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Without irony, you probably would have less censorship than should a private company own it. Is that a good thing? Not sure. Seems like spam would overtake it q

Without irony, you probably would have less censorship than should a private company own it. Is that a good thing? Not sure. Seems like spam would overtake it quickly.

krapp 5y ago
Sure, until an American president decides to ban another country's account for disrespecting him, or use it for leverage in negotiations, or have the NSA bulk scan their citizens private messages for 'terrorist' communications, or have the algorithm bias other country's newsfeeds in favor of American propaganda. Twitter is a global platform and much of the world wouldn't trust the US as far as they could throw an American nuke (not withstanding how much they would also trust their own government.) The only reason Twitter works as well as it does now is that its primary concern, as a company, is profit, and not the national interests of one specific country.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  That ship long since sailed. Look at Russia, for example. They have basically been cut off from all forms of social media and the president didn’t even need to order them to do it (Even though the president has more or less total power over anything involving international trade). The social media companies did it voluntarily.
  - krapp 5y ago
    I would still prefer it to be the choice of individuals and private platforms, which can be competed with and avoided, than a government. Even if I think blacklisting Russians at every opportunity is a terrible, unproductive and ultimately self-sabotaging move for Americans to make.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > Sure, until an American president decides to ban Well, that is what the court system, and the supreme court is for. The court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech. Sure, maybe a president would want to do something. And the courts, which have a very established history of protecting speech rights would stop them. A better solution, though, would be to make a new law that requires twitter to follow similar standards as the government has to follow, in the same way how we put strong restrictions on what telephone companies are allowed to do (So don't give me any objections about how such laws would be illegal, when we already have them! Use our phone laws as the model, to do something similar, if not exact the same).
  - krapp 5y ago
    Social media companies aren't common carriers. People want them to be so they have to follow the same laws, but they never claimed to be neutral. They have rules, they have distinct cultures and business models. They also exist within an ecosystem of competitors - Twitter being popular doesn't mean they control communications infrastructure. Facebook serving a billion people no more makes it a public good than MacDonald's.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      Did you read this part, or are you just going to completely ignore it? "The [modern day] court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech." I am not sure how anyone who has read any supreme court opinion in the last 40 years, could come to the conclusion that the government is not strongly prevented from engaging in large speech restrictions.
      - krapp 5y ago
        I read it, I just don't trust it. Not after the Patriot Act, PRISM, Guantanamo Bay and any number of other ways the government has made an end run around its own laws and the courts have let them, or at best not been able to intervene until well after the damage has been done. If the US government really, really wants to break the law, the courts will often look the other way if there's plausible deniability. Are we really talking about trusting the courts to properly adjudicate a platform with a global userbase and an algorithmically driven feed (designed for psychological control and influence) when the American press is all but universally considered, by Americans, to be controlled by corporate interests and the military industrial complex? We don't even trust CNN to tell us the sun rises in the East and sets in the West but we'll trust the government to have a fair hand at managing Twitter? I get the argument intellectually, and I'll even concede that it could work in the best circumstance. But I don't believe we live in the world of best circumstance, and i don't trust it to work in practice. Maybe if there were real international controls over the platform. But even then there could be some secret ECHELON BS going on between governments to allow rights abuses on a technicality.

Without irony, you probably would have less censorship than should a private company own it. Is that a good thing? Not sure. Seems like spam would overtake it quickly.

krapp 5y ago

Sure, until an American president decides to ban another country's account for disrespecting him, or use it for leverage in negotiations, or have the NSA bulk scan their citizens private messages for 'terrorist' communications, or have the algorithm bias other country's newsfeeds in favor of American propaganda. Twitter is a global platform and much of the world wouldn't trust the US as far as they could throw an American nuke (not withstanding how much they would also trust their own government.) The only reason Twitter works as well as it does now is that its primary concern, as a company, is profit, and not the national interests of one specific country.

oceanplexian 5y ago
That ship long since sailed. Look at Russia, for example. They have basically been cut off from all forms of social media and the president didn’t even need to order them to do it (Even though the president has more or less total power over anything involving international trade). The social media companies did it voluntarily.
- krapp 5y ago
  I would still prefer it to be the choice of individuals and private platforms, which can be competed with and avoided, than a government. Even if I think blacklisting Russians at every opportunity is a terrible, unproductive and ultimately self-sabotaging move for Americans to make.
stale2002 5y ago
> Sure, until an American president decides to ban Well, that is what the court system, and the supreme court is for. The court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech. Sure, maybe a president would want to do something. And the courts, which have a very established history of protecting speech rights would stop them. A better solution, though, would be to make a new law that requires twitter to follow similar standards as the government has to follow, in the same way how we put strong restrictions on what telephone companies are allowed to do (So don't give me any objections about how such laws would be illegal, when we already have them! Use our phone laws as the model, to do something similar, if not exact the same).
- krapp 5y ago
  Social media companies aren't common carriers. People want them to be so they have to follow the same laws, but they never claimed to be neutral. They have rules, they have distinct cultures and business models. They also exist within an ecosystem of competitors - Twitter being popular doesn't mean they control communications infrastructure. Facebook serving a billion people no more makes it a public good than MacDonald's.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    Did you read this part, or are you just going to completely ignore it? "The [modern day] court system puts very strong restrictions on what the government is able to do, regarding speech." I am not sure how anyone who has read any supreme court opinion in the last 40 years, could come to the conclusion that the government is not strongly prevented from engaging in large speech restrictions.
    - krapp 5y ago
      I read it, I just don't trust it. Not after the Patriot Act, PRISM, Guantanamo Bay and any number of other ways the government has made an end run around its own laws and the courts have let them, or at best not been able to intervene until well after the damage has been done. If the US government really, really wants to break the law, the courts will often look the other way if there's plausible deniability. Are we really talking about trusting the courts to properly adjudicate a platform with a global userbase and an algorithmically driven feed (designed for psychological control and influence) when the American press is all but universally considered, by Americans, to be controlled by corporate interests and the military industrial complex? We don't even trust CNN to tell us the sun rises in the East and sets in the West but we'll trust the government to have a fair hand at managing Twitter? I get the argument intellectually, and I'll even concede that it could work in the best circumstance. But I don't believe we live in the world of best circumstance, and i don't trust it to work in practice. Maybe if there were real international controls over the platform. But even then there could be some secret ECHELON BS going on between governments to allow rights abuses on a technicality.