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In a sane world, the US as a supposed bastion of free speech and personal liberties would enact legislation that requires companies to provide a specific, artic
by Tyrubias 5mo ago
In a sane world, the US as a supposed bastion of free speech and personal liberties would enact legislation that requires companies to provide a specific, articulable reason for suspending accounts due to rules violations and offer everyone the chance to appeal. That would serve as a counterbalance to more authoritarian regimes insisting companies like Meta censor people, even if the US can’t guarantee it for people not affiliated with the US. Unfortunately, the US seems more intent on censoring its own residents and becoming one of those authoritarian regimes than actually doing anything about it.
- giancarlostoro 5mo ago[flagged]
- funimpoded 5mo agoI once spent an hour or so tracking down and reading parts of the twitter files specifically highlighted by people loudly complaining about them (as I figured those would be the worst bits) and it was mostly pretty yawn-worthy in context. That might be why they didn't get more attention.
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoSo you're saying that the FBI using Twitter as a proxy to violate US citizens First Amendment right is not an issue? Because that's my entire point. There is absolutely no context that okays the FBI doing this, once you open pandoras box, you allow other administrations (including the current) to use the same "power" that they should have never had to begin with.
- funimpoded 5mo ago“Yo, this violates your rules” and then twitter sometimes going “yep, true, we’ll do something” and sometimes “nah” is pretty low on my list of concerns, yeah. Then again I also don’t think any company should have the reach any of the major media companies do these days. But antitrust and media-diversity regulations and laws have been out of fashion since the ‘70s.
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoExcept Twitter staff debated if they actually broke any rules repeatedly, and later said, that, nope, no they did not. So you're not making any sense. Why read the raw source if you're not paying attention to their own words after the fact where the executives admit they goofed big time?
- KaiserPro 5mo ago> requires companies to provide a specific, articulable reason for suspending accounts wouldn't that violate free speech though? forcing a company to keep something up/take something down is entirely up to them no?
- traverseda 5mo agoYou can be protected by safe harbour provisions, or you can editorialise your content. I don't think you should have both. Free speech does not cover scams and fraud, something that happens on their platform. Society doesn't take any action against them for publishing illegal content, scams, libel, fraud, because they aren't a newspaper. They're more like a newspaper printing house. In my opinion they should probably be losing those protections and should suffer legal consequences for the content their users post. The moderation has reached a point where they ate defacto editorialising content. An alternative to that could be opting in to some kind of third party moderation arbitration process.
- KaiserPro 5mo ago> You can be protected by safe harbour provisions, or you can editorialise your content. Aha, now this is an interesting distinction. I'm not an expert in this, as you might imagine, but what counts as editorialising? To my naive eyes, having an algorithm that re-arranges posts, or injects new subjects seems like editorialising to me.
- traverseda 5mo agoI'm also not a lawyer, I was making that as a more vague moral distinction on the topic of free speech and accountability. For practical reasons I think those algorithms are absolutely necessary. We need spam filters. A good line to draw would be "bring your own algorithm". A technical challenge to be sure, bit breaking up social media backend providers and content filtering seems like one of the only safe ways to allow these massive platforms to exist. The algorithm can be just "Dan filters out spam".
- dev_l1x_be 5mo agoBecoming? It has always been this way.
- bekon 5mo ago[flagged]
- anonymousiam 5mo agocitation?
- ipaddr 5mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21081770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21081770
- anonymousiam 5mo agoThis is not shadow banning, it is increased moderation for new accounts. There's a big difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning
- breck 5mo ago[dead]
- ptdcc 5mo ago[flagged]
- thejazzman 5mo agoWhen the standing president uses his speech to incite violence at the capital, attempt a coup, spread proven lies about health issues directly harming citizens... oh, right, free speech. everyones allowed to do anything because they use their VOICE to INCITE harm and that's enough abstraction that others can't see the facade??? bull shit.
- hilariously 5mo agoI figured the speech part was ok until it declined into an active coup but that's just me.
- skywhopper 5mo ago“Free speech” has never meant you can say or do anything you want.
- Jiro 5mo agoWhich is true here, except "do anything you want" is "be displeasing to Kuwait". It's all "they're a private company, they can ban anyone they want" right up until they ban someone who promoters of that idea don't like. Then they're suddenly horrible people for being a private company that bans anyone they want.
- mystraline 5mo ago> It's all "they're a private company, they can ban anyone they want" right up until they ban someone who promoters of that idea don't like. Then they're suddenly horrible people for being a private company that bans anyone they want. If they are NOT acting as an impartial aggregator and only censoring/deleting when the law demands, then they should NOT be covered under Section 230. Thats quite simple.
- 5mo ago
- iamalizard 5mo ago[dead]
- toasty228 5mo ago> the US as a supposed bastion of free speech Only americans believe that, this is almost as dumb as when they try to use dollars in Europe, "but it is valid tender I tell you!" or when they believe their TSA precheck works in China
- gatlin 5mo agoDo Americans often try to use dollars in Europe?
- toasty228 5mo agoThey also try to drive to canada with their guns, and believe they can't be "foreigners" because they're american. 30% of americans are functionally illiterate, no surprise really. https://immigration.ca/americans-frequently-caught-bringing-guns-across-canadian-border/ https://immigration.ca/americans-frequently-caught-bringing-...
- blacksmith_tb 5mo agoEmbarrassing, but the statistic cited there is 6 cases in 2017 for a single crossing point, looks like there are ~1.5M visits a year[1] so I would imagine even if we're talking hundreds of cases (generous), still not too common? 1: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/as-canadian-visits-to-the-u-s-continue-to-decline-american-visits-to-canada-fall-7-5-says-statistics-canada https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/as-canadian-visits-to-t...
- edent 5mo agoYes. Everyone has a story about being stuck behind an irate American who can't understand why their currency isn't accepted abroad. I've seen it in the UK - when a tourist tried to leave a tip in dollars for a bemused waiter.
- jandrewrogers 5mo agoUS currency is accepted in a surprisingly large number of countries abroad. Just not in Europe proper. US dollars are even accepted in some European sovereign territories outside of Europe. It is very convenient for Americans. Depending on the parts of the world you've traveled it is easy to get the impression that the US dollar is a sort of universal currency. Which isn't to excuse the people in your story. It is pretty easy to find out if US currency works where you are traveling.
- hankerapp 5mo ago[dead]
- OtomotO 5mo agoThe US are an oligarchy with the PR department being instructed to claim they are thr bastion of free speech though, so ex falso quodlibet.
- tamimio 5mo agoOligarchy and oligopoly as well.
- benoau 5mo agoUnfortunately we live in a world where any attempt to regulate "big tech" is met by massive campaigns to prevent it.
- NetOpWibby 5mo agoJust realizing that being a lobbyist is job security these days
- warumdarum 5mo ago[dead]
- montroser 5mo agoYou don't have a constitutional right to post on Facebook. When you invest your life into platforms run by for profit corporations, you agree to play by their rules. Merging state and big tech is not going to help.
- thaumasiotes 5mo ago> You don't have a constitutional right to post on Facebook. Well, that depends on who says you don't. If the government says so, they are wrong, because you do have a constitutional right enforceable against the government to post on Facebook. The idea of saying "you don't have a constitutional right to post on Facebook" is that you don't have such a right enforceable against Facebook. Which is true. But under current US law, you do have a civil right enforceable against any public accommodation to be offered the same service that they offer to the public generally.
- Retric 5mo agoYou have many constitutional protections that do apply in business relationships. Extending that list is at minimum worth considering.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> You don't have a constitutional right to post on Facebook Which is why OP describes the U.S. enacting legislation creating a statutory right.
- prasadjoglekar 5mo agoAu contraire, enacting such a law is akin to forcing FB to support certain speech. That itself is unconstitutional and any such legislation would be struck down.
- montroser 5mo agoYou are correct. But it's a ridiculous suggestion. Can you imagine the local corner store with a bulletin board, and some patron tacks up a picture of a swastika, and the owner of the store is not allowed to take it down?
- stinkbeetle 5mo agoPresumably Kuwait could just assemble a panel of self-proclaimed experts to denounce the speech of people threatening to the regime to be "very dangerous to our democracy", "hate speech", islamophobic, etc.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- heisenbit 5mo agoThere is a reason moderation decisions are not perfectly transparent: They are gamed otherwise. So there needs to be legal recourse with discovery and meaningful liability attached to submitting to the role of acting as the agent of a foreign government.