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> As much as I support this pure democratic view Honestly I really struggle to see why this would even be 'democratic'. There's a pretty strong and convincing

by qsort 6y ago

> As much as I support this pure democratic view Honestly I really struggle to see why this would even be 'democratic'. There's a pretty strong and convincing argument that it would be better if Twitter hadn't blocked Trump, but the notion that the government should be allowed to force at gunpoint a private entity to amplify speech that such entity disagrees with doesn't strike me as particularly democratic. I get it, Twitter bad, I agree. But the implications of this idea are frankly much scarier than any "corporate decision" will ever be.

zeroz 6y ago
With constitutionality free speech the government shouldn't be allowed to force a private entity to amplify or censor speech. And don't get me wrong. I was happy about the ban in this moment. On the other hand I wouldn't like to give all moderation power to private entities alone. If not opportune with current business model, company ethics are quickly changed (e.g. don't be evil). As long as you have small decentralized shops and platforms that's ok. With concentration of power a private company nearly acts like a utility. Maybe some kind of neutral and elected ethics committee could help large private platforms to maintain transparent and democratic standards. Would they have blocked him even earlier?
- qsort 6y ago
  > With concentration of power a private company nearly acts like a utility. I agree this is a problem. I believe the more rational way to solve it is to break the monopoly, i.e. using antitrust powers more aggressively and letting the market decide, rather than having some committee decide what's kosher. > elected Holy cow please no. I'm willing to believe you have the best of intentions, but anything elected would 100% become a stupid political game from day one. And even if it didn't, popular votes on issues that potentially impact individual rights are a terrible idea: if 51% of the public votes $VERY_BAD_THING, do we have to go along with it? We enshrine fundamental rights in constitutions precisely because we don't want them to be endangered by the current political wind.
piaste 6y ago
> the notion that the government should be allowed to force at gunpoint a private entity to amplify speech that such entity disagrees with doesn't strike me as particularly democratic. "Private entity" is a very broad category that encompasses everything from individual citizens/entrepreneurs to trillion-dollar multinational corporations with armies of shareholders, lobbyists, and lawyers. I think there are plenty of scenarios where the law should discriminate between the latter and the former, and this is one of them.
- qsort 6y ago
  > I think there are plenty of scenarios where the law should discriminate between the latter and the former, I don't see why this is the case. Private entities are made of people. If Twitter vehemently disagrees with something, I don't see any reason why the government should force them to go against their wishes. > very broad category that encompasses everything This is exactly the problem. While there is an argument that Twitter was wrong in the specific case, the implications of having the government force Twitter to say/amplify things they don't believe are __chilling__. Restricting speech is bad enough, but often understandable, this is frankly several steps beyond what I'm comfortable with.
twmiller 6y ago
> There's a pretty strong and convincing argument that it would be better if Twitter hadn't blocked Trump... There is? I haven't heard it.
- qsort 6y ago
  From a strictly utilitarian perspective, Twitter's actions generated backlash that was probably avoidable had they continued with their previous policy of placing a label that basically said "this guy is an idiot" on every tweet. This obviously has to be balanced against the damage caused by letting him break very rule without (apparent) consequences. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but I can see an argument for both sides. This is however a completely disjoint topic. "Should they have done X" and "Should they be able to do X if they so choose" are very different questions.
  - twmiller 6y ago
    From my perspective, we're still talking about the actual events of Jan. 6, rather than whatever inane thing Trump would have tweeted this morning to deflect that conversation. In my mind, that's a HUGE win that far outweighs any backlash. I also, personally, wonder how overstated that backlash actually is. I don't know anyone IRL that is lamenting the fact that Trump lost his Twitter account.
satyrnein 6y ago
If you're deemed a common carrier, you can no longer exercise full editorial control over the content you're carrying. We've gone back and forth on whether ISPs are common carriers or not. Twitter is a step even further, but possible.
- qsort 6y ago
  Sure, but does the comparison really hold? ISPs provide a service that's strictly tied to very expensive and hard to duplicate infrastructure (often with strategic significance, even). To make an even more extreme example, if the companies controlling the North Atlantic TAT cables suddenly decided to arbitrarily deny service we'd have a huge problem, nobody is denying that. But social media are literally a database and some javascript, that's not even remotely in the same league. Again, I do agree we have a quasi-monopoly problem; but if we do, the logical solution is to break the monopoly. Imposing political control creates more problems than it solves.
  - satyrnein 6y ago
    Agreed that social networks are not natural monopolies due to physical characteristics, but the network effects are still significant barriers to entry. Another angle is mandating interoperability of some kind, such as mandating that mobile carriers had to support porting of phone numbers. None of these ideas seem like a slam dunk, though.

by qsort 6y ago

zeroz 6y ago

With constitutionality free speech the government shouldn't be allowed to force a private entity to amplify or censor speech. And don't get me wrong. I was happy about the ban in this moment. On the other hand I wouldn't like to give all moderation power to private entities alone. If not opportune with current business model, company ethics are quickly changed (e.g. don't be evil). As long as you have small decentralized shops and platforms that's ok. With concentration of power a private company nearly acts like a utility. Maybe some kind of neutral and elected ethics committee could help large private platforms to maintain transparent and democratic standards. Would they have blocked him even earlier?

qsort 6y ago
> With concentration of power a private company nearly acts like a utility. I agree this is a problem. I believe the more rational way to solve it is to break the monopoly, i.e. using antitrust powers more aggressively and letting the market decide, rather than having some committee decide what's kosher. > elected Holy cow please no. I'm willing to believe you have the best of intentions, but anything elected would 100% become a stupid political game from day one. And even if it didn't, popular votes on issues that potentially impact individual rights are a terrible idea: if 51% of the public votes $VERY_BAD_THING, do we have to go along with it? We enshrine fundamental rights in constitutions precisely because we don't want them to be endangered by the current political wind.

piaste 6y ago

> the notion that the government should be allowed to force at gunpoint a private entity to amplify speech that such entity disagrees with doesn't strike me as particularly democratic. "Private entity" is a very broad category that encompasses everything from individual citizens/entrepreneurs to trillion-dollar multinational corporations with armies of shareholders, lobbyists, and lawyers. I think there are plenty of scenarios where the law should discriminate between the latter and the former, and this is one of them.

qsort 6y ago
> I think there are plenty of scenarios where the law should discriminate between the latter and the former, I don't see why this is the case. Private entities are made of people. If Twitter vehemently disagrees with something, I don't see any reason why the government should force them to go against their wishes. > very broad category that encompasses everything This is exactly the problem. While there is an argument that Twitter was wrong in the specific case, the implications of having the government force Twitter to say/amplify things they don't believe are __chilling__. Restricting speech is bad enough, but often understandable, this is frankly several steps beyond what I'm comfortable with.

twmiller 6y ago

> There's a pretty strong and convincing argument that it would be better if Twitter hadn't blocked Trump... There is? I haven't heard it.

qsort 6y ago
From a strictly utilitarian perspective, Twitter's actions generated backlash that was probably avoidable had they continued with their previous policy of placing a label that basically said "this guy is an idiot" on every tweet. This obviously has to be balanced against the damage caused by letting him break very rule without (apparent) consequences. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but I can see an argument for both sides. This is however a completely disjoint topic. "Should they have done X" and "Should they be able to do X if they so choose" are very different questions.
- twmiller 6y ago
  From my perspective, we're still talking about the actual events of Jan. 6, rather than whatever inane thing Trump would have tweeted this morning to deflect that conversation. In my mind, that's a HUGE win that far outweighs any backlash. I also, personally, wonder how overstated that backlash actually is. I don't know anyone IRL that is lamenting the fact that Trump lost his Twitter account.

satyrnein 6y ago

If you're deemed a common carrier, you can no longer exercise full editorial control over the content you're carrying. We've gone back and forth on whether ISPs are common carriers or not. Twitter is a step even further, but possible.

qsort 6y ago
Sure, but does the comparison really hold? ISPs provide a service that's strictly tied to very expensive and hard to duplicate infrastructure (often with strategic significance, even). To make an even more extreme example, if the companies controlling the North Atlantic TAT cables suddenly decided to arbitrarily deny service we'd have a huge problem, nobody is denying that. But social media are literally a database and some javascript, that's not even remotely in the same league. Again, I do agree we have a quasi-monopoly problem; but if we do, the logical solution is to break the monopoly. Imposing political control creates more problems than it solves.
- satyrnein 6y ago
  Agreed that social networks are not natural monopolies due to physical characteristics, but the network effects are still significant barriers to entry. Another angle is mandating interoperability of some kind, such as mandating that mobile carriers had to support porting of phone numbers. None of these ideas seem like a slam dunk, though.