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It's interesting to read the comments here and the debate around whether social media counts as a public square or not. Ultimately, the web, and social media,

It's interesting to read the comments here and the debate around whether social media counts as a public square or not. Ultimately, the web, and social media, is where a majority of our citizens spend a large chunk of their time. While it's certainly true, that you don't _need_ to access them to live your life, for the vast majority of us it would be more than an inconvenience to be banned. In all other aspects of our lives, we do not accept rules imposed upon us by a large private actor. There are courts, and appeals processes, and politicians, and other channels through which we can assert our societal norms. Not so with social media today. These societal rules and norms, are, and should be governed by a democratic process. Social media is undeniably now such a large and important part of our society and it's absurd that we do not collectively have control over the rules around it. Other infrastructure, like trains, were also originally private endeavours where your rights are now protected by the courts, and laws of the land. At some point, the interest of the collective takes precedence over the private rights of Zuckerberg and Dorsey. We are well past that point with social media. These private companies should be considered access points to the social graph, not owners of it, and therefore regulated as such.

q-big 4y ago
> These societal rules and norms, are, and should be governed by a democratic process. By deleting your account at services that show such a licentious behaviour, you can cast your democratic vote against such services. Not doing this or at least starting or joining a huge riot against such services as soon as you hear about such licentious behaviour means casting a democratic vote that what the big tech company is doing is all right.
- bratbag 4y ago
  I don't think you know what a democratic vote is.
  - q-big 4y ago
    "Democratic vote" does not only mean "put ballot paper into ballot box". You can also vote with your feet.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      Perhaps we need the word "agorocracy" to describe "rule by markets". That's not quite what you're proposing, since you presumably only want the market to rule over Twitter and not over the rest of society, but unfortunately the latter scenario is closer to reality than most would like. In fact, suggesting that having a few large social media companies to choose between constitutes a free market (despite the high switching costs and non-interoperable products) is as misleading as thinking that the First Past The Post voting system (and weak campaign finance laws) provides representative democracy.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> These private companies should be considered access points to the social graph, not owners of it, and therefore regulated as such. Okay, but how? Every time I see calls for regulation, I don't see any specifics. Regulation isn't a magic wand that solves all problems you don't like while keeping the parts you want to keep. We got regulation for cookies, and now we're all doomed to click cookie banners on every website we visit forever. What exact regulations would you apply to Twitter to solve this problem without forcing the companies out of business? Any solution that ends up requiring Twitter to fend off constant legal battles from people angry about being banned or requires scores of humans to moderate content to some government-stated standards or face expensive fines just doesn't work. If US websites were suddenly subject to onerous legal standards that weren't required elsewhere, companies would move their headquarters to other countries ASAP.
- didibus 4y ago
  Agreed, dealing with bots, fake accounts, troll farms, and the scums of the universe actually posting child abuse, revenge porn, or other such things, is a hard problem, especially at the scale of Twitter. Designing and deploying mechanism that are effective at preventing those and have zero false positives is very hard. Having humans in the loop at that scale is very hard. It's all a tricky balance. You can force people to have zero false positives but it's futile, in practice they still will. You can force them to manually verify each posts, but humans also have false positives, and this might come at a cost that Twitter can't afford. It's complicated. What's less complicated is running your own website where you can be your own moderator... I think an alternative is to give people some rights. Like establish a category of things that is always allowed. Then use the normal court system. Of course, it's a terribly slow and expensive appeal process, but also the best, and publicly funded. Similar to a case where you claim you've been refused access to a job or business because of a protected characteristic for example. You'd need to sue.
- eckesicle 4y ago
  Just spitballing: Then pass a law that says any company with a user count exceeding 100,000 must not prevent access or disable an account unless the user in question breaks the law on the platform. Then establish a simplified claims court, where for a nominal fee, say £500, you could apply to have your case reviewed by an independent judge. If you lose, you forfeit the funds, and have to pay the costs to the company you claim against, capped at a reasonable fee. Say another £500. If you win, the company pays the costs, nominal damages, and must also reinstate your account. If you cannot run your business at scale without externalising the costs on innocent users through false positives, then the business shouldn't be running at all.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Thorrez 4y ago
>In all other aspects of our lives, we do not accept rules imposed upon us by a large private actor. Sure Amtrak is government-run, but many other things we use on a daily basis aren't. Restaurants and stores have their own rules and can kick you out if they think you violated them, without much recourse for you if they were wrong.
- eckesicle 4y ago
  see my other comment. In short: it's not like being kicked out of a restaurant, it's like being kicked out of every restaurant.
edmcnulty101 4y ago
We want government to run or regulate these systems as long as we trust the government but what happens when we don't trust the government anymore? Like for example if in this years midterms there's a Congressional supermajority, and then the president is elected from that same party two years later and the courts are of that party. Will we really want government regulations if things? There would be widespread mistrust by many groups of people of the government having a single party in charge. Now that government regulations are established and approved they can be used by the government at their will.
- eckesicle 4y ago
  For all it's failures the government and courts do a good job at mediating disputes in every other aspect of our lives, so why not this one too?
  - edmcnulty101 4y ago
    Many governments don't though. If you think about it modern U.S. is a pretty rare phenomenon throughout history and it's not guaranteed to continue forever.
- account42 4y ago
  If you don't trust your government then you have bigger issues. And that governmant could always choose to start to regulate Twitter to their advantage if they have that much public support no matter what regulations there are now. Also, I think if any single party can get that much of a majority (or even just a majority on its own) then your already have an extremely unhealthy democracy even if such setups are quite common in "developed" countries.
didibus 4y ago
If we go one step back, bars, clubs, pubs, discos, and churches/worship places were where a majority of people spent their socializing time in prior to social media platforms. Those places would routinely throw people out and all had bouncers and sometimes gatekeepers for entry and all that. There are certain specific patterns that we did regulate, like the tradition where certain gender or race weren't allowed in them. But generally, someone causing a ruckus gets thrown out.
- eckesicle 4y ago
  Your comparison falls short though, because there's not really a historical equivalent we can compare to. Being banned from social media is not like being thrown out of a pub by a bouncer. It's like being thrown out of every pub, nightclub, and church by the bouncer. If I may take an example from my own life: if I were to be banned from WhatsApp, I would not be able to * take part in my son's school group and social events. * participate in the neighbourhood group * participate in my local sports team * participate in the local party * participate in the business * participate in my university alumni group WhatsApp completely owns the social graph where I live. Almost to the point where one would not be able to live without it. A false positive ban would be catastrophic for me.
  - didibus 4y ago
    I understand the impact difference could be argued, but some places the local community center or pub would also be the home to most of those. And similarly, it depends on the choice each of these groups make, like to all be on Whatsapp, some could be on Telegram, on Hangouts, on Facebook, etc. Nevertheless, I think you're right, scale is different and maybe that needs different rules because of that. Though, scale might also be why people can complain so much about it. I know people who have been shunned by their church, and the impact on their life from that is major. But if there's only a handful, they can't be a big voice to complain about it. On Facebook, everyone banned can bend together to complain about and create a counter balance. Now false positive I think is an even bigger argument. It's probably a lot more rare for a local pub or community center to wrongly kick you out. It can happen, but I'd say there's less chance, and you might get an easier time comming back or appealing. Something else I'm curious is how come this has so much impact on you, but so little on me? If I get banned from Whatsapp I'm just inconviened, but I can still call or text those people, mail/email them, show up to their physical locations in person, etc. I think the "couldn't be able to live without it" sounds a bit exaggerated to me, but maybe some places are way more dependent on Whatsapp then I realize with no alternative way to reach anyone?
leviathant 4y ago
>In all other aspects of our lives, we do not accept rules imposed upon us by a large private actor. There are courts, and appeals processes, and politicians, and other channels through which we can assert our societal norms. Out of curiosity, where do you live? Where I live, I accept that my phone will receive unsolicited robocalls and texts, and that the majority of mail delivered to my address is, similarly, unsolicited waste. Where I live, I accept that the marketing efforts of a coalition of firearms manufacturers carries more weight than schools littered with dead children, a thousand unarmed people shot to death by police every year, thousands annually killed in domestic situations or on street shootouts. There's also, of course, the #1 cause of death by firearm: suicide. Where I live, a large private actor repeatedly abused the legal system throughout his career, and through a particular quirk in our bizarre republican democracy, was elected to the highest office in the land after losing a popular election by millions of votes. He continued to break laws while in office, but was never held accountable, and the second time he lost a popular election, went on to break more laws, along with his cronies and a crowd of supporters... There are myriad reasons why this private actor should be in jail, but the government where I live has largely been gutted of any regulatory power. More often than not where I live, you have one choice of broadband provider, provided by a large private actor, who often times has worked with politicians to outlaw choice. Maybe you live somewhere else, but where I live, we are reaping what decades of aggressive pro-business anti-government action has sown.
- eckesicle 4y ago
  I live in the UK. Many of the things you mention are reasons why I would never consider making the US my permanent home.

q-big 4y ago

> These societal rules and norms, are, and should be governed by a democratic process. By deleting your account at services that show such a licentious behaviour, you can cast your democratic vote against such services. Not doing this or at least starting or joining a huge riot against such services as soon as you hear about such licentious behaviour means casting a democratic vote that what the big tech company is doing is all right.

bratbag 4y ago
I don't think you know what a democratic vote is.
- q-big 4y ago
  "Democratic vote" does not only mean "put ballot paper into ballot box". You can also vote with your feet.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    Perhaps we need the word "agorocracy" to describe "rule by markets". That's not quite what you're proposing, since you presumably only want the market to rule over Twitter and not over the rest of society, but unfortunately the latter scenario is closer to reality than most would like. In fact, suggesting that having a few large social media companies to choose between constitutes a free market (despite the high switching costs and non-interoperable products) is as misleading as thinking that the First Past The Post voting system (and weak campaign finance laws) provides representative democracy.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> These private companies should be considered access points to the social graph, not owners of it, and therefore regulated as such. Okay, but how? Every time I see calls for regulation, I don't see any specifics. Regulation isn't a magic wand that solves all problems you don't like while keeping the parts you want to keep. We got regulation for cookies, and now we're all doomed to click cookie banners on every website we visit forever. What exact regulations would you apply to Twitter to solve this problem without forcing the companies out of business? Any solution that ends up requiring Twitter to fend off constant legal battles from people angry about being banned or requires scores of humans to moderate content to some government-stated standards or face expensive fines just doesn't work. If US websites were suddenly subject to onerous legal standards that weren't required elsewhere, companies would move their headquarters to other countries ASAP.

didibus 4y ago
Agreed, dealing with bots, fake accounts, troll farms, and the scums of the universe actually posting child abuse, revenge porn, or other such things, is a hard problem, especially at the scale of Twitter. Designing and deploying mechanism that are effective at preventing those and have zero false positives is very hard. Having humans in the loop at that scale is very hard. It's all a tricky balance. You can force people to have zero false positives but it's futile, in practice they still will. You can force them to manually verify each posts, but humans also have false positives, and this might come at a cost that Twitter can't afford. It's complicated. What's less complicated is running your own website where you can be your own moderator... I think an alternative is to give people some rights. Like establish a category of things that is always allowed. Then use the normal court system. Of course, it's a terribly slow and expensive appeal process, but also the best, and publicly funded. Similar to a case where you claim you've been refused access to a job or business because of a protected characteristic for example. You'd need to sue.
eckesicle 4y ago
Just spitballing: Then pass a law that says any company with a user count exceeding 100,000 must not prevent access or disable an account unless the user in question breaks the law on the platform. Then establish a simplified claims court, where for a nominal fee, say £500, you could apply to have your case reviewed by an independent judge. If you lose, you forfeit the funds, and have to pay the costs to the company you claim against, capped at a reasonable fee. Say another £500. If you win, the company pays the costs, nominal damages, and must also reinstate your account. If you cannot run your business at scale without externalising the costs on innocent users through false positives, then the business shouldn't be running at all.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Thorrez 4y ago

>In all other aspects of our lives, we do not accept rules imposed upon us by a large private actor. Sure Amtrak is government-run, but many other things we use on a daily basis aren't. Restaurants and stores have their own rules and can kick you out if they think you violated them, without much recourse for you if they were wrong.

eckesicle 4y ago
see my other comment. In short: it's not like being kicked out of a restaurant, it's like being kicked out of every restaurant.

edmcnulty101 4y ago

We want government to run or regulate these systems as long as we trust the government but what happens when we don't trust the government anymore? Like for example if in this years midterms there's a Congressional supermajority, and then the president is elected from that same party two years later and the courts are of that party. Will we really want government regulations if things? There would be widespread mistrust by many groups of people of the government having a single party in charge. Now that government regulations are established and approved they can be used by the government at their will.

eckesicle 4y ago
For all it's failures the government and courts do a good job at mediating disputes in every other aspect of our lives, so why not this one too?
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  Many governments don't though. If you think about it modern U.S. is a pretty rare phenomenon throughout history and it's not guaranteed to continue forever.
account42 4y ago
If you don't trust your government then you have bigger issues. And that governmant could always choose to start to regulate Twitter to their advantage if they have that much public support no matter what regulations there are now. Also, I think if any single party can get that much of a majority (or even just a majority on its own) then your already have an extremely unhealthy democracy even if such setups are quite common in "developed" countries.

didibus 4y ago

If we go one step back, bars, clubs, pubs, discos, and churches/worship places were where a majority of people spent their socializing time in prior to social media platforms. Those places would routinely throw people out and all had bouncers and sometimes gatekeepers for entry and all that. There are certain specific patterns that we did regulate, like the tradition where certain gender or race weren't allowed in them. But generally, someone causing a ruckus gets thrown out.

eckesicle 4y ago
Your comparison falls short though, because there's not really a historical equivalent we can compare to. Being banned from social media is not like being thrown out of a pub by a bouncer. It's like being thrown out of every pub, nightclub, and church by the bouncer. If I may take an example from my own life: if I were to be banned from WhatsApp, I would not be able to * take part in my son's school group and social events. * participate in the neighbourhood group * participate in my local sports team * participate in the local party * participate in the business * participate in my university alumni group WhatsApp completely owns the social graph where I live. Almost to the point where one would not be able to live without it. A false positive ban would be catastrophic for me.
- didibus 4y ago
  I understand the impact difference could be argued, but some places the local community center or pub would also be the home to most of those. And similarly, it depends on the choice each of these groups make, like to all be on Whatsapp, some could be on Telegram, on Hangouts, on Facebook, etc. Nevertheless, I think you're right, scale is different and maybe that needs different rules because of that. Though, scale might also be why people can complain so much about it. I know people who have been shunned by their church, and the impact on their life from that is major. But if there's only a handful, they can't be a big voice to complain about it. On Facebook, everyone banned can bend together to complain about and create a counter balance. Now false positive I think is an even bigger argument. It's probably a lot more rare for a local pub or community center to wrongly kick you out. It can happen, but I'd say there's less chance, and you might get an easier time comming back or appealing. Something else I'm curious is how come this has so much impact on you, but so little on me? If I get banned from Whatsapp I'm just inconviened, but I can still call or text those people, mail/email them, show up to their physical locations in person, etc. I think the "couldn't be able to live without it" sounds a bit exaggerated to me, but maybe some places are way more dependent on Whatsapp then I realize with no alternative way to reach anyone?

leviathant 4y ago

>In all other aspects of our lives, we do not accept rules imposed upon us by a large private actor. There are courts, and appeals processes, and politicians, and other channels through which we can assert our societal norms. Out of curiosity, where do you live? Where I live, I accept that my phone will receive unsolicited robocalls and texts, and that the majority of mail delivered to my address is, similarly, unsolicited waste. Where I live, I accept that the marketing efforts of a coalition of firearms manufacturers carries more weight than schools littered with dead children, a thousand unarmed people shot to death by police every year, thousands annually killed in domestic situations or on street shootouts. There's also, of course, the #1 cause of death by firearm: suicide. Where I live, a large private actor repeatedly abused the legal system throughout his career, and through a particular quirk in our bizarre republican democracy, was elected to the highest office in the land after losing a popular election by millions of votes. He continued to break laws while in office, but was never held accountable, and the second time he lost a popular election, went on to break more laws, along with his cronies and a crowd of supporters... There are myriad reasons why this private actor should be in jail, but the government where I live has largely been gutted of any regulatory power. More often than not where I live, you have one choice of broadband provider, provided by a large private actor, who often times has worked with politicians to outlaw choice. Maybe you live somewhere else, but where I live, we are reaping what decades of aggressive pro-business anti-government action has sown.

eckesicle 4y ago
I live in the UK. Many of the things you mention are reasons why I would never consider making the US my permanent home.