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Twitter suspends the account of Venezuela's new National Assembly
- joemazerino 6y agoThose who celebrated Trumps ban off Twitter will quickly see how the tables can turn. What is worse is that I can't come up with a suitable answer to the Twitter censorship problem. Regulate? Remove 230?
- whitepaint 6y agoJust waiting will do. Let the free markets decide and please, for the love of god, don't involve governments. They are already stupidly powerful, let's not give them more of it ourselves.
- amalantony06 6y agoFree markets cannot work without some oversight from the government - esp for the protection of rights of individuals against monopolies. Unfortunately the biggest consumer tech giants (Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft etc) have turned into 1 giant monopoly (since they collude illegally, as numerous news leaks have shown). The only way to truly protect the rights of the individual would be for the government to step in at this moment to put big tech in it's place. Unfortunately I have very little confidence that it'd actually happen. Esp since the newly elected government in the US seems firmly on the side of big tech (political contributions and what not). Failing government intervention, I fear a technological dystopia is not too far away in the future, if not already here. The other alternative ofc would be for individuals to take back control by moving out of these platforms towards their own personal websites with custom email and RSS feeds.
- axaxs 6y agoI honestly don't see Twitter lasting much longer. They'll ban and woke mob their way to halving their user base. Once the mob finally has their safe space, investors will let them know how much that's worth.
- edoceo 6y agoIf it's less toxic wouldn't it more valuable?
- axaxs 6y agoInvestors typically want users and growth. It doesn't look good to be declining, no matter how you spin it. And toxicity is in the eye of the beholder, generally.
- dx87 6y agoDepends on if it was actually toxic, or just full of people who want it to be toxic so they have something to fight against. I recently read a book by Alan Watts, and he said that one thing that liberal and conservative morality police have in common is that they don't actually want things to improve things, it's just the justification they use to try and control people. If either group were to "win", they'd just find some other cause to be upset about.
- tjalfi 6y agoWhat's the name of the book? It sounds like an interesting read.
- dokem 6y agoAll the woke mob knows is anger and destruction. Leave them together alone and they'll turn on each other. This is a documented phenomena at this point.
- monadic3 6y agoIt's incredibly difficult to get anyone who isn't a celebrity banned effectively from Twitter.
- kmeisthax 6y agoTwitter was a far better experience before right-wingers discovered how to use it. After that, any sort of political discussion on the platform became an inexorable shouting match drawn out over months. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that left-wingers have learned and employed the same tactics since then. I care less about that problem because they do not have the same institutional support that Donald Trump used to enjoy. Remember: Twitter bent over backwards to make exceptions to their own rules to keep Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone on their platform. Hell, they even exempted him from their repeat infringer policy that the DMCA mandates they have. If January 6th hadn't happened, he'd still be tweeting, and Twitter would still be coming up with new policies and arguments for why Donald Trump should remain on their platform.
- monadic3 6y agoIt's a corporate decision. Why invest any energy in an emotional response? There's no role any of us play in these events.
- burnte 6y agoRemoving 230 would lead to exponentially more bans, as Twitter would be liable for anything users said. Regulation? Well, do you want the government to force you to allow me to put political signs on your lawn? Same thing. Twitter is private property, they can kick you off if they want.
- hirundo 6y ago> I can't come up with a suitable answer to the Twitter censorship problem Protocols over platforms. Get to a critical mass in a blogging protocol such that posts can be shared between platforms and apps that each moderate, or don't, according to their own needs. The power of Twitter is in their silo. When enough of us de-silo they lose their power.
- NoOneNew 6y agoI love how in other threads the past 2 weeks, folks were considering the trump ban a one time, extreme thing that wouldn't happen again. Heres the thing, what if Biden decides to strengthen consumer privacy rights? Who will lose the most out of it? The same folks who are now controlling popular narrative. "You dont want to end up like Trump, do you?" Think about that. How hard is it for them to propagate anti-Biden rhetoric now? Twitter has free reign of changing people's opinion by Twitter declaring what is true and what is disinformation.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoWhen they started the warning labels on tweets three or four months ago, it seemed inevitable that it would escalate in this direction. It's happening even faster than I expected, though.
- kmeisthax 6y agoThis problem has been festering for four years: Twitter deliberately carved out exceptions for "world leaders" that, in practice, applied to Trump and Trump alone because they really liked having @realDonaldTrump on their platform, even though he was flagrantly breaking their rules. Trump said things on Twitter that I could not. The best thing I could see going forward would be a legal requirement for online platforms that broadcast content to others to apply their moderation rules even-handedly. This could be effectuated by either banning ToS terms that allow arbitrary and capricious moderation; or by reducing the scope of CDA 230 immunity to prohibit carve-outs for specific individuals, in the same way that DMCA 512 immunity goes away when you start rejecting legally valid counternotices or ignoring repeat infringers (which, BTW, they also did for Trump).
- amalantony06 6y agoThe simplest no-brainer answer to the censorship problem is for everyone to own their personal websites with custom email and RSS feeds so that friends and family can "follow" you. Nobody can censor you on your own website can they? ;)
- bitwize 6y agoWe will continue celebrating the removal of abusive assholes from platforms which would otherwise serve to facilitate their abuse. The duly elected government of a country is a different matter entirely.
- xhkkffbf 6y agoIt's all Jack Dorsey's world. We just live in it.
- Reedx 6y agoI don't think he's really in control. Jack's world would be decentralized Twitter, Signal and Bitcoin. That's what he's pushing for and putting resources into.
- armenarmen 6y agoStill CEO isn’t he?
- paulpauper 6y agonot quite true. Jack has personally overseen some of the bannings for high profile people. I think he def. played a role in trump being banned
- bitwize 6y agoOne of the things that came out was that Trump's permaban came about as a result of demands from employees, to which Jack eventually capitulated.
- rubyist5eva 6y agoJack is still the CEO, and based on the leaked conference calls from a few days ago - he's very much in control. The guy is a complete egomaniac.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoI'm open to the idea that on a personal level he'd like for Twitter as it exists today to die.
- neom 6y agoTrue, US didn't recognize the National Assembly, but many countries (Lima Group) didn't accept it... Canada for example formally recognized Juan Guaidó as President of the National Assembly over a year ago.
- mainstreem 6y agoThe US did recognize Juan Guaido as President https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/trump-recognizes-juan-guaido-as-president-of-venezuela/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/trump-recognizes-juan-guaido-a...
- mainstreemm 6y agothe USA also formally recognized Guaido as President under Trump https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/trump-recognizes-juan-guaido-as-president-of-venezuela/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/trump-recognizes-juan-guaido-a...
- gord288 6y agoDon’t you think that the main reason Canada et al recognized Guaidó, was precisely because he was the Americans’ favoured choice? You’re really not making the point you think you are making.
- neom 6y agoI wasn't making a point. I was stating a fact.
- paulpauper 6y agoThere are two types of twitter suspsnesions: automated suspensions due to reports, which can be appealed irrevocable suspensions at the discretion of twitter staff I suspect this is the former. If an account gets enough reports, twitter's algos will automatically suspend it. The account owner then has the option to appeal it.
- mc32 6y agoDid the state department issue an announcement or ask Twitter to do this? Otherwise Twitter is interfering in foreign diplomacy and governments, be they legal, illegal, authoritarian or democratic. Twitter should not be making these calls. This is a decision for the State Department to make.
- dragonwriter 6y agoTwitter is exercising free speech rights, the same as when it suspended Trump's account. People need to stop acting like Twitter is supposed to act as an organ of the US government.
- redwine11 6y agoNeed to lose section 230 protection then. Can't be an editorial and have liability protection.
- borski 6y agoThey aren’t editorializing; they are arguably trying to remove potential liabilities from their service. If you walk into my bar and start screaming racist nonsense, I am well within my rights to ask you to leave the bar, and I do not have to let you back in. That doesn’t also suddenly make me liable for the nonsense you spewed.
- redwine11 6y agoCorrect because you could be potential liable if you did nothing, right now they have no liability and the ability to have editorial control.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Need to lose section 230 protection then. Can't be an editorial and have liability protection. The entire point of section 230 is to enable editorial control so long as you aren't the content creator/submitter without the kinds of civil liability tied to “publisher” status otherwise, for both platforms and users on those platforms who are empowered to act in ways which have editorial impact. And a one-sentence “you can't do X and Y” isn't really a substantive argument against Section 230.
- chmod775 6y agoTwitter will keep going until they're on the same level as Habbo Hotel. A medium where you can't communicate with your (political) adversaries has greatly reduced value even less relevance. It's also kind of boring.
- ashish1521 6y agoWhy is Twitter so aggressive with the suspensions these days, I mean there were such incidents in the past too
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoThe Capitol riots probably spooked them into upping the strictness of their enforcement.
- dominotw 6y agoBeing a good boy hoping current admin doesn't bring down the antitrust hammer.
- bszupnick 6y agoI agree with other answers here, but as a pushback, maybe it's not Twitter but rather the press and spotlight on it? There was an obvious "bump" after the insurrection, but I wonder if it reverted to it's mean and now we're just focused on that metric as we weren't before.
- im3w1l 6y agoImagine a curve. On the x-axis is amount of censorship. On the y-axis is opposition. A slippery slope corresponds to a flat part of the curve, where a large increase in censorship causes a small increase in opposition. Any policy in the middle of the slippery-slope is not stable. Political alliances are easiest to form advocating either side of it. In this case there are few people who want Trump banned but think banning Venezuela's National Assembly is a step too far.
- sschueller 6y agoGreat, is the US back at over throwing foreign governments again? I was hopeful this would finally stop.
- orange_tee 6y agoSanity restored, now back to waging war overseas!
- NonEUCitizen 6y ago"back?" When did it stop?
- grawprog 6y agoClearly no agenda here. Twitter backing an illegitimate US backed tin pot dictator and denying the legitmately elected government a voice. But i guess, private company and all that, doesn't matter if what they're doing aligns completely with US military interests or so the argument goes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ardy42 6y ago> Clearly no agenda here. Twitter backing an illegitimate US backed tin pot dictator and denying the legitmately elected government a voice. As far as I can tell, the group you're calling the "legitimately elected government" is that of the tin pot dictator that's run Venezuela into the ground and ran a sham election to cement its power: https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-congress-socialists-control-5226bbbcdeb19b07fd8b4e2e425b2759 https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-congress-socialists-con...: > Maduro’s allies swept legislative elections last month boycotted by the opposition and denounced as a sham by the U.S., the European Union and several other foreign governments. While the vote was marred by anemically low turnout, it nonetheless seemed to relegate into irrelevancy the U.S.-backed opposition led by lawmaker Juan Guaidó. The government there bribes voters with food handouts. Think of how bad things must be if you can be bribed with food: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55211149 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55211149: > The government may now be in control of the National Assembly but the low turnout was hardly a "win". > Sure, there were people who cast their vote, some still clinging to the man in power, others citing their democratic right as well as many more fearful of repercussions like losing food handouts if they didn't. > But for the most part, there's an atmosphere of resignation. Most Venezuelans I've spoken to this past week saw little point in these elections and decided there were better things to be doing on Sunday. > The vast queues at petrol stations rather than the polling stations explain what you need to know about politics here - that Venezuelans just want to survive another day and for politics to just go away.
- grawprog 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020) https://www.mintpressnews.com/juan-guidos-latest-coup-attempt-venezuela-ends-was-a-massive-flop/262870/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/juan-guidos-latest-coup-attemp... https://www.vox.com/2020/5/11/21249203/venezuela-coup-jordan-goudreau-maduro-guaido-explain https://www.vox.com/2020/5/11/21249203/venezuela-coup-jordan...
- perardi 6y agoJust going to go ahead and drop the EFF’s position on Section 230 into here… https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actually https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actua...
- mimikatz 6y agoHaving a censor mindset is going to be destructive to Twitter and the userbase. Now everyone is going to want to find and ban anyone who they see as violating rules. Making PR issues as they go to the media saying XXX was banned, but not YYY who is just as bad as worse. A huge Pandora's box has been opened.
- undefined1 6y agoIt's interesting how Twitter is self-isolating. Why would any other country use it now? No doubt this will lead to countries leaving Twitter and making their own. Indeed at least Germany, France[1] and Mexico[2] realize the problem. 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-sees-closing-trump-s-social-media-accounts-problematic https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/merkel-se... 2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-mexico/mexico-president-slams-social-media-censorship-after-chaos-in-us-capitol-idUSKBN29C1QY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-mexico/mexic...
- prophesi 6y ago> Why would any other country use it now? For the same reason people were using it before. Everyone is on Twitter. A much, much smaller fraction are on Twitter-alternatives. That said, I wish them the best of luck, as I hope alternatives are able to succeed in the near future.
- lokedhs 6y agoNowhere near "everyone" is on Twitter. I have to admit that I don't know a single person who is (I'm sure some of them are, it's not like I ask everyone if they use some specific platform). The point is that a lot of media people is, and posting there gets you exposure. But as this group of people is much smaller than your proverbial "everyone", moving them off Twitter is a much easier affair. I have often thought about what would happen if a small number of very high profile Twitter users with a wide reach to various different groups decided to set up their own servers (Mastodon perhaps) and asked their followers to go there. How many such high-profile users would you need before Twitter's momentum completely stops? I argue that that number is very small.
- prophesi 6y agoThat's fair. I don't even have a Twitter account myself (except back when the Nintendo Switch required a social account to export screenshots). But I am _viewing_ tweets my friends share on an almost daily basis as its become the media of choice for realtime news in my circles. https://hntrending.com/domains/year/index.html https://hntrending.com/domains/year/index.html Seems to be the same for HN, though my guess is that Twitter's rise in HN exposure is due to the BLM protests, the Capitol incident, and Trump. > How many such high-profile users would you need before Twitter's momentum completely stops? I argue that that number is very small. Microsoft made that bet, and got Twitch's top 2 streamers on to their platform (Mixer), but it still died within a year. There's a chicken-and-the-egg problem here. High-profile users have no financial incentive to move to a smaller platform. Maybe a platform that isn't as expensive as livestreaming, backed by someone as huge as Microsoft, could sign enough contracts to break the barrier of the network effect. Another solution would be upending social media's toxic money-maker: blackbox algorithms for targeted ads. That'll give the decentralized Fediverse model a chance. We did see Gab fall under too much server strain, but it's essentially a centralized version of Mastodon.
- im3w1l 6y agoVenezuela is not part of the US, and they don't have any section 167 to either repeal or enforce. What a silly debate. The prudent thing for Venezuela is to get together with a few other countries and jointly block Twitface.
- llboston 6y agoHow about let the users decide for themselves who to follow or block?
- iso1631 6y ago> Twitter just suspended the account of Venezuela's new National Assembly, which was voted on in an election in December There was no legitimate election. The Lima Group (practically every country in America - North and South), the EU, and indeed the UN say it's not legitimate. Some random person on twitter says it is. Twitter has been banning Maduro backed accounts for years, to try to link this into the recent fair and transparent US elections and the removal of ex-president Trump from twitter is desparate
- amalantony06 6y agoRegardless of your political views, behaviour such as this from tech monopolies/gatekeepers should be a cause of concern for anyone who'd like to keep their freedoms (esp of speech) intact. The ideal scenario would be for people to use the web as how it was originally intended: ie, everyone having custom websites (and private emails) hosted on a VPS with an RSS feed so that your friends can follow your "feed". That way you'd own your content and wouldn't have to worry about censorships/account bans etc. Discover-ability is just about the only downside with this.
- dc2k08 6y agoNo solution. Internet infrastructure has been politicised now too and credit card processors.
- amalantony06 6y agoAWS and Google Cloud are not the only infrastructure providers around ya know ;). There are plenty of other superior and cheaper alternatives like Linode, Vultr, Digital Ocean, OVH, Hetzner etc. Regrading credit card processors, I don't see why it'd be necessary for a personal website. If it's about accepting donations, one could accept cryptocurrency.
- wut42 6y agoAnd you'll be really naive to think that Vultr/DO/OVH/... won't deplatform you like others did already. Pretty sure that if you search a bit you can find people that has been booted off them
- amalantony06 6y agoThis is a poorly thought out comment. Hosting providers are a commodity and so they cannot de-platform you. Only a platform like Twitter can de-platform you. If a hosting provider suspends your account, you still own the domain and all your data - you'd just move it to the next host. Besides, when there's sufficient demand, there'd be several more options for hosting, including ones that are "pro free speech". OTOH, monopolies could end up destroying individual liberty and choice.
- dariusj18 6y agoIf someone created a Twitter account impersonating (not parodying) a Government or Government Agency, would people anticipate that Twitter might remove it?