on online abuse could also be included in new legislation. > Measures to tackle online harm could be funded through an industry-wide levy on firms such Facebook and Twitter.

jackjeff 6y ago
Nice to see he’s got some free time. It’s not like the Pandemic is out of control and should keep him busy... oh wait.
- notassigned 6y ago
  It's not...
sockjuice 6y ago
He's also a very strange man aside from that. For example, have you seen that video of him standing uncomfortably close to a lady he's being interviewed with, and staring at her? Weird as fuck.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Yes. Here's a twitter thread of him being odd. https://twitter.com/Emcharlotte10/status/1341334691035623425 https://twitter.com/Emcharlotte10/status/1341334691035623425
6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

UK government minister belatedly finds out that adopting US based companies as pseudo official channels may be a mistake. Worrisome to see how far elected officials can be out of touch with reality. I never understood why my own government seems to feel the need to jump on every social medium out there. It gives those legacy, leverage and goes against many years of tradition.

d0100 6y ago

Companies are now shielded from the government when it comes to user generated content with Section 230. They are not, however, shielded from social justice. And there lies the problem. Social spaces and infrastructure should be regulated so that they can be shielded from social justice and the government regarding user generated content. No one will boycott twitter if they know twitter can't just press a button to ban. No one will ask for demonetization of a YouTube channel if they know that has to come from the legal system. Or pressure companies buying ads that show on channels you don't like

sockjuice 6y ago
Companies should be shielded from ... the fair treatment of all people in a society? What is your comment even saying? Don't dogwhistle please, write what you really mean.
dgellow 6y ago
Of course people will boycott twitter if the company cannot easily ban content. They will label twitter as a network that promote right wing propaganda and push people to move to other places if they don’t want to be associated with that group.
- due7rurhdu 6y ago
  There's a very obvious fix for this which is to simply acknowledge that social media platforms are operating with too much editorial bias to avoid being considered publishers rather than platforms. This acknowledgement creates an environment where the safest strategy to maintain the legal protections that make social media platforms possible is one of minimal censorship.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    Maybe read this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

villgax 6y ago

Lol Govts around the world are stupidly starting to think that they have a say in how private companies can regulate users on it. Lol users don't even pay for the bulk of social media & its mostly Govts/politicians/celebs who pay PR firms to manage their 'free'/ToS attached accounts. Talk about SelfAwareWolves

LatteLazy 6y ago

I don't see what questions are raised by twitters Liberal and Permissive minimal actions that haven't been raised already by Foxx's pure propaganda model...

jackjeff 6y ago

To what extent could the UK regulate a US company? Especially if they don’t have a UK subsidiary. Last I checked I publish a blog site and I did not get the necessary permission from Chinese authorities to do so... and I don’t care, I have no link to China.

dgellow 6y ago
The EU has regulations, such as GDPR, that applies to any company serving EU citizens, even US companies. The UK has regulations that companies have to follow to serve UK citizens. It’s not that strange and is quite common.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Extra-territorial enforcement is a different matter, though. A government on the far side of the world can say whatever it likes in its own laws, but if a business has no presence there, why would that business be under the foreign government's jurisdiction? The EU's strategy with the GDPR, in attempting to make it viral so that businesses it could reach within its own jurisdiction could be penalised if they dealt with businesses it couldn't reach elsewhere, is a dangerous path to be following. Taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of strategy becomes a significant barrier to international trade and can leave businesses in impossible positions. A better way to address these issues is for governments to make proper international agreements with each other on matters where they agree on the principles, so that businesses in any state that is party to those agreements know what the rules are, and the rules are consistent and enforceable throughout the states making the agreement. Without such agreements, one would hope that governments of states that have not implemented some rule would protect their own businesses, including actively intervening to support those businesses if they were being "leaned on" to enforce the rules of other states extra-territorially. We really don't want a world where any sufficiently large political power -- the US, EU, China, India, whoever -- can unilaterally set rules that apply to everyone else as well.

pjc50 6y ago

Reminder to everyone especially Hancock: the US is not the UK. We don't have "section 230". We don't have US-style free speech. We have, at best, ECHR-style free speech, which comes with slightly more caveats. Here in recent memory is the UK dealing with elected politicians who were silenced by force of law: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm (mind you, they were also members of a terrorist organisation, so all the arguments about promoting violence apply ...)

throwaway2245 6y ago
Curiously, elected politicians have unrestricted speech within the UK parliament. For example, they are able to breach legal injunctions against publication, in such a way that a report of the breach can then be legally published. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-parliaments-46071159 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-parliaments-46071159
- Traster 6y ago
  And it's important to understand that's the one exception - MPs have freedom from prosecution only when they're speaking in parliament, and that freedom is moderated by the fact the house can have a majority to suspend that MP from parliament.

jmull 6y ago

Fortunately, in the US, the constitution prevents the government from forcing private companies or individuals to promote/broadcast/display the messages of government leaders. It’s a little weird he tries to characterize Twitter exercising their ability to choose who has a voice on their platform as a new thing. That’s not new. They’ve been doing this all along. If you only promote free speech in defense of authoritarian sedition, you aren’t promoting free speech. You’re promoting authoritarian sedition.

tomatotomato37 6y ago
Unfortunately, Twitter has decided to eagerly toss themselves into 18 other countries too, including the UK, each with different interpretations of what rights their citizens are entitled too. Their Dubai office is especially spicy, considering that countries stance regarding woman and LGBT rights.
- jmull 6y ago
  Waddabout Dubai?

techsin101 6y ago

It seems to me concerns regarding censorhips are all gone. Now we have everyone at every level of internet banning people left and right. From DNS provider, hosting, name servers, to social media, youtube, to even blogs.