6 ms·

These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. What makes you think they can't ban yours - you don't even have any nuclear launch codes...

by lmz 4y ago

shakezula 4y ago
> These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. Good, you should be able to choose who you do business with, or at least that’s what conservatives argued for years.
- standyro 4y ago
  Pretty sure “the free market” has decided that Parler and Truth Social are terrible social media products based on their relative lack of adoption
  - tenpies 4y ago
    Give it a few. It's only a matter of time until the Leftist tech platforms ban a critical amount of content producers and make themselves irrelevant. After all, each creator you ban represents a multiple of monetizable viewers that you just partially or totally told "don't come to my site". Take Rumble for example. It still has a substantial amount of gristle, but a growing amount of mainstream content. It is also now a publicly listed company undergoing hockey stick growth at a time when most companies are not.
    - 1270018080 4y ago
      I don't think there are any "leftist" social media platform. Maybe explicitly leftist subreddits if that counts? But overall, there are normal people platforms and right wing propaganda platforms. Is this the effect where anything left of fox news is "communism"? I hadn't heard of Rumble until now. But I'm just seeing some putin defense, covid conspiracy, and joe biden is a terrorist videos. And the UX is early 2010's.
      - godmode2019 4y ago
        Welcome to 2010 YouTube were adults can decide what information they want to consume.
        1270018080 4y ago
        Adults most vulnerable to right wing propaganda, the demographic famous for making good decisions for themselves and those around them.
  - anticensor 4y ago
    Social networking space is not a true market due to the fact common users are not buyers or sellers in them.
  - loa_in_ 4y ago
    Free market did enormous amount of terrible, short sighted choices. I am living in a (moderately) free market country, which isn't USA and government moderation is a never ending war with evolution of ways to circumvent regulations. These are only in place to try to keep food products from harming people eating them. I use food as an obvious example, but it applies to all branches of economy - electronics, insurance policies, gambling, clothing, meat, produce, etc. All in pursuit of profit over humanitarian needs. Always trying to evade detection by means of misdirection, "accidental" omission; surely even bribery.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    that isn't facebook's problems that they regular folks don't want to join a bunch of fascist platforms. No one is -owed- an audience of a billion people. I don't think the -means- of those shoudl be blocked. ISP, cloudfront, AWS, etc shouldn't be able to block such orgs (as long as they aren't doing anything illegal) as they are providing a source that means the internet does fall apart because they are providing the most basic of what makes up the web/internet and it's easy to argue that they should be able to pick and choose like a facebook/amazon/twitter/etc, who provide something that isn't a commodity.
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  Not exactly. You can't deny baking someone a carrot cake because they are gay for example. But you can deny baking them a cake that represents a gay celebration, for example asking to have two male figured on top, or delivering it to a gay wedding. I don't think you should be able to ban someone because you don't like them. If it's the case that you should, why doesn't Facebook scrape off and ban known sexual offenders list? Criminals? Should someone that beat their exwife in 1987 really be on Facebook, let alone be able to look up his victim? I personally think people should be allowed on unless they break the actual rules of the platform on the platform.
Barrin92 4y ago
the personal account of the president, an important and not pedantic distinction because as a citizen he has no more rights than anyone else, despite having a lot of might. The president's not a king or a queen who can just walk into whatever place he or she wants, in my book a win for the rights of private citizens and companies in a Republic.
- lmz 4y ago
  Personal account? He was forced to unblock users: https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts
gpm 4y ago
Obviously they can, the surprise is that they did. Vindictive actions like this are rarely profitable, they tend to scare people off from doing business with you.
- safety1st 4y ago
  Unless you're a monopoly and then you can do whatever you want because your customers have no alternative. Which Meta is (well, it's a duopoly with Google). Anyway Meta's customers, and the only entities it cares about, are large ad buyers. None of them will give a crap about this random app and these random human beings getting banned. This has zero impact on their ability to continue writing checks to Meta and continue getting in front of your eyeballs. If anything Meta's customers will be happy about the ban since this app caused fewer people to see their ads.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    There are plenty platforms out there besides meta; numerous places, fox comments, stormfront forums, gab, truth social, 4 chan, reddit, your own blog, twitter. No one can say that there aren't other platforms.
    - safety1st 4y ago
      Meta is a monopoly. It doesn't matter that other platforms exist. Those platforms don't make a lot of money (at least in the US) and whether you're a monopoly or not is about money. (You also don't need 100% - essentially if you have a lot and you have the power to distort the market, you're a monopoly.) The business of social media is ads. In the US the vast majority of social media ad spend goes to Meta. Thus, monopoly. Google and Meta hold a duopoly over digital ad spending in general. The FTC agrees and is suing Meta for monopolizing social media and the "metaverse." Anything could happen with these lawsuits but they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think they had a good case.
bobsil1 4y ago
*These companies can ban a terrorist from abusing their platforms as a terrorist control channel, banning him years too late due to their corrupt incentives.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  These companies don't ban real terrorists, though: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-taliban-accounts-213501287.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-tali...
- 93po 4y ago
  Is this the narrative now? Tr*mp is a terrorist? Are we holding the same standards against previous presidents, too? Is drone striking Americans without due process also a terrorist move? Or are we only going to focus on the one president that said mean things on Twitter?
  - bobsil1 4y ago
    *that tried to lynch VP, Congress via tweets
    - 93po 4y ago
      So we're just making stuff up now? This tweet doesn't exist.
      - bobsil1 4y ago
        https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/card/trump-s-tweet-about-pence-seen-as-critical-moment-during-riot-fmPxoFkeoTKxi0NqPLCL https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/c...
ninth_ant 4y ago
Most any business can ban a president. Put up a sign in your gas station and poof, you’ve banned Joe Biden. What you’re talking about is the platforms relenting and finally enforcing their own terms of service. In this case, _not_ giving a president special exemption from rules that would have caused another user to be banned. The only special treatment they applied was ignoring their rules for years. Your imagined persecution was simply equal treatment.

These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. What makes you think they can't ban yours - you don't even have any nuclear launch codes...

by lmz 4y ago

These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. What makes you think they can't ban yours - you don't even have any nuclear launch codes...

shakezula 4y ago

> These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. Good, you should be able to choose who you do business with, or at least that’s what conservatives argued for years.

standyro 4y ago
Pretty sure “the free market” has decided that Parler and Truth Social are terrible social media products based on their relative lack of adoption
- tenpies 4y ago
  Give it a few. It's only a matter of time until the Leftist tech platforms ban a critical amount of content producers and make themselves irrelevant. After all, each creator you ban represents a multiple of monetizable viewers that you just partially or totally told "don't come to my site". Take Rumble for example. It still has a substantial amount of gristle, but a growing amount of mainstream content. It is also now a publicly listed company undergoing hockey stick growth at a time when most companies are not.
  - 1270018080 4y ago
    I don't think there are any "leftist" social media platform. Maybe explicitly leftist subreddits if that counts? But overall, there are normal people platforms and right wing propaganda platforms. Is this the effect where anything left of fox news is "communism"? I hadn't heard of Rumble until now. But I'm just seeing some putin defense, covid conspiracy, and joe biden is a terrorist videos. And the UX is early 2010's.
    - godmode2019 4y ago
      Welcome to 2010 YouTube were adults can decide what information they want to consume.
      - 1270018080 4y ago
        Adults most vulnerable to right wing propaganda, the demographic famous for making good decisions for themselves and those around them.
- anticensor 4y ago
  Social networking space is not a true market due to the fact common users are not buyers or sellers in them.
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  Free market did enormous amount of terrible, short sighted choices. I am living in a (moderately) free market country, which isn't USA and government moderation is a never ending war with evolution of ways to circumvent regulations. These are only in place to try to keep food products from harming people eating them. I use food as an obvious example, but it applies to all branches of economy - electronics, insurance policies, gambling, clothing, meat, produce, etc. All in pursuit of profit over humanitarian needs. Always trying to evade detection by means of misdirection, "accidental" omission; surely even bribery.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  that isn't facebook's problems that they regular folks don't want to join a bunch of fascist platforms. No one is -owed- an audience of a billion people. I don't think the -means- of those shoudl be blocked. ISP, cloudfront, AWS, etc shouldn't be able to block such orgs (as long as they aren't doing anything illegal) as they are providing a source that means the internet does fall apart because they are providing the most basic of what makes up the web/internet and it's easy to argue that they should be able to pick and choose like a facebook/amazon/twitter/etc, who provide something that isn't a commodity.
phpthrowaway99 4y ago
Not exactly. You can't deny baking someone a carrot cake because they are gay for example. But you can deny baking them a cake that represents a gay celebration, for example asking to have two male figured on top, or delivering it to a gay wedding. I don't think you should be able to ban someone because you don't like them. If it's the case that you should, why doesn't Facebook scrape off and ban known sexual offenders list? Criminals? Should someone that beat their exwife in 1987 really be on Facebook, let alone be able to look up his victim? I personally think people should be allowed on unless they break the actual rules of the platform on the platform.

Barrin92 4y ago

the personal account of the president, an important and not pedantic distinction because as a citizen he has no more rights than anyone else, despite having a lot of might. The president's not a king or a queen who can just walk into whatever place he or she wants, in my book a win for the rights of private citizens and companies in a Republic.

lmz 4y ago
Personal account? He was forced to unblock users: https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts

gpm 4y ago

Obviously they can, the surprise is that they did. Vindictive actions like this are rarely profitable, they tend to scare people off from doing business with you.

safety1st 4y ago
Unless you're a monopoly and then you can do whatever you want because your customers have no alternative. Which Meta is (well, it's a duopoly with Google). Anyway Meta's customers, and the only entities it cares about, are large ad buyers. None of them will give a crap about this random app and these random human beings getting banned. This has zero impact on their ability to continue writing checks to Meta and continue getting in front of your eyeballs. If anything Meta's customers will be happy about the ban since this app caused fewer people to see their ads.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  There are plenty platforms out there besides meta; numerous places, fox comments, stormfront forums, gab, truth social, 4 chan, reddit, your own blog, twitter. No one can say that there aren't other platforms.
  - safety1st 4y ago
    Meta is a monopoly. It doesn't matter that other platforms exist. Those platforms don't make a lot of money (at least in the US) and whether you're a monopoly or not is about money. (You also don't need 100% - essentially if you have a lot and you have the power to distort the market, you're a monopoly.) The business of social media is ads. In the US the vast majority of social media ad spend goes to Meta. Thus, monopoly. Google and Meta hold a duopoly over digital ad spending in general. The FTC agrees and is suing Meta for monopolizing social media and the "metaverse." Anything could happen with these lawsuits but they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think they had a good case.

bobsil1 4y ago

*These companies can ban a terrorist from abusing their platforms as a terrorist control channel, banning him years too late due to their corrupt incentives.

josephcsible 4y ago
These companies don't ban real terrorists, though: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-taliban-accounts-213501287.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-tali...
93po 4y ago
Is this the narrative now? Tr*mp is a terrorist? Are we holding the same standards against previous presidents, too? Is drone striking Americans without due process also a terrorist move? Or are we only going to focus on the one president that said mean things on Twitter?
- bobsil1 4y ago
  *that tried to lynch VP, Congress via tweets
  - 93po 4y ago
    So we're just making stuff up now? This tweet doesn't exist.
    - bobsil1 4y ago
      https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/card/trump-s-tweet-about-pence-seen-as-critical-moment-during-riot-fmPxoFkeoTKxi0NqPLCL https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/c...

ninth_ant 4y ago

Most any business can ban a president. Put up a sign in your gas station and poof, you’ve banned Joe Biden. What you’re talking about is the platforms relenting and finally enforcing their own terms of service. In this case, _not_ giving a president special exemption from rules that would have caused another user to be banned. The only special treatment they applied was ignoring their rules for years. Your imagined persecution was simply equal treatment.