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Seems like you’re saying contradictory things here. On the one hand you’re arguing for massive moderation, and on the other you’re suggesting a few people shoul

Seems like you’re saying contradictory things here. On the one hand you’re arguing for massive moderation, and on the other you’re suggesting a few people shouldn’t be able to de-platform a president. You can’t have both. What’s funny about this is we all act like Facebook/Twitter/YouTube are the only ways that politicians can talk to the public, yet somehow politicians have long campaigned well before the Internet existed, let alone these 3 specific platforms. It’s not like news media has stopped writing about Trump (in fact big news just yesterday about the trump org & taxes). Plus the news media was writing about how Trump is now on some new Gab-alternative, to which Gab is suggesting he’s not on there because they want to allow anti-Semitism and Kushner blocked it. So new platforms easily can come up and acquire various demographics. It’s also not like Facebook etc is the only source for systemic dissemination of propaganda. Trump used to have extremely frequent calls with Fox News hosts, for example, which commands a very large set of the GOP eyeballs. Probably more than Twitter could ever hope for. All of this is effectively protected by the first amendment. You could revoke 230 which would quickly lead to mass moderation or complete changes of platform behaviors/features, but you’d be very hard pressed to find a way to force any news org to shape their messaging.

moksly 5y ago
I’m not saying the platforms shouldn’t ban people for breaking their rules, I’m saying that they should be consistent and not just apply their rules when it is convenient for them to do so. I use Trump as an example because it’s the example everyone knows. I personally think that he should have been banned when he first broke the rules, but since he wasn’t, then he shouldn’t have been banned at all. I’m calling for more moderation, but for it to be removed from the hands of a few tech billionaires and put into the hand of the public. Is the social media platforms cannot do this, then I fully support the EU route or making them illegal. I don’t see that as a free speech issue, as long as we democratically agree on it within the EU because the internet is still there and politicians have, as you point out, campaigned without Facebook. What I do see as a free speech issue is when a very select few non-EU billionaires can dictate who says what and when they do it on their platforms. That’s the most anti-democratic threat we face in the EU right now.

moksly 5y ago

I’m not saying the platforms shouldn’t ban people for breaking their rules, I’m saying that they should be consistent and not just apply their rules when it is convenient for them to do so. I use Trump as an example because it’s the example everyone knows. I personally think that he should have been banned when he first broke the rules, but since he wasn’t, then he shouldn’t have been banned at all. I’m calling for more moderation, but for it to be removed from the hands of a few tech billionaires and put into the hand of the public. Is the social media platforms cannot do this, then I fully support the EU route or making them illegal. I don’t see that as a free speech issue, as long as we democratically agree on it within the EU because the internet is still there and politicians have, as you point out, campaigned without Facebook. What I do see as a free speech issue is when a very select few non-EU billionaires can dictate who says what and when they do it on their platforms. That’s the most anti-democratic threat we face in the EU right now.