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I don't like the government, but I hate monopoly of the twitter ever more than I hate the existing government or their opposition or any coalition of them. I ha

I don't like the government, but I hate monopoly of the twitter ever more than I hate the existing government or their opposition or any coalition of them. I hate any single entity owning this much power. So government bending them a little is a good thing at least right now.

xibalba 5y ago
By what definition is Twitter a monopoly?
- netcan 5y ago
  By the commonplace colloquial definition. Economic taxonomy might call it an oligopsony, monopsony or whatnot. To the average person, "really big powerful company that stands above ordinary competition and choice dynamics, influences politics, dominates a business sector or other realm, dictates rules to a market and such." In many parts of the world, if you are a politician, journalist, celebrity or other public figure, twitter is extremely powerful... a determining factor in hundreds of thousands of careers. What trends on twitter trends in society. But no, it doesn't fit neatly into a "cornered the market for turnips" box.
pcmoney 5y ago
I am somewhat confused how a middling social network of ~200M (generously) active users with a message limit of 280 chars has a lot of power? Celebrating government strong arming is an interesting take and only nice when its going your way. Always imagine whatever government excess you are ok with in this instance is now going against your position and see if you still like it.
- portpecos 5y ago
  Perhaps you're confused, but the rest of Europe isn't confused at how Twitter has a lot of power: German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to the decisions [of banning Trump], saying on Monday that lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech and not private technology companies. 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... Emmanuel Macron blasts social media platforms for banning Trump https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter-facebook-bf8640d0-57d0-4747-affb-e91835f9fb84.html https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter...
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    I don't think you understand free speech in the US context, Twitter is protected by the first amendment, it itself has freedom of speech and of association. It does not have to allow anything it doesn't want on its platform. It could ban everyone wearing blue in their profile photo, it is THEIR platform. If Twitter COULDN'T ban anyone they wanted under US law THEN it would be a violation of free speech.
    - hooplah 5y ago
      Except the ruling that Trump could not ban people from his feed because it was considered an official government medium. I believe that's the core case that Trump's lawyers are making in their class action lawsuit. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-rules-trump-violated-first-amendment-by-blocking-twitter-follo https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r... Also, laws can change, the government should not and can not delegate things to businesses things that they cannot do themselves. If Twitter can legally do it is one thing, should they morally do it?
    - Engineering-MD 5y ago
      And that wouldn’t be an issue if twitter wasn’t so dominant for this form of communication between positions and people. It’s because it is so entrenched without a meaningful equivalent service that this becomes significant.
      - pcmoney 5y ago
        Could you explain how it is dominant? It is literally one tenth the size of Facebook. It is not even one of the top 10 social networks, currently at #17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
        Engineering-MD 5y ago
        It’s hard to draw clear lines between domains, but I think for public representation of official organisations, there isn’t any other. So for this purpose it’s dominant.
pcmoney 5y ago
Monopoly claims need to show customer harm and an absence of alternatives. I don't think Twitter fits either definition as it has many competitors, it is free for users, and the advertisers are the customers and they have even more alternatives. Do you have data to show otherwise?
- l0k3ndr 5y ago
  Hey, it seems there is no way one gets notifications on their hacker news comments. So I couldn't reply to this earlier. May be I should use a better word - but I have none right now. When I said monopoly - I intended to say the dominance and control it has over widespread news, opinions etc. Your twitter feed can decide what you know today, and what you don't know today. That's so much damn power. Now ofcourse there are other sources of news as well - but it is becoming more and more centralised towards twitter. People are getting to know about what is happening in the world from twitter and I don't know what algorithm they use - but it's their algorithm. They can make the left look stupid, the right look stupid, the government look stupid, the citizens look stupid.. they can practically do anything by just tweaking a little of our feeds.

xibalba 5y ago

By what definition is Twitter a monopoly?

netcan 5y ago
By the commonplace colloquial definition. Economic taxonomy might call it an oligopsony, monopsony or whatnot. To the average person, "really big powerful company that stands above ordinary competition and choice dynamics, influences politics, dominates a business sector or other realm, dictates rules to a market and such." In many parts of the world, if you are a politician, journalist, celebrity or other public figure, twitter is extremely powerful... a determining factor in hundreds of thousands of careers. What trends on twitter trends in society. But no, it doesn't fit neatly into a "cornered the market for turnips" box.

pcmoney 5y ago

I am somewhat confused how a middling social network of ~200M (generously) active users with a message limit of 280 chars has a lot of power? Celebrating government strong arming is an interesting take and only nice when its going your way. Always imagine whatever government excess you are ok with in this instance is now going against your position and see if you still like it.

portpecos 5y ago
Perhaps you're confused, but the rest of Europe isn't confused at how Twitter has a lot of power: German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to the decisions [of banning Trump], saying on Monday that lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech and not private technology companies. 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... Emmanuel Macron blasts social media platforms for banning Trump https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter-facebook-bf8640d0-57d0-4747-affb-e91835f9fb84.html https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter...
- pcmoney 5y ago
  I don't think you understand free speech in the US context, Twitter is protected by the first amendment, it itself has freedom of speech and of association. It does not have to allow anything it doesn't want on its platform. It could ban everyone wearing blue in their profile photo, it is THEIR platform. If Twitter COULDN'T ban anyone they wanted under US law THEN it would be a violation of free speech.
  - hooplah 5y ago
    Except the ruling that Trump could not ban people from his feed because it was considered an official government medium. I believe that's the core case that Trump's lawyers are making in their class action lawsuit. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-rules-trump-violated-first-amendment-by-blocking-twitter-follo https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r... Also, laws can change, the government should not and can not delegate things to businesses things that they cannot do themselves. If Twitter can legally do it is one thing, should they morally do it?
  - Engineering-MD 5y ago
    And that wouldn’t be an issue if twitter wasn’t so dominant for this form of communication between positions and people. It’s because it is so entrenched without a meaningful equivalent service that this becomes significant.
    - pcmoney 5y ago
      Could you explain how it is dominant? It is literally one tenth the size of Facebook. It is not even one of the top 10 social networks, currently at #17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
      - Engineering-MD 5y ago
        It’s hard to draw clear lines between domains, but I think for public representation of official organisations, there isn’t any other. So for this purpose it’s dominant.

pcmoney 5y ago

Monopoly claims need to show customer harm and an absence of alternatives. I don't think Twitter fits either definition as it has many competitors, it is free for users, and the advertisers are the customers and they have even more alternatives. Do you have data to show otherwise?

l0k3ndr 5y ago
Hey, it seems there is no way one gets notifications on their hacker news comments. So I couldn't reply to this earlier. May be I should use a better word - but I have none right now. When I said monopoly - I intended to say the dominance and control it has over widespread news, opinions etc. Your twitter feed can decide what you know today, and what you don't know today. That's so much damn power. Now ofcourse there are other sources of news as well - but it is becoming more and more centralised towards twitter. People are getting to know about what is happening in the world from twitter and I don't know what algorithm they use - but it's their algorithm. They can make the left look stupid, the right look stupid, the government look stupid, the citizens look stupid.. they can practically do anything by just tweaking a little of our feeds.