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>I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful o

>I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful of corporations. Further, these corporations have demonstrated an ability to steer public opinion and credibly even unilaterally influence elections This is the Democratic party and Mainstream Media line. I vehemently disagree with that. So OP was correct. We can't even agree what the problem is. One half of the population blames Russia, Twitter, and 'misinformation' for their nominee's election loss and now wants blood and openly advocates for censorship of their political opponents.

paulmd 6y ago
Ironically the facts are essentially the exact opposite. It's Thomas who is mad about his candidate's loss and feels it's Facebook's fault for suppressing "conservative speech", and argues for common-carrier regulation so that it doesn't "happen again". Democrats and the mainstream media have nothing to do with this other than being things that you don't like that virtue signal what side you're on. On the other hand if you think Russia isn't doing their best on social media, and that they're overwhelmingly pushing for Trump... you're willfully ignoring the facts, and the conclusions of multiple law-enforcement and intelligence studies. Of course this is only a temporary thing - Russia pushes for whatever will produce the most chaos both domestic and also in our international alliances and on the world stage. Right now that is Trump and that faction of his party, but they use the green party similarly, and hypothetically if the Republican party fractures and the democrats become ascendant on the US political stage then you will see them push unqualified green-party wacko candidates to do similar kinds of damage. The healing-crystals lady (Marianne something?) already has some suspicious stuff going on iirc. Also, there is of course a point to be made here about the subtle acknowledgement that a large amount of "conservative speech" these days is in fact hate speech in political clothing, targeting immigrants, minorities, LGBT, etc, or violent extremism such as the capitol insurrection, advocating the overthrow of democratic governors (yet another incident last week from the leader of the Michigan GOP), and so on. That is what Facebook is taking down, and that is what Thomas and others choose to identify as "conservative speech".
throwaway894345 6y ago
> This is the Democratic party and Mainstream Media line It was in 2016, but after 2020-11 it's become a prominent conservative position as well. People disagree with respect to their specific concerns about how the social media giants might use their influence, and that's actively a good thing because it means that our solution space must be nonpartisan--we're looking to reduce the power of social media giants irrespective of the giants' political alignment.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
  Let’s be honest here, the two aren’t complaining about the same thing. One side is complaining about lax enforcement of TOS violations, while the other is trying to claim that a private actor enforcing rules on their private property is violating their rights. One is pointing out preferential treatment, and the other is complaining that they aren’t getting enough preferential treatment.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I think both sides want more aggressive enforcement of TOS violations, or at least I see a lot of lefties advocating for more aggressive enforcement while righties are advocating for consistent enforcement. In whatever case, I'm not really interested in ToS concerns for the purposes of this thread. > the other is trying to claim that a private actor enforcing rules on their private property is violating their rights I sympathize with this argument insofar as "their private property" has become the de facto public square, and it's absurd that one company should have the ability to evict someone from the public square. But I'm not actually that interested in the power dynamics between the company and any given individual, but rather about the implications associated with one or several companies having such control over the public square--they can unilaterally influence public opinion and steer democracy. Too much concentrated influence. And if you're one of the folks who were complaining that Russia was able to manipulate Twitter's algorithms to decide the 2016 POTUS election, you necessarily agree that Twitter's algorithms have the potential to decide elections and Twitter pretty clearly has direct control over its algorithms, thus you necessarily believe that Twitter has the potential to unilaterally decide POTUS elections.
uberman 6y ago
You "vehemently disagree" with the "Democratic Party line" that "speech is at the mercy of a handful of mega corporations with the ability to steer public opinion"? That being the case... I assume you must feel that speech is not threatened by the likes of Facebook and Twitter and thus you would certainly agree there would be no reason to regulate them. They should be free to exercise their corporate free speech rights to censure content for any reason or no reason at all. Right?

paulmd 6y ago

Ironically the facts are essentially the exact opposite. It's Thomas who is mad about his candidate's loss and feels it's Facebook's fault for suppressing "conservative speech", and argues for common-carrier regulation so that it doesn't "happen again". Democrats and the mainstream media have nothing to do with this other than being things that you don't like that virtue signal what side you're on. On the other hand if you think Russia isn't doing their best on social media, and that they're overwhelmingly pushing for Trump... you're willfully ignoring the facts, and the conclusions of multiple law-enforcement and intelligence studies. Of course this is only a temporary thing - Russia pushes for whatever will produce the most chaos both domestic and also in our international alliances and on the world stage. Right now that is Trump and that faction of his party, but they use the green party similarly, and hypothetically if the Republican party fractures and the democrats become ascendant on the US political stage then you will see them push unqualified green-party wacko candidates to do similar kinds of damage. The healing-crystals lady (Marianne something?) already has some suspicious stuff going on iirc. Also, there is of course a point to be made here about the subtle acknowledgement that a large amount of "conservative speech" these days is in fact hate speech in political clothing, targeting immigrants, minorities, LGBT, etc, or violent extremism such as the capitol insurrection, advocating the overthrow of democratic governors (yet another incident last week from the leader of the Michigan GOP), and so on. That is what Facebook is taking down, and that is what Thomas and others choose to identify as "conservative speech".

throwaway894345 6y ago

> This is the Democratic party and Mainstream Media line It was in 2016, but after 2020-11 it's become a prominent conservative position as well. People disagree with respect to their specific concerns about how the social media giants might use their influence, and that's actively a good thing because it means that our solution space must be nonpartisan--we're looking to reduce the power of social media giants irrespective of the giants' political alignment.

jonathankoren 6y ago
Let’s be honest here, the two aren’t complaining about the same thing. One side is complaining about lax enforcement of TOS violations, while the other is trying to claim that a private actor enforcing rules on their private property is violating their rights. One is pointing out preferential treatment, and the other is complaining that they aren’t getting enough preferential treatment.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I think both sides want more aggressive enforcement of TOS violations, or at least I see a lot of lefties advocating for more aggressive enforcement while righties are advocating for consistent enforcement. In whatever case, I'm not really interested in ToS concerns for the purposes of this thread. > the other is trying to claim that a private actor enforcing rules on their private property is violating their rights I sympathize with this argument insofar as "their private property" has become the de facto public square, and it's absurd that one company should have the ability to evict someone from the public square. But I'm not actually that interested in the power dynamics between the company and any given individual, but rather about the implications associated with one or several companies having such control over the public square--they can unilaterally influence public opinion and steer democracy. Too much concentrated influence. And if you're one of the folks who were complaining that Russia was able to manipulate Twitter's algorithms to decide the 2016 POTUS election, you necessarily agree that Twitter's algorithms have the potential to decide elections and Twitter pretty clearly has direct control over its algorithms, thus you necessarily believe that Twitter has the potential to unilaterally decide POTUS elections.

uberman 6y ago

You "vehemently disagree" with the "Democratic Party line" that "speech is at the mercy of a handful of mega corporations with the ability to steer public opinion"? That being the case... I assume you must feel that speech is not threatened by the likes of Facebook and Twitter and thus you would certainly agree there would be no reason to regulate them. They should be free to exercise their corporate free speech rights to censure content for any reason or no reason at all. Right?