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Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub
- atomashpolskiy 6y agoIt also shut down the account of the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V today. Seems like they are taking too much upon themselves lately, aren't they? UPD: Access has been restored.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoI just googled it and could open it in Twitter.
- amrrs 6y agoThis is absurd. I'd love to see Twitter shutting down Twitter's account because There are lots of Fake News spreading on Twitter!
- dimitrios1 6y ago"Fake news" isn't illegal. Piracy is.
- PrefixKitten 6y agoI find the notion of owning scientific knowledge kind of unsettling...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crawfordcomeaux 6y agoThis is because science has yet to prove ownership isn't a real concept.
- jtbayly 6y agoThere's plenty of illegal stuff on Twitter, too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoThundering voice from the heavens above: THOU SHALT NOT LIE! edit: just cited THE supralegal authority here, regarding fake nyuz...
- xamuel 6y agoIt is a common misconception that "Thou shalt not lie" is a divine commandment from God. You're probably thinking of "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16), which is more specific.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoThe specifics must have been lost in translation on their way to me ;-)
- pretendscholar 6y agoI wish I could read ancient aramaic because I'm pretty sure they don't literally mean its fine to lie about anything that doesn't involve someone living nearby.
- ska 6y agoI suspect even in the translation, neither "neighbor" nor "false witness" are meant in the way you are inferring. It should be probably read something like : don't swear to untrue things about your countrymen.
- pretendscholar 6y agoThat's what I meant but I could have been less terse. It probably refers to the tribe of the Israelites so clan is probably closer than countrymen.
- ska 6y agoAh, fair I misread you.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoYou mean, sharing is illegal unless done in a controlled way?
- tyingq 6y agoNot a fan of "pirated" as the descriptive word for what Sci-Hub does. I'm sure some of it fits that description. On the other hand, a fair amount of these papers are funded with taxpayer dollars, and shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls in the first place.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ABeeSea 6y agoThe chairs at the DMV are also paid with taxpayer dollars. I’d be arrested if I tried to walk out the door with one.
- superkuh 6y agoIf you took a photo of one of the chairs and looked at it at home you'd be just fine though. You're mixing up theft and copyright infringement.
- typenil 6y agoThat's totally the same thing - because downloading a paper destroys the original copy.
- rektide 6y agoLet's talk about the purpose of these things, chairs & papaers. The purpose of a chair is to enhance the space it resides in by enabling folks to rest/sit in the chair. The purpose of a paper is to document science, such that others can see that science, replicate it, learn from it, extend it; the purpose of a paper is to present science such that we can all beget yet more science to happen.
- kache_ 6y agoYou wouldn't download a chair from the DMV
- jenwkejnwjkef 6y ago
- tehjoker 6y ago"Counterfeit goods"? Sci-Hub is giving us the real deal unlike these for-profit publishers.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoYup. I don't get that. SciHub doesn't offer counterfeit, it offers the actual, real PDFs, grabbed from the publishers' own servers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rektide 6y agoWhat had Sci-Hub talked about on their feed? Who followed it & can report in? This seems like the ban may well have been because of who Sci-Hub is, not what they said. Which is an interesting complication to this story of what content/who companies opt to host.
- ehsankia 6y agoAccording to the linked article, most of the tweets were about open science issue, though a few tweets may have had a link to Sci-Hub’s website. The latter probably used as an excuse to ban them. I just checked and the pirate bay for example has a perfectly fine twitter account with a great handle (@tpb), and their profile even links to the website. Not sure if they have any tweets linking to their website though.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoTwitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between Elbakyan and Elsevier et al. Few people would have issues if Twitter shut down the Sci-Hub account after they received a valid court order, but a private monopolist cannot be trusted to be the arbiter of what is permitted speech.
- spoonjim 6y agoWhat’s your opinion on their takedown of @realDonaldTrump?
- HarryHirsch 6y agoThe same. If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly, and if he isn't a private entity has no issue determining what a politician can say. As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace. Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with political expression, which is a constitutional right. A monopolist like Twitter has no business interpreting the constitution, the issue would have to see its day in court.
- michaelmior 6y agoWhy would Twitter request a court to issue an injunction to remove him from the platform that they own and control? They're fully able to do some without an injunction so I'm not sure any court would even deal with the case. IANAL
- wutbrodo 6y agoIt's not about Twitter's ability to ban users it's about enabling them avoid a substantial expansion of their moderation responsibilities. Twitter considers it a positive thing to have transparent and relatively equitably-applied rules, and this is an obvious positive for its users, and society in general (given how central Twitter has become to national discourse). Capricious one-off expansions that are difficult to justify generally (or that would require massive increases in moderation that pretty much everyone would hate) are the last thing Twitter wants.
- dankboys 6y agoThey’re a private company, Sci-Hub has to make their own social media service
- superkuh 6y agoYes, that's a legit option. But it does not mean that what twitter has done here is not very, very wrong. So bad in fact that individual humans should reflect on it and decide if they want to continue supporting twitter themselves by using it. This is the inevitable end of any popular centralized incorporated means of communication.
- rcoveson 6y agoCan't host it with Google or Amazon, though, as those companies are also willing to take you down before any injunction. DNS providers will also take you out if there's social pressure to do so; see the recent GoDaddy action against AR15.com. Not sure how you work around that. As for Internet connection, there was another recent action by an ISP which blocked access to Twitter. So you're not necessarily safe with your ISP either. I think the only story I haven't heard yet is a landlord evicting its tenants for hosting objectionable content. But without any of the above services, it doesn't really matter. All that said, it's still possible to stay accessible even if your content isn't legal. The important point is that legal but broadly unacceptable content is never safe. You can be kicked out by any provider at any layer, and getting kicked out once serves as a signal to all the other providers at that layer that they are expected to do the same. It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there. They don't need law enforcement on their side, they'll run you out all the same.
- generalizations 6y agoI like that analogy. Also read on here recently that it's super hard to knock facebook offline because they own all the pieces, even their own domain registrar. Now I've been wondering how hard it is to set up my own domain registrar.
- jolmg 6y agoTo see the tweets: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub I should donate more to the Internet Archive. I hate how so much history can just disappear at a whim if it weren't for them.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoHow can you see Tweets there? When I try to open some past snapshots, they just render ajaxy "Something went wrong". (I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap.)
- jolmg 6y agoI see tweets here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201225111818/https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub https://web.archive.org/web/20201225111818/https://twitter.c... I use Chromium for this because on Firefox I have the Referer header disabled and that causes the WaybackMachine to return a 498 HTTP status on an internal API call, but otherwise I see no issues. Images: https://ibb.co/1mRqyvW https://ibb.co/1mRqyvW https://ibb.co/F8TbCLv https://ibb.co/F8TbCLv https://ibb.co/P1xZwZT https://ibb.co/P1xZwZT > I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place I'm sure it must have taken some effort by the IA team, but Twitter is a pretty important source to archive, so I'm not as surprised because of that. They simply rock and can be expected of greatness. The infinite scroll works, but zooming on images doesn't. That's a bit of a shame because Twitter clips them, and they can sometimes contain important content. Loading replies also doesn't work. Still way better than nothing.
- userbinator 6y agoI'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap Up until a few months ago, you could still get the old UI if you used a suitable UA header, and until more recently, the "plain HTML" mobile.twitter.com version was available. But with those shutdown, they are definitely trying to make it hard to consume their content in anything other than their "approved" way, which makes one wonder...
- abnry 6y agoI don't support piracy. So I don't support Sci-hub. But I believe that publishers are bilking the public and that publicly funded research should be made freely available. The real way to fix this is to disrupt the reputational incentives academics (and deans supporting this) have to keep publishing in these journals. For some reason, I think this is an unpopular opinion on HN.
- cwkoss 6y agoFor most academic researchers, publishing is a net cost: they aren't getting royalties when people pay to read their work. "Piracy" of these documents does not deprive the creators of anything. The only entities it hurts are the organizations of questionable social value who exist by gatekeeping this information.
- CryptoGhost 6y agoNo one is putting the proverbial gun to academic researchers heads to use these publishers.
- harry8 6y agoYes they absolutely are. Decoupling academia from this horrendous publishing parasites is an ongoing project that has taken a vast amount of effort from a vast number of academics and continues. You have metrics. You pulish with the parasites, they're bigger than with some open-source journal nobody has heard of. Your career progression relies on getting published by the "most prestigious" journal. You want your work read. Everybody in your field read parasite journal A, there isn't a good substitute. You're stuffed. You don't get to decide. You're one author. the head of school had decided for you. I can go on. The parasitic publishers are /hated/ by everybody. They provide nothing at all of value. They have been a very successful example of rent-seeking through the puchase of prestige titles then jacking up the subscription prices. You underestimate the level of hatred accross the political spectrum from socialist to libertarian of these parasitic (insert metaphor here). The gun they have to the head isn't perfect. They will go but they continue to extract a vast amount of rent on the way down.
- dickbar 6y agoThis move is bold and refreshing. I think Facebook and Amazon should also be taking action (assuming sci hub is using AWS and people are posting links to it on FB and organizing groups). It’s only fair that, in case of breach of any law, regardless of where it comes from, that same measures be applied in each and every case. I’m sure HN would agree given what has transpired over the last week. Edit: I missed to include CloudFlare and others as well. They shouldn’t be providing DNS services to anyone who is breaking any laws.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoThey're private companies, they are not required to uphold the law. We have police and courts which are paid to do that. I can understand removing content that would make them liable in front of a court (as publishers) - anything else they remove it's censorship and I don't like it.
- jenwkejnwjkef 6y agoSci-hub is not breaking any laws. They are accused of breaking laws. Who gave Twitter, in your eyes, the power to act as a judge?
- inglor_cz 6y agoJudge, jury and executioner at the same time.
- Robotbeat 6y agoCopyright infringement (especially when arguably in the public interest, even if illegal) and inciting violence are not even close to comparable. Different moral universe. Different legal ramifications as well.
- paul_f 6y agoI wish Facebook and Twitter would ban everything I don't like. That seems healthy.
- tengbretson 6y agoI'm not very familiar with Sci-Hub, but I doubt they were uploading pirated content to be hosted on Twitter, so what would their violation be? Incitement to commit copyright violation?
- bondarchuk 6y agoAh yes and torrent sites don't host any content either :P
- ska 6y agoNot really the same thing unless they were linking to particular copyright works you could find elsewhere, is it?
- cwkoss 6y agoIn a just world, any organization which tries to prevent the free exchange of scientific information would be dismantled.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- young_unixer 6y ago100th reminder to stop using Twitter and to stop acting like it's an acceptable medium of communication.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- specktr 6y agoWhat’s your alternative method to reach a mass audience?
- bob1029 6y agoProduce something of actual intrinsic value and the word usually gets out on its own. Find smaller communities that are more focused on what you actually care about. Targeting the entire internet as your desired audience is the root cause of most of our troubles today.
- carapeco 6y agoThat's a lot of wishful thinking
- gpanders 6y agoIs our collective imagination really so stunted that we cannot conceive of what the world was like before Twitter existed?
- harry8 6y agoThe telephone is terrible in many ways too. Not using it or something very much like it is not much of an option even if we can conceive of the world before Alexander Graham Bell stole the idea abusing the patent office to do it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoWhy does everyone feel the need to reach a mass audience?
- breck 6y agoIt's time. #AbolishCopyright. #AbolishPatents. #EndImaginaryPropertyLaws.
- bArray 6y agoI for one am glad that our new moral enforcers are keeping us safe from the possibility of free academic knowledge.
- CobrastanJorji 6y agoMoral and legal are different. I think Sci-Hub is ethical. I'm under no illusions that this somehow makes it legal. Sci-Hub explicitly bills itself as a "pirate website." Twitter's rules explicitly ban both copyright violation and illegal activities. Therefore Sci-Hub is violation of Twitter's rules. Twitter may well be very selective in their enforcement, but the fact that Sci-Hub is violating Twitter's rules is not in doubt, is it?
- garaetjjte 6y agoDid Sci-Hub Twitter account shared copyrighted material actually?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- orionblastar 6y agoWhat about The Pirate Bay account? Should it be banned as well?
- sebmellen 6y agoFor that matter, what about the Pirate Party?
- harry8 6y agoAnd every single person advocating civil disobedience. From legalize pot on. Which countries' laws? It's kind of illegal in civilized countries to decapitate homosexuals. Will twitter ban this account now: https://twitter.com/ksamofaen?lang=en https://twitter.com/ksamofaen?lang=en They're kind of for it. Anyway as Matt Levine points out everything is securities fraud nowadays so when any of these decisions burn the share price even a bit, they'll get a class action to deal with. Not sure that's the right way to deal with this sort of thing at all but here we are.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agothey could sneak it in now because it'll get drowned out by all the other news, and the applause they get for "cracking down on nazis". but neither are good news for free speech. I'm glad twitter purges alt-right and Q accounts but then why use it as an opportunity to also silence a platform that is the biggest hit since the first time a human rights lawyer uttered "Open Access". pretty glad I left twitter in 2017. I still read twitter via other people's list (those I used to follow) and via searches on nitter. If you know a great list you still have doom scrolling. But the good thing: when I get too angry (or even too much in agreement with the OP), there is no way to share it with the world. This is both frustrating (in the moment), but literally has no downsides. It has never been once that I woke up the next morning regretting I hadn't already shared whatever my opinion was on literally any subject earlier. The same platform shapes news today. Literally any subject there are weekly instances where a journo got their story through some "influencer or thought leader". Elon Musk tweeted about Signal and the number of downloads increase within 1 day five-fold. Story is in the NYT and international news. Twitter is a surreal place that shapes way too much the news-cycle in partisan ways. Everyone complains about news being divisive but forgetting where the division comes from - there is simply no way a leftist journalist will have many followers from the right and vice versa. It's been like this forever but twitter (and all of social media) amplified this a million fold. Blame journalism for sure but in the same sentence also damn these individuals requesting features that "drive engagement". How the actual F should an algorithm drive engagement when there is no way of really telling what that engagement will cause. Twitter judged from history has never done the right thing when it could have been up to them. They always waited until enough damage had been done to justify what should be "ongoing housekeeping". [1] https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592 https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592
- jonplackett 6y agoMeanwhile they’re still hosting all sorts of accounts of hackers, jail breakers and many people obviously breaking the law. It’s a slippery slope and they’ve started slipping. Now how do you stop?
- bob33212 6y agoYou can't, someone will always be complaining about "X didn't get banned, buy Y did". The only solution is for Twitter to say "You all are right, our moderation policy isn't fair it leans to the left more than the right, but we think Twitter is a great product that provides a lot of value. If you disagree and want to leave, we understand"
- dylan604 6y agoWhich is ironic since it is the right that always wants to shut down things like art/film/music/etc that they object. The gaslighting is ridiculous.
- dmitrygr 6y agoDid you enjoy the party? Everyone cheered Twitter when they started taking down accounts, sure that it would never affect them. Everyone ignored the warnings that it is a very slippery slope. Well, after a fun party, the bill is due.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoIt is likely not up to Twitter but rather DMCA related.
- lucb1e 6y agoThen wouldn't it say so?
- noncoml 6y agoInstead of arguing who, when and why should Twitter ban someone, we should be trying to find a way to stop depending on Twitter, FB and Google for our voices to be heard. Banning Trump may seem like a good idea in vacuum, but it's a slippery slope. And before you say that the cases are different, my point is that it shouldn't be up to Twitter to decide. By supporting Trump's ban, we support Twitter to be the arbitrator of free speech. We either have to treat Twitter as a private company, they can do what even the fuck they want, and hence we shouldn't have any saying, or treat it a public utility in which case only a judge can decided who gets banned and who doesn't We cannot have it both ways, based on what we thing suits better our believes at the time.
- splistud 6y agoThey are a public company (private in the sense I know you mean it) and should be treated as such. They are a public company that publishes certain opinions by allowing individuals who are willing to espouse those opinions access, while not allowing others. They are a public company that blocks other opinions from being heard (on other platforms) in association with other technology giants, by removing the ability for other private or public corps any access to meaningful internet services unless they do not stay in the opinion lanes the giants are comfortable with. They are a public company that is using their position and status to shape public discourse in the United States, and they should absolutely be treated as such. Here's hoping.
- Funes- 6y agoIt's funny. If a direct popular vote was held on making publicly-funded research freely available, it would pass by a staggering margin. Yet here we are, many easily-solvable issues ignored by government officials later, pretending representative democracy is a valid form of democracy.
- swebs 6y agoIf a direct popular vote was held promising voters $100,000, it would also pass by a huge margin. Probably every year.
- mandelken 6y agoI doubt that. Giving out (free) money indiscriminately will not immediately pass a direct popular vote. A good case is the Swiss referendum on universal basic income a few years ago that was voted out. And the Swiss have the money to pull it off if they wish.
- wolco5 6y agoTwitter promoting the open web again.
- at_a_remove 6y agoTwitter flexed, everyone flinched. Expecting more flexing is where I am. They say the slippery slope is a fallacy, but I am starting to think of that as a reflex saying when someone gets caught shoving the Overton Window.
- guerrilla 6y agoSlippery slope is a fallacy when no evidence that the slope is actually slipper is presented. If someone were to, for example, highlight unchecked incentives Twitter has to further censor then that'd be a valid argument.
- at_a_remove 6y agoWell, the incentive can be as tiny as "I don't like them." Recall Cloudflare's CEO waking up "in a bad mood."
- koolk3ychain 6y agoI hate that I have to preface this, but I'm a democrat who voted for Biden and doesn't question the outcome of the election. That said, our society does not need this kind of gerrymandering in our online discourse. People need to forget politics for a second and realize the true harm companies like this are inflicting by effectively playing god.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoI think the message of holding social media accountable for the harm it causes everybody is being drowned out by the hyperbolic statements like "effectively playing god". They are not playing god. They own a platform, they are determining who can and cannot speak on that platform. That's the same thing every news paper, internet forum, email server, BBS, public bulletin board, or really any publishing of any kind has done since the invention of publishing. Twitter is not part of the government, and it does not have a monopoly on internet communication. Hell, it doesn't even charge for its services. You are not entitled to use their platform. If you are disgusted and disappointed in social media for their behavior, that's perfectly reasonable! There are things you can do about it! you can refuse to use their service, refuse to recommend it to friends, promote competitors, etc. What you cannot do is pretend that just because they are a large wealthy organization you have some kind of right to use their platform to say whatever you want.
- lliamander 6y agoYou are not entitled to use a platform, but there are plenty of reasons why a platform may be liable for kicking you off. There's the obvious case if they should discriminate against users based on a protected class. Platforms have also been sued for things like tortuous interference and deceptive practices as a consequence of deplatforming users. If a user engages in activity that is either clearly illegal or contrary to clear and sensible Terms of Service, removing them is obviously a fine and good thing. Outside of those circumstances though, I would not take it as a given that there is no recourse if a user is deplatformed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lovecg 6y agoThis is eyebrow raising but hardly the news to lose any sleep over. If for example Google were to unilaterally purge sci-hub from its search results (for “greater good”, not as a result of however questionable but legal-at-this-point takedown request) that would be a serious escalation.
- oytis 6y agoReally, why can't US and/or EU government allocate a modest sum from the budget to establish public journals and solve the problem forever. This system seems so obviously broken.
- d100 6y agopg: "Twitter made a mistake in banning Sci-Hub." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1349771657485955074 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1349771657485955074 To say the least.
- 2ion 6y agoWho cares about Twitter anymore? Telegram has more active users than this minor blogspam outlet :)
- djrogers 6y agoAnd yet there are still accounts for torrent sites (@tpb is alive and well last I heard) and other sites that allow for the distribution of copyrighted material. Something is fishy here, and I really really really don't see the motivation for Twitter to have done this by itself. If this were part of a sweeping crackdown on accounts that promote 'piracy' it'd make sense, but it's not. Feels more like "a board member has a friend who made a phone call" kind of thing.
- Triv888 6y agoYeah they really pick and choose what they ban based on "personal opinion".
- brutal_chaos_ 6y agoTwitter is helping the argument that platforms are to be content moderators. This kills 230. This will entrench Twitter as one of the few social media services capable, due to the need to moderate at scale.
- vlmutolo 6y agoIt’s funny — I found this link a few days ago and now it seems like it applies here. 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... It’s a summary of how section 230 works and is worded. The tone of the piece is overly hash and critical of its readers (prompting me unnecessarily to write this paragraph), but it raises some good points, and I was surprised by more than one of the clarifications it made. Basically, as it applies here, I don’t think Twitter moderating its content to remove SciHub goes against Section 230. My understanding is that it’s specifically covered by 230.
- adolph 6y agoI'm not saying the article is totally wrong, but at least one of the studies they linked to is Internet industry funded (NetChoice: "Described by Politico as tech's most aggressive lobbying presence in Washington D.C."), and authored by one "Michael Masnick" which is the same name as the author of the Techdirt article and also the name of Techdirt's founder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techdirt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techdirt So, until something is litigated to the point of SCOTUS precedent, I think most things are at the level of "that's just like, your opinion, man."
- guerrilla 6y agoCreating a giant barrier to entry for competition?
- brutal_chaos_ 6y agoYes, because of the tooling that will be an upfront requirement and cost. However, as pointed out elsewhere, much litigation is still needed to really understand the extent of 230 and thus, "this is like my own opinion, man."
- 1337biz 6y agoGreat, we need more of that! With politicans it is easy to hide behind partisan idealogy to justify that everything is fine. The more regular, relatively apolitical accounts are getting banned, the more people realize that something is wrong with the way Twitter acts.
- 49531 6y agoI think the general discourse around high profile account banning raises some interesting questions. I've seen a lot of people in my (generally liberal) social bubble carry the line that Twitter, as a private corporation, has the right to ban accounts for whatever reason they see fit. While technically this is true, should it be? Is there a threshold where a service becomes more of a public good than a private enterprise? I think a lot of us would argue that making ISPs into publicly owned utilities would be beneficial for users. I think perhaps a legislative approach to monopoly should be nationalizing rather than breaking up. Monopolies can be valuable for consumers if their claws are trimmed.
- bob1029 6y agoMonopolies are wonderful if used responsibly. Having 1 standard way to do something across the board can solve entire universes of problems. Interstate highway system, electrical grid, internet, etc. all fall very cleanly into that bucket. Splitting up a technology company like Amazon or Google would probably just make matters worse over the long haul. Instead of 1 obvious regulatory target you would wind up with several and this creates more shadowy areas for perverse incentives to grow like mold. Just look at how splitting up ATT has played out. It ultimately re-aggregated into more-or-less the same monster but with even more power and influence than in the 80s. If ATT would have been nationalized instead of split up, I'd have a hard time believing we wouldn't have better internet access on average today.
- bgilroy26 6y ago>Interstate highway system, electrical grid, internet, etc. all fall very cleanly into that bucket Insurance is another highly networked product that benefits from monopoly The insurance companies of the 19th and 20th centuries were boons to society because their local buckets of money could be invested in local businesses and spent (practically as a donation) on advertising at the minor league baseball diamond or the church bulletin The sooner we mitigate the loss of those good effects, the sooner We can benefit from the efficiency of insurance monopolies whose risk pools will be as large as is practicable rather than driven by historical accidents
- 6y ago
- hetspookjee 6y agoIirc Twitter was really close to going down before Trump's election brought it back to life. I'm guessing Twitter will be back to that state in some time.
- thordenmark 6y agoDue to Twitter's impact on society, not just the US but the world, they are de facto the public square. Not unlike the Gutenberg Press - and when you read about the impact that had at first on society the parallels are remarkable. The defense of "they're a private company and can ban who they want" becomes less and less convincing.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Due to Twitter’s impact on society, not just the US but the world, they are de facto the public square. I disagree, they are more like an automatically customized newspaper. > Not unlike the Gutenberg Press Agreed, not unlike the Gutenberg Press. Books and newspapers also are not “the public square”, and we don’t allow people to commandeer presses to get their message out against the will of the onwers of presses. We did something loosely like that with the public airwaves, via the Fairness Doctrine, but its worth noting that the same ideological faction who not only objected to that as a totalitarian infringement of the First Amendment at the time, but who used the spector that kind of thing on the Internet (even though the actual rules they were opposing proposed nothing of the kind) as an argument against Open Internet regulations up through, well, the debate over the desirability of Net Neutrality that is still active, are exactly the faction—often the same individuals—complaining that private actors are choosing not to relay their speech today.
- 737min 6y agoThis really seems like an overreaction that is overshadowed by weightier events. Hope they reconsider..
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoThey’ll move over to Parlor I guess.
- CapitalistCartr 6y agoGoDaddy booted AR15.com, it's becoming clear the FAANG companies are flexing their power. If you're not on the corporate approved list, get across the tracks. I'm appalled at the extremist stuff, such as Parler hosted, but this path is lined with primroses.
- spothedog1 6y agoGoDaddy is a FAANG?
- selectout 6y agoFlywheel A2 AccuWeb Nexcess GoDaddy
- stevespang 6y agoBig Mistake Dorsey, I have deleted my twitter account and will encourage my followers to do the same.
- kgin 6y agoIt is very surprising to see this happen without an order from a court or law enforcement.
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoThis is the world the fools who cheered when Trump was banned from twitter and when parler was banned from all clouds desired.