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Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power? We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor

Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power? We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor and censor a sitting President. Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified. But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments, not businesses.

DanBC 6y ago
> Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power? Yes, absolutely. An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services, and now he's not president they're finally getting around to enforcing those contracts.
- genidoi 6y ago
  Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe. I don’t support trump in any shape or form, but if this mass de-platforming doesn’t make you the slightest bit uncomfortable, that in itself should make you a bit uncomfortable.
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    He's the President of the United States. He's free to speak to every media outlet in the world every day in the Press Room if he wants. He just chooses not to as that would make him accountable and it's easier to rant on Twitter instead of doing his job. The Gulag Archipelago is as much about the unchallenged silencing of free media outlets, opposition parties and growth of tyranny ("Yes communists have some fringe ideas but they won't really be that bad when they come to power"). FB, Twitter, YT have been banning all sorts of groups over the years, in Palestine for example - it's just more people are noticing it now.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    People seem intent on reliving the mistakes of the twentieth century. At this point, it’s become so blatant, I’m starting to doubt that it’s just out of ignorance.
    - est31 6y ago
      There is a saying that democracy has to reconfirm itself each generation. Both the left and the right hate democracy now. On college campuses, the idea gets increasingly popular that free speech is a harmful concept. This is not just an empty phrase. This generation is graduating and will one day hold the keys to power. Let alone the dystopian gang ruled crime infested places that they built during the BLM riots. On the right side of the political spectrum, you have the Capitol trespassers, pipe bomb layers, cop killers. I'm worried.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - oblio 6y ago
    > Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe. Honest question: when was this ever not the case for mass media?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - pbourke 6y ago
    Jesus, enough with the Gulag Archipelago references. Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. “Conservatives” were not. You are still free to engage in all manner of conservative speech on Twitter that does not call for violence against your ideological opponents.
    - krzyk 6y ago
      Did he really call for violence against his ideological opponents? I don't follow twitter, but it would be good to have some evidence.
      - Jeema101 6y ago
        It's not so much that he has intentionally incited violence - I don't actually think that's the case. It's that he's been engaging in political brinkmanship for some time now, and in the process become a spiritual leader to an extremist faction which caused violence. To allow him to continue to engage in that same brinkmanship after violence has already occurred is allowing him to continue inciting violence, unintentional as it may be.
    - genidoi 6y ago
      He was banned from everything from Shopify to Spotify. This was a weaponised, coordinated deplatforming. People have been banned on Twitter before, and in fact other state leaders tweet significantly worse: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784?s=21 https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784?s... This is about a small group of people coming together whilst collectively possessing significant power on the fabric of society and choosing to erase an individual.
      - pbourke 6y ago
        What do you suppose that example proves? If the account continues to post shit like that it should be banned too.
      - arcatech 6y ago
        It’s a large group of people. A large group of people all made the business decision that it’s better not to associate with Parler/Trump. That’s not coordinated deplatforming, that’s just a society making a decision.
- eloisant 6y ago
  It is true that Trump shouldn't have relied on social media that much, and used official channels for communication. But on the other hand, you can't deny that a few services became indispensable to get any kind of reach... So if we accept that those companies decide what content gets in or not, we accept that they control what content gets to be shown publicly or not.
  - PeterStuer 6y ago
    Exactly. Maybe he could have used the telex and fax machines, as that is the category where 'websites' 'blogs' and 'mailing lists' have been relegated to for a while now. I'm not a fan of the man but in practice nearly all non media framed public discourse happens on FB, YT, Twitter and a few tier 2 services. If the social media conglomerate decides to nix you, you are done with reaching the broad public directly.
- krzyk 6y ago
  > An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services So why wasn't he removed earlier? > now he's not president I don't know US system that well, but from what I heard he is still president and will step down in a week or two.
  - detaro 6y ago
    Because they thought letting him stay was overall the better idea. Twitter added some rules around "world leaders" when they were pressured to give a reason: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/worldleaders2019.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/...
  - ben_w 6y ago
    US government officials have accused him of incitement of insurrection, and are working to impeach him and remove him faster than scheduled.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    Trump was very profitable for the media. But this shit is getting too real, and they know it, so now they go the opposite direction. In the absence of hate speech laws and some guidance to regulate social media to prevent mass psychosis, this kind of thing is expected.
kome 6y ago
> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments, not businesses. I fully agree. And let's not ignore that leaders of the free world are pretty shocked by what's happening. - German canceler, Angela Merkel: “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-dc9732268493a8ac337e03159f0dc1c9 https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-... - French minister, Bruno Le Maire: "Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary." https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-trump/bruno-le-maire-choque-que-ce-soit-twitter-qui-ferme-le-compte-de-donald-trump_4252977.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-... - Mexico president, Manuel Lopez Obrador: "‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse on the subject. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”"https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-leader-condemns-twitter-facebook-for-blocking-trump/2021/01/07/e454ed32-514f-11eb-a1f5-fdaf28cfca90_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-lea...
bcrosby95 6y ago
It's not just big tech. It's pretty much every company that has any sort of business ties with the movement. It's really a bad example to point out because this isn't a few monopolistic companies cutting off his voice. It's practically every company in existence.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Shouldn't you be realising that saying that someone is "cutting off the voice" of the president of the United States by banning him from a website is more than a little bit ridiculous? There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him.
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    > There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him. Nobody has a meaningful voice unless it is amplified by mass media. That includes the President. Television and radio have increasingly (since at least the Bush years, got much worse with Obama, and continued with Trump) chosen to ignore Presidential press conferences and addresses they didn't feel like covering, or heavily edited them, provided them only with their commentary, etc. That's one reason why politicians have increasingly turned to social media!
    - wtfiswiththis 6y ago
      The fact that Trump stopped press briefings because he already favored using his personal Twitter account for presidential business is a problem for him, not us.
- croon 6y ago
  > It's not just big tech. It's pretty much every company that has any sort of business ties with the movement. [...] It's practically every company in existence. If all the courts (including your own judges) are silencing "your movement", your own AG is silencing you, the guy in charge of election security is silencing you, "all" media is silencing you, experts, fact checkers, law scholars, now most of your party, and not just big tec, but "practically every company in existence", etc etc, maybe you're not being silenced, but are simply full of [expletive] and everyone's fed up with that and you should stop spewing it and solve the problem for everyone.
jug 6y ago
It's a scary power for sure, given how centralized around a few services to have a voice that the Internet has become. Of course, there are more resilient solutions like Mastodon or even Darknet but they are geek solutions that the public are not aware of or care for. The discoverability of those from the websites Google Search, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok is basically zero. I think one problem for those services is that if they'd allow this until explicit government action, they'd risk being completely overrun by very vocal antidemocratic crowds of people. Twitter recently banned 70,000 QAnon accounts besides Trump and then they couldn't do that either. Hell, Twitter already struggles and the atmosphere over there right now, despite all this, is really not all that great. Going by Twitter, you'd sometimes think that extremist groups had like 30% of the public vote...
watwut 6y ago
Amazon destroyed competitor when it closed Parler after Parler repeatedly broke terms they signed is incredibly dishonest framing.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Amazon destroyed competitor when it closed Parler Parler and Amazon are not, and never have been competitors. Amazon does a lot of different things, but running a social media site isn't one of them.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    Frankly I'd go further and say that not even Twitter and Parler were competitors. Wasn't Parler a glorified WordPress comments section? That's all fine and well, but if I started a website and broke the TOS I doubt anybody would have wept for my losses in the same way. It's really odd seeing people conflate, or even manufacture, predominant socio-political ideologies for companies and then labelling them competitors when those made-up ideologies differ.
- engineer_22 6y ago
  I think it's a little more nuanced. Parler had some users who broke Parler's own TOS, and Parler was slow to react (problems of scale? victim of own success? Willfully slow to enforce? We don't know). Amazon acted swiftly, in light of a loosely connected civil disturbance (although Amazon's actions were not expressly a result of the riot, the timing is relevant).
shripadk 6y ago
> Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified Not justified at all. Nothing can justify censoring a sitting President and destroying a small competitor. America is on the wrong path. This I say as a observer of American politics. Big Tech has too much power in its hands now.
- arcatech 6y ago
  The President has not been censored.
  - crmrc114 6y ago
    I mean sure, from the standpoint of he can still speak. But like I have mentioned elsewhere- I would like to see someone successfully get elected without a social media presence. Especially with COVID the town square is digital- I dont know that I can mentally treat twitter and others like little upstarts with no power. Remember when accounts were hacked and asked for payment in bitcoin? What would happen if those accounts were hacked and someone talked about launching nukes? You have to start asking if what happens on those platforms -REALLY- has no effect on the physical world. I would argue that their moderation actions can non-person a politician and ruin their career with little or no public input. I dont know what the solution is- but I dont feel confident in a democracy where six media companies and about four tech companies control all that I can see, hear and read. That does not make me feel confident in the fourth estate.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Outside of tech, most people don't care about Twitter. If you were to ask a million people what their local Congressperson or Senator said on twitter, 999,999 of them wouldn't know that their legislator had a twitter account or the handle was. Twitter and Facebook's bans of Trump are only news because Trump relied on them so heavily. They're not the primary means of communication for politicians, nor have they ever been.
      - crmrc114 6y ago
rzz3 6y ago
As someone who works in “big tech”, I don’t think we should have this power, especially when so selectively and reactively applied. We’ve all already heard all of the debates and I don’t wish to rehash it all. I’ve heard a lot of great arguments on all sides of the issue (and there are more than two), but the purpose of my comment is just to say that opinions within our community are not uniform. Not many of us speak our minds about it, unless we agree with the mainstream perspective of “this is fine ”. I’d like to see more of a constitutional framework establishing some type of due process and equal access, personally. We’re currently the sole arbitrators of who is allowed to speak to the world and who is not. And for all those who say “they’re welcome to go use a different platform”, well they did, and look what happens. Apple, Google, and Amazon can simply destroy a community within minutes, and we all applaud because we detest this particular community.
- shripadk 6y ago
  Thank you for speaking out in this charged climate. You could have chosen to keep silent but you chose not to. So thank you.
- peytn 6y ago
  It’s no secret that we have this power. Furthermore, there are people who know that we have this power who are also experts in drumming up hate.
- greatgirl 6y ago
  So what's your solution then? Would you be in favour of democratising the workplace so the workers own and have a say in the company?
  - rzz3 6y ago
    I’m not sure that would be a solution. And frankly, if we did that, I’m sure the majority of people would want to quickly ban the things they don’t like. And that’s certainly not what I want to do (the deplatforming), so I don’t see it as a solution. I imagine my views are probably in the minority, though we do have a lot of free expression (the concept, not just the amendment) proponents in our industry as well.
mattlondon 6y ago
But is it censoring though, vs just not letting them use their services? I don't visit facebook or twitter or apple sites at all, but I still see a lot of what Trump says in the news (e.g. BBC et al). Have Facebook/Twitter/Apple censored Trump when I still hear his views all the time? Have Facebook et al got a lot of "power" here when really they have changed nothing for people like me? Disclosure: I don't have any strong opinions on Trump or American politics in general.
- speeder 6y ago
  You believe you hear his views all the time. I am not from USA, and not a trump supporter, still been trying to figure out what is going on, and noticed some patterns. 1. Media loves taking stuff out of context, not just with Trump mind you. 2. Not only big tech is censoring Trump, but normal media too, for example more than once channels refused to air live presidential addresses, sometimes they aired but with comments, or they waited for a while and then aired it edited. I saw other day here in HN people saying BigTech kicking Trump off their platform was fine because he wouldn't be silenced, since he has the Whitehouse official system of contacting with the press... thing is, the press is now delibetarely ignoring him too, so you have a situation where both BigTech and Press is not letting his words through, isn't that censorship?
  - eppp 6y ago
    So your argument is that private companies should be forced to amplify a person's speech? The genius of the first amendment is that yes you can spout whatever vile garbage you want but no one is forced to listen to you. It is also a form of speech to not reproduce someone else's speech.
    - speeder 6y ago
      I am not from USA so not talking in the legal sense of things. Still I must ask, alright, nobody is obliged to listen to someone, but what about the rights of those that WANT to listen? 70+ million people voted for Trump after all, is it right to prevent them from hearing Trump? He was also banned from e-mail plataforms too, so basically all his channels to talk with his voters are down, except normal mail, that was crippled a long time ago by the congress (normal mail has an absurd law where all new hires must have their pension pre-funded 50 years in advance... this is what caused all the mailing woes in US lately, wasn't necessarily Trump's fault as many claimed)
sanitycheck 6y ago
You seem to be making an argument to nationalise these companies? Or are you making an argument that private companies shouldn't be able to decide who they provide services to? There are thousands of better examples of Google etc having too much power than their eventual refusal to deal with the most famous and powerful man in the world, a man who can 100% rely on his every move being publicised in minute detail. It's a strange time for people to start caring about this stuff.
- tjansen 6y ago
  I think there can be a middle ground. One approach would be, if a company claims section 230 protections, it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >if a company claims section 230 protections No one claims section 230 protections. It applies to everyone and every service on the internet in the US. You can't "lose" those protections, they're just the law. And that law states (paraphrasing): You can't sue me for something a third person says. That's essentially it. You can't "qualify" for or "lose" that protection. And it applies to you and me and HackerNews and Facebook and Twitter and your github repo and your favorite recipe site and every other web site and Mastodon instance and Discord channel and mailing list and IRC channel and porn site and anywhere else that allows more than one person to share their thoughts. >it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator. That's not part of the law either. And a good thing too. Section 230 (yes, I'm saying it again) says (paraphrasing): You can't be sued for something another person says. Full stop. No fairness is required, no balance, no transparency, none of that. Should the big social networking sites be regulated and reined in? Absolutely! But changing/repealing Section 230 won't do that. In fact, it would hurt everyone and the deep pocketed social media companies would be just about the only ones who could afford to fight all the lawsuits. We need to find a different way to fix this.
ben_w 6y ago
Should a president be allowed greater freedom of speech than a normal person? These companies have been censoring certain groups for ages. One of my exes who self-identifies as an anarcho-Communist has been angry with what she sees a Facebook’s anti-left political censorship for at least seven years; and if you see her censorship as justified given her politics, there’s also stuff like this: https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3936987.html https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3936987.html People have been begging for these companies to censor threats of violence for ages (meme is something like “Twitter: What changes would you like? Users: Remove the Nazis; Twitter: Timeline now scrolls sideways, likes are now called florps”) The consensus response until now has been that corporations are private and have the right to kick off whoever they want. When I have suggested that their power to do so needed to be constrained the way governments are and for similar reasons, I got a lot of flack for it. That said, I don’t have the American attitude to freedom of speech as an end in itself, rather I value it as an instrumental goal, so I’m a lot more comfortable with some censorship than many people on Hacker News, even though I still want as little as possible. As little as possible just isn’t “none” in my opinion.
js8 6y ago
May I suggest a compromise? If you only provide a forum, and give moderation power to users (block other users, select what they want), then let whatever speech happens there to happen. However, if you (as a forum provider, social network, whatever) select the content to be viewed and promoted (either using a proprietary algorithm or human discretion), or you are optimizing for engagement, then you are responsible for moderation failures and suspensions.
- detaro 6y ago
  So Twitter would have to have banned Trump years ago instead of coming up with a "world leader" exception? Would work.
  - js8 6y ago
    Well, if Twitter shows a curated selection of tweets to all users, yes, they should have not selected Trump in it years ago. But if somebody wants to follow him privately, I don't see why he should be banned.
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      This is what I want. A more advanced feature would be: Pick your own moderator. The system could essentially figure this out for you based on upvotes / downvotes, but a shortcut would be that if I "follow" someone, it means I generally want to see things that they like as well. Another feature: let me bang on the downvote or upvote button multiple times to tell the system how much I like or dislike something. Show me more or less or none at all of that topic/user/etc based on that. Finally and perhaps most importantly, I'd like to see comments and topics sorted by how much my own personal network of influencers rated them. I don't care that 100,000 idiots liked American Idol. I care how much the 100 people I followed hated it (so don't show it to me, ever). Some people don't like my idea because they say it will create an echo chamber. To them I say that it more closely models real life. In real life, I generally don't hang around with people who I disagree with all the time. My ideal system would insulate people from me if they disagree with me and me from them. Twitter must have a different goal.
rzwitserloot 6y ago
> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor Highly problematic. > We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon censor a sitting President What are you talking about? He's the president. If he has something to say, there are a million ways for him to get the message out. > But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments A government compelling a person (or a private company) to publish something is in violation of the law in many countries, often a constitutional law (Example: That violates the first amendment quite clearly, in the USA). I also think most folks would find that highly suspect. Bigger companies shutting out smaller ones is highly problematic, but then laws do exist to stop this (anti-trust laws). These probably need an update. Whatever update they get, if they prevent Parler's shutdown they went too far. I'm pretty sure that shutdown wasn't about 'eliminating' a competitor at all.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  The American obsession with the rights of private companies needs to end, especially when those companies serve the common good. I personally see open communication as a common good, and companies that we rely on to provide it should be expected to do so.
  - eppp 6y ago
    The internet itself is the common good. Twitter isnt and Facebook certainly isnt.
    - legolas2412 6y ago
      What makes you do certain? The reach and minds share of FB and Twitter are unparalleled
      - kingnothing 6y ago
        This is nothing new. Media evolves. 20 years ago: The reach and minds share of Fox News and CNN are unparalleled 40 years ago: The reach and minds share of ABC and NBC are unparalleled 50 years ago: The reach and minds share of News Radio are unparalleled 70 years ago: The reach and minds share of New York Times and other papers are unparalleled 100 years ago: The reach and minds share of the town criers are unparalleled
Traster 6y ago
Maybe we should think about this in the opposite way - when a person tries overthrow the government they should be arrested. The problem isn't that people on twitter are getting banned from twitter from advocating/planning the murder of members of congress. It's that they're not getting arrested. If we actually had functioning law enforcement for this stuff then we could actually have a proper discussion about what legal content what should be moderated and how.
- phendrenad2 6y ago
  The law moves slowly. Angry mobs move quickly. Give it time. Just because the angry mob got there first, doesn't mean that the law isn't functional. I fully believe that people who broke the law will be tried, eventually.
  - logifail 6y ago
    > The law moves slowly ..and [one would hope] carefully and [one would hope] according to well-understood rules. "She said something that really offends me" probably won't get you arrested, and almost certainly won't get you convicted; under the current climate it might well get you kicked off social media.
hahamrfunnyguy 6y ago
I am troubled by it, but has anything really changed? There have been mass purges of users before spam bots, accounts liked to the Islamic state, etc. Multiple hosting providers terminated Gab's services. Usually large companies don't take action like this until they are under public scrutiny and have something to loose. The mess the US is in right now can in some ways blamed on the way way it's democracy works: candidates can win elections with a plurality of the vote. This incentivizes highly partisan activities like gerrymandering and makes it more difficult for 3rd party to gain traction. Most states and localities have closed primaries, meaning you need to be registered with a party to vote for a candidate. This takes power away from the people and puts it in the hands of the parties. If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it. That's slowly changing ~15 states have non/bi-partisan redistricting commissions. A dozen or so states and localities have implemented Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Is it enough? No. And it never will be unless people all over the country stand up and demand it. It's not as hard as it sounds. Election laws are made by the states and election systems are run by each county. 26 states have ballot initiaves/referenda. All you need are enough signatures to get changes on the ballot. How many people voted for your state assembly person in 2018? For your state senator? You can go look it up. I'll wait. Not very many, right? Those are the people who make the election laws for the state. And how many people voted for your council member in your city/town/county? For your mayor/county executive? They set the rules for your local elections (sometimes the state has a say too, but not always). But in order to make changes like non-partisan redistricting and RCV and open primaries (although those aren't always so fabulous either, cf. California) and term limits and public funding of elections, etc. you need to pound on your elected representatives. And if even a few hundred people pester your state assembly person or city council member, it's likely you can get some movement on these initiatives.
redis_mlc 6y ago
> Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified. Nope. There is no supporting evidence.
soneil 6y ago
Honestly, no. The analogy I've been using amongst friends/family, is that "big tech" has gone nuclear. The Bomb has gone from being a hypothetical to a reality. And no matter how much we do or don't agree with this particular target/application, we have to be aware that there's no putting this genie back in the bottle, and this is going to be an option in all future "wars". It's a tortured and over-dramatic analogy, but I find it the easiest way to communicate the divide between not particularly wanting to defend this particular target, but still being uneasy that The Bomb even exists.
- TimMeade 6y ago
  That may be one of the best explanation I have heard yet. Excellent way of putting it.
- tpoacher 6y ago
  It's also a good analogy because you get to argue whether 'nuking' the enemy is worth introducing 'nukes' into the game in the first place.
threatofrain 6y ago
I would take Parler as a test case off the table, as per their CEO even their bank and payment providers, and law firms, and mail and text providers all cancelled on them. Are you going to turn into a cash business?
ionwake 6y ago
It feels quite cyberpunk and dystopic
bitwize 6y ago
How do you propose countering Trump's power to whip up anger and hate on the far right with his lies? COVID has taught me that single-minded commitment to human freedom is harmful in the long run, and that the curtailment of freedoms and exercise of power -- even absolute power -- is necessary to preserve the public good in certain situations. A dangerous demagogue like Trump, allowed to run loose on private platforms, presents a huge risk to those platforms and the nation itself.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  This is not going to age well.
wtfiswiththis 6y ago
He can step up to restart White House press briefings any time.

DanBC 6y ago

> Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power? Yes, absolutely. An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services, and now he's not president they're finally getting around to enforcing those contracts.

genidoi 6y ago
Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe. I don’t support trump in any shape or form, but if this mass de-platforming doesn’t make you the slightest bit uncomfortable, that in itself should make you a bit uncomfortable.
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  He's the President of the United States. He's free to speak to every media outlet in the world every day in the Press Room if he wants. He just chooses not to as that would make him accountable and it's easier to rant on Twitter instead of doing his job. The Gulag Archipelago is as much about the unchallenged silencing of free media outlets, opposition parties and growth of tyranny ("Yes communists have some fringe ideas but they won't really be that bad when they come to power"). FB, Twitter, YT have been banning all sorts of groups over the years, in Palestine for example - it's just more people are noticing it now.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  People seem intent on reliving the mistakes of the twentieth century. At this point, it’s become so blatant, I’m starting to doubt that it’s just out of ignorance.
  - est31 6y ago
    There is a saying that democracy has to reconfirm itself each generation. Both the left and the right hate democracy now. On college campuses, the idea gets increasingly popular that free speech is a harmful concept. This is not just an empty phrase. This generation is graduating and will one day hold the keys to power. Let alone the dystopian gang ruled crime infested places that they built during the BLM riots. On the right side of the political spectrum, you have the Capitol trespassers, pipe bomb layers, cop killers. I'm worried.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- oblio 6y ago
  > Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe. Honest question: when was this ever not the case for mass media?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- pbourke 6y ago
  Jesus, enough with the Gulag Archipelago references. Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. “Conservatives” were not. You are still free to engage in all manner of conservative speech on Twitter that does not call for violence against your ideological opponents.
  - krzyk 6y ago
    Did he really call for violence against his ideological opponents? I don't follow twitter, but it would be good to have some evidence.
    - Jeema101 6y ago
      It's not so much that he has intentionally incited violence - I don't actually think that's the case. It's that he's been engaging in political brinkmanship for some time now, and in the process become a spiritual leader to an extremist faction which caused violence. To allow him to continue to engage in that same brinkmanship after violence has already occurred is allowing him to continue inciting violence, unintentional as it may be.
  - genidoi 6y ago
    He was banned from everything from Shopify to Spotify. This was a weaponised, coordinated deplatforming. People have been banned on Twitter before, and in fact other state leaders tweet significantly worse: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784?s=21 https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784?s... This is about a small group of people coming together whilst collectively possessing significant power on the fabric of society and choosing to erase an individual.
    - pbourke 6y ago
      What do you suppose that example proves? If the account continues to post shit like that it should be banned too.
    - arcatech 6y ago
      It’s a large group of people. A large group of people all made the business decision that it’s better not to associate with Parler/Trump. That’s not coordinated deplatforming, that’s just a society making a decision.
eloisant 6y ago
It is true that Trump shouldn't have relied on social media that much, and used official channels for communication. But on the other hand, you can't deny that a few services became indispensable to get any kind of reach... So if we accept that those companies decide what content gets in or not, we accept that they control what content gets to be shown publicly or not.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  Exactly. Maybe he could have used the telex and fax machines, as that is the category where 'websites' 'blogs' and 'mailing lists' have been relegated to for a while now. I'm not a fan of the man but in practice nearly all non media framed public discourse happens on FB, YT, Twitter and a few tier 2 services. If the social media conglomerate decides to nix you, you are done with reaching the broad public directly.
krzyk 6y ago
> An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services So why wasn't he removed earlier? > now he's not president I don't know US system that well, but from what I heard he is still president and will step down in a week or two.
- detaro 6y ago
  Because they thought letting him stay was overall the better idea. Twitter added some rules around "world leaders" when they were pressured to give a reason: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/worldleaders2019.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/...
- ben_w 6y ago
  US government officials have accused him of incitement of insurrection, and are working to impeach him and remove him faster than scheduled.
- MrMan 6y ago
  Trump was very profitable for the media. But this shit is getting too real, and they know it, so now they go the opposite direction. In the absence of hate speech laws and some guidance to regulate social media to prevent mass psychosis, this kind of thing is expected.

kome 6y ago

> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments, not businesses. I fully agree. And let's not ignore that leaders of the free world are pretty shocked by what's happening. - German canceler, Angela Merkel: “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-dc9732268493a8ac337e03159f0dc1c9 https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-... - French minister, Bruno Le Maire: "Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary." https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-trump/bruno-le-maire-choque-que-ce-soit-twitter-qui-ferme-le-compte-de-donald-trump_4252977.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-... - Mexico president, Manuel Lopez Obrador: "‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse on the subject. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”"https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-leader-condemns-twitter-facebook-for-blocking-trump/2021/01/07/e454ed32-514f-11eb-a1f5-fdaf28cfca90_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-lea...

bcrosby95 6y ago

It's not just big tech. It's pretty much every company that has any sort of business ties with the movement. It's really a bad example to point out because this isn't a few monopolistic companies cutting off his voice. It's practically every company in existence.

user-the-name 6y ago
Shouldn't you be realising that saying that someone is "cutting off the voice" of the president of the United States by banning him from a website is more than a little bit ridiculous? There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  > There is no one on this planet who har a larger voice than him. Nobody has a meaningful voice unless it is amplified by mass media. That includes the President. Television and radio have increasingly (since at least the Bush years, got much worse with Obama, and continued with Trump) chosen to ignore Presidential press conferences and addresses they didn't feel like covering, or heavily edited them, provided them only with their commentary, etc. That's one reason why politicians have increasingly turned to social media!
  - wtfiswiththis 6y ago
    The fact that Trump stopped press briefings because he already favored using his personal Twitter account for presidential business is a problem for him, not us.
croon 6y ago
> It's not just big tech. It's pretty much every company that has any sort of business ties with the movement. [...] It's practically every company in existence. If all the courts (including your own judges) are silencing "your movement", your own AG is silencing you, the guy in charge of election security is silencing you, "all" media is silencing you, experts, fact checkers, law scholars, now most of your party, and not just big tec, but "practically every company in existence", etc etc, maybe you're not being silenced, but are simply full of [expletive] and everyone's fed up with that and you should stop spewing it and solve the problem for everyone.

jug 6y ago

It's a scary power for sure, given how centralized around a few services to have a voice that the Internet has become. Of course, there are more resilient solutions like Mastodon or even Darknet but they are geek solutions that the public are not aware of or care for. The discoverability of those from the websites Google Search, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok is basically zero. I think one problem for those services is that if they'd allow this until explicit government action, they'd risk being completely overrun by very vocal antidemocratic crowds of people. Twitter recently banned 70,000 QAnon accounts besides Trump and then they couldn't do that either. Hell, Twitter already struggles and the atmosphere over there right now, despite all this, is really not all that great. Going by Twitter, you'd sometimes think that extremist groups had like 30% of the public vote...

watwut 6y ago

Amazon destroyed competitor when it closed Parler after Parler repeatedly broke terms they signed is incredibly dishonest framing.

nobody9999 6y ago
>Amazon destroyed competitor when it closed Parler Parler and Amazon are not, and never have been competitors. Amazon does a lot of different things, but running a social media site isn't one of them.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  Frankly I'd go further and say that not even Twitter and Parler were competitors. Wasn't Parler a glorified WordPress comments section? That's all fine and well, but if I started a website and broke the TOS I doubt anybody would have wept for my losses in the same way. It's really odd seeing people conflate, or even manufacture, predominant socio-political ideologies for companies and then labelling them competitors when those made-up ideologies differ.
engineer_22 6y ago
I think it's a little more nuanced. Parler had some users who broke Parler's own TOS, and Parler was slow to react (problems of scale? victim of own success? Willfully slow to enforce? We don't know). Amazon acted swiftly, in light of a loosely connected civil disturbance (although Amazon's actions were not expressly a result of the riot, the timing is relevant).

shripadk 6y ago

> Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified Not justified at all. Nothing can justify censoring a sitting President and destroying a small competitor. America is on the wrong path. This I say as a observer of American politics. Big Tech has too much power in its hands now.

arcatech 6y ago
The President has not been censored.
- crmrc114 6y ago
  I mean sure, from the standpoint of he can still speak. But like I have mentioned elsewhere- I would like to see someone successfully get elected without a social media presence. Especially with COVID the town square is digital- I dont know that I can mentally treat twitter and others like little upstarts with no power. Remember when accounts were hacked and asked for payment in bitcoin? What would happen if those accounts were hacked and someone talked about launching nukes? You have to start asking if what happens on those platforms -REALLY- has no effect on the physical world. I would argue that their moderation actions can non-person a politician and ruin their career with little or no public input. I dont know what the solution is- but I dont feel confident in a democracy where six media companies and about four tech companies control all that I can see, hear and read. That does not make me feel confident in the fourth estate.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    Outside of tech, most people don't care about Twitter. If you were to ask a million people what their local Congressperson or Senator said on twitter, 999,999 of them wouldn't know that their legislator had a twitter account or the handle was. Twitter and Facebook's bans of Trump are only news because Trump relied on them so heavily. They're not the primary means of communication for politicians, nor have they ever been.
    - crmrc114 6y ago

rzz3 6y ago

As someone who works in “big tech”, I don’t think we should have this power, especially when so selectively and reactively applied. We’ve all already heard all of the debates and I don’t wish to rehash it all. I’ve heard a lot of great arguments on all sides of the issue (and there are more than two), but the purpose of my comment is just to say that opinions within our community are not uniform. Not many of us speak our minds about it, unless we agree with the mainstream perspective of “this is fine ”. I’d like to see more of a constitutional framework establishing some type of due process and equal access, personally. We’re currently the sole arbitrators of who is allowed to speak to the world and who is not. And for all those who say “they’re welcome to go use a different platform”, well they did, and look what happens. Apple, Google, and Amazon can simply destroy a community within minutes, and we all applaud because we detest this particular community.

shripadk 6y ago
Thank you for speaking out in this charged climate. You could have chosen to keep silent but you chose not to. So thank you.
peytn 6y ago
It’s no secret that we have this power. Furthermore, there are people who know that we have this power who are also experts in drumming up hate.
greatgirl 6y ago
So what's your solution then? Would you be in favour of democratising the workplace so the workers own and have a say in the company?
- rzz3 6y ago
  I’m not sure that would be a solution. And frankly, if we did that, I’m sure the majority of people would want to quickly ban the things they don’t like. And that’s certainly not what I want to do (the deplatforming), so I don’t see it as a solution. I imagine my views are probably in the minority, though we do have a lot of free expression (the concept, not just the amendment) proponents in our industry as well.

mattlondon 6y ago

But is it censoring though, vs just not letting them use their services? I don't visit facebook or twitter or apple sites at all, but I still see a lot of what Trump says in the news (e.g. BBC et al). Have Facebook/Twitter/Apple censored Trump when I still hear his views all the time? Have Facebook et al got a lot of "power" here when really they have changed nothing for people like me? Disclosure: I don't have any strong opinions on Trump or American politics in general.

speeder 6y ago
You believe you hear his views all the time. I am not from USA, and not a trump supporter, still been trying to figure out what is going on, and noticed some patterns. 1. Media loves taking stuff out of context, not just with Trump mind you. 2. Not only big tech is censoring Trump, but normal media too, for example more than once channels refused to air live presidential addresses, sometimes they aired but with comments, or they waited for a while and then aired it edited. I saw other day here in HN people saying BigTech kicking Trump off their platform was fine because he wouldn't be silenced, since he has the Whitehouse official system of contacting with the press... thing is, the press is now delibetarely ignoring him too, so you have a situation where both BigTech and Press is not letting his words through, isn't that censorship?
- eppp 6y ago
  So your argument is that private companies should be forced to amplify a person's speech? The genius of the first amendment is that yes you can spout whatever vile garbage you want but no one is forced to listen to you. It is also a form of speech to not reproduce someone else's speech.
  - speeder 6y ago
    I am not from USA so not talking in the legal sense of things. Still I must ask, alright, nobody is obliged to listen to someone, but what about the rights of those that WANT to listen? 70+ million people voted for Trump after all, is it right to prevent them from hearing Trump? He was also banned from e-mail plataforms too, so basically all his channels to talk with his voters are down, except normal mail, that was crippled a long time ago by the congress (normal mail has an absurd law where all new hires must have their pension pre-funded 50 years in advance... this is what caused all the mailing woes in US lately, wasn't necessarily Trump's fault as many claimed)

sanitycheck 6y ago

You seem to be making an argument to nationalise these companies? Or are you making an argument that private companies shouldn't be able to decide who they provide services to? There are thousands of better examples of Google etc having too much power than their eventual refusal to deal with the most famous and powerful man in the world, a man who can 100% rely on his every move being publicised in minute detail. It's a strange time for people to start caring about this stuff.

tjansen 6y ago
I think there can be a middle ground. One approach would be, if a company claims section 230 protections, it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >if a company claims section 230 protections No one claims section 230 protections. It applies to everyone and every service on the internet in the US. You can't "lose" those protections, they're just the law. And that law states (paraphrasing): You can't sue me for something a third person says. That's essentially it. You can't "qualify" for or "lose" that protection. And it applies to you and me and HackerNews and Facebook and Twitter and your github repo and your favorite recipe site and every other web site and Mastodon instance and Discord channel and mailing list and IRC channel and porn site and anywhere else that allows more than one person to share their thoughts. >it must have a fair and transparent process when blocking someone. And it must apply this process to everyone equally, with the possibility of an arbitrator. That's not part of the law either. And a good thing too. Section 230 (yes, I'm saying it again) says (paraphrasing): You can't be sued for something another person says. Full stop. No fairness is required, no balance, no transparency, none of that. Should the big social networking sites be regulated and reined in? Absolutely! But changing/repealing Section 230 won't do that. In fact, it would hurt everyone and the deep pocketed social media companies would be just about the only ones who could afford to fight all the lawsuits. We need to find a different way to fix this.

ben_w 6y ago

Should a president be allowed greater freedom of speech than a normal person? These companies have been censoring certain groups for ages. One of my exes who self-identifies as an anarcho-Communist has been angry with what she sees a Facebook’s anti-left political censorship for at least seven years; and if you see her censorship as justified given her politics, there’s also stuff like this: https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3936987.html https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3936987.html People have been begging for these companies to censor threats of violence for ages (meme is something like “Twitter: What changes would you like? Users: Remove the Nazis; Twitter: Timeline now scrolls sideways, likes are now called florps”) The consensus response until now has been that corporations are private and have the right to kick off whoever they want. When I have suggested that their power to do so needed to be constrained the way governments are and for similar reasons, I got a lot of flack for it. That said, I don’t have the American attitude to freedom of speech as an end in itself, rather I value it as an instrumental goal, so I’m a lot more comfortable with some censorship than many people on Hacker News, even though I still want as little as possible. As little as possible just isn’t “none” in my opinion.

js8 6y ago

May I suggest a compromise? If you only provide a forum, and give moderation power to users (block other users, select what they want), then let whatever speech happens there to happen. However, if you (as a forum provider, social network, whatever) select the content to be viewed and promoted (either using a proprietary algorithm or human discretion), or you are optimizing for engagement, then you are responsible for moderation failures and suspensions.

detaro 6y ago
So Twitter would have to have banned Trump years ago instead of coming up with a "world leader" exception? Would work.
- js8 6y ago
  Well, if Twitter shows a curated selection of tweets to all users, yes, they should have not selected Trump in it years ago. But if somebody wants to follow him privately, I don't see why he should be banned.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    This is what I want. A more advanced feature would be: Pick your own moderator. The system could essentially figure this out for you based on upvotes / downvotes, but a shortcut would be that if I "follow" someone, it means I generally want to see things that they like as well. Another feature: let me bang on the downvote or upvote button multiple times to tell the system how much I like or dislike something. Show me more or less or none at all of that topic/user/etc based on that. Finally and perhaps most importantly, I'd like to see comments and topics sorted by how much my own personal network of influencers rated them. I don't care that 100,000 idiots liked American Idol. I care how much the 100 people I followed hated it (so don't show it to me, ever). Some people don't like my idea because they say it will create an echo chamber. To them I say that it more closely models real life. In real life, I generally don't hang around with people who I disagree with all the time. My ideal system would insulate people from me if they disagree with me and me from them. Twitter must have a different goal.

rzwitserloot 6y ago

> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor Highly problematic. > We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon censor a sitting President What are you talking about? He's the president. If he has something to say, there are a million ways for him to get the message out. > But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments A government compelling a person (or a private company) to publish something is in violation of the law in many countries, often a constitutional law (Example: That violates the first amendment quite clearly, in the USA). I also think most folks would find that highly suspect. Bigger companies shutting out smaller ones is highly problematic, but then laws do exist to stop this (anti-trust laws). These probably need an update. Whatever update they get, if they prevent Parler's shutdown they went too far. I'm pretty sure that shutdown wasn't about 'eliminating' a competitor at all.

Thorentis 6y ago
The American obsession with the rights of private companies needs to end, especially when those companies serve the common good. I personally see open communication as a common good, and companies that we rely on to provide it should be expected to do so.
- eppp 6y ago
  The internet itself is the common good. Twitter isnt and Facebook certainly isnt.
  - legolas2412 6y ago
    What makes you do certain? The reach and minds share of FB and Twitter are unparalleled
    - kingnothing 6y ago
      This is nothing new. Media evolves. 20 years ago: The reach and minds share of Fox News and CNN are unparalleled 40 years ago: The reach and minds share of ABC and NBC are unparalleled 50 years ago: The reach and minds share of News Radio are unparalleled 70 years ago: The reach and minds share of New York Times and other papers are unparalleled 100 years ago: The reach and minds share of the town criers are unparalleled

Traster 6y ago

Maybe we should think about this in the opposite way - when a person tries overthrow the government they should be arrested. The problem isn't that people on twitter are getting banned from twitter from advocating/planning the murder of members of congress. It's that they're not getting arrested. If we actually had functioning law enforcement for this stuff then we could actually have a proper discussion about what legal content what should be moderated and how.

phendrenad2 6y ago
The law moves slowly. Angry mobs move quickly. Give it time. Just because the angry mob got there first, doesn't mean that the law isn't functional. I fully believe that people who broke the law will be tried, eventually.
- logifail 6y ago
  > The law moves slowly ..and [one would hope] carefully and [one would hope] according to well-understood rules. "She said something that really offends me" probably won't get you arrested, and almost certainly won't get you convicted; under the current climate it might well get you kicked off social media.

hahamrfunnyguy 6y ago

I am troubled by it, but has anything really changed? There have been mass purges of users before spam bots, accounts liked to the Islamic state, etc. Multiple hosting providers terminated Gab's services. Usually large companies don't take action like this until they are under public scrutiny and have something to loose. The mess the US is in right now can in some ways blamed on the way way it's democracy works: candidates can win elections with a plurality of the vote. This incentivizes highly partisan activities like gerrymandering and makes it more difficult for 3rd party to gain traction. Most states and localities have closed primaries, meaning you need to be registered with a party to vote for a candidate. This takes power away from the people and puts it in the hands of the parties. If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it.

nobody9999 6y ago
>If the US puts measures in place that disincentivize partisan politics, we'll see less of the activity that comes along with it. That's slowly changing ~15 states have non/bi-partisan redistricting commissions. A dozen or so states and localities have implemented Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Is it enough? No. And it never will be unless people all over the country stand up and demand it. It's not as hard as it sounds. Election laws are made by the states and election systems are run by each county. 26 states have ballot initiaves/referenda. All you need are enough signatures to get changes on the ballot. How many people voted for your state assembly person in 2018? For your state senator? You can go look it up. I'll wait. Not very many, right? Those are the people who make the election laws for the state. And how many people voted for your council member in your city/town/county? For your mayor/county executive? They set the rules for your local elections (sometimes the state has a say too, but not always). But in order to make changes like non-partisan redistricting and RCV and open primaries (although those aren't always so fabulous either, cf. California) and term limits and public funding of elections, etc. you need to pound on your elected representatives. And if even a few hundred people pester your state assembly person or city council member, it's likely you can get some movement on these initiatives.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified. Nope. There is no supporting evidence.

soneil 6y ago

Honestly, no. The analogy I've been using amongst friends/family, is that "big tech" has gone nuclear. The Bomb has gone from being a hypothetical to a reality. And no matter how much we do or don't agree with this particular target/application, we have to be aware that there's no putting this genie back in the bottle, and this is going to be an option in all future "wars". It's a tortured and over-dramatic analogy, but I find it the easiest way to communicate the divide between not particularly wanting to defend this particular target, but still being uneasy that The Bomb even exists.

TimMeade 6y ago
That may be one of the best explanation I have heard yet. Excellent way of putting it.
tpoacher 6y ago
It's also a good analogy because you get to argue whether 'nuking' the enemy is worth introducing 'nukes' into the game in the first place.

threatofrain 6y ago

I would take Parler as a test case off the table, as per their CEO even their bank and payment providers, and law firms, and mail and text providers all cancelled on them. Are you going to turn into a cash business?

ionwake 6y ago

It feels quite cyberpunk and dystopic

bitwize 6y ago

How do you propose countering Trump's power to whip up anger and hate on the far right with his lies? COVID has taught me that single-minded commitment to human freedom is harmful in the long run, and that the curtailment of freedoms and exercise of power -- even absolute power -- is necessary to preserve the public good in certain situations. A dangerous demagogue like Trump, allowed to run loose on private platforms, presents a huge risk to those platforms and the nation itself.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
This is not going to age well.

wtfiswiththis 6y ago

He can step up to restart White House press briefings any time.