
Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms - patd
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/27/after-twitter-fact-check-trump-threatens-to-regulate-or-close-down-social-media-platforms/
======
Traster
I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably
going to be a shitshow, but anyway:

There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be
compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect
information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be
applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think
it's a vast over-reach and almost unachievable to have both perfect free
speech on these platforms and actually run them as a viable business.

But let's lay that aside, those people who make the argument claim to be
adhering to an even stronger dedication to free speech. Surely, it's clear
here that having the _actual_ head of the US government threatening to shut
down private companies for how they choose to manage their platforms is a far
more disturbing and direct threat against free speech even in the narrowest
sense.

~~~
0x5002
I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general,
I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring
overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks
have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided
political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the
idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st
amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the
/r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly), rather than to facilitate free and
open discourse.

On the other hand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al are undoubtedly massively
influential on the public opinion and their corporate position on political
topics - Yoel Roth's recent tweets serve as a decent example, showing clearly
that this person cannot be an objective "fact checker" \- essentially create a
public forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights (and,
legally speaking, rightfully so). I cannot help but to find this very
concerning.

YouTube (despite numerous issues with their interpretation of free speech),
for instance, starting linking Wiki articles under videos that cover certain
topics or are uploaded by certain channels. Videos by the BBC show a notice
that the BBC is a British public broadcast service, simply informing the
viewer about the fact that any bias they might encounter can be easily
identified (feel free to switch "BBC" with "RT"). I've found that to be a
decent middle ground between outright suppressing views by a corporation
pretending to be the authority on certain topics and broadcasting everything
without any context.

~~~
kitd
FWIW, the BBC World Service podcast "The Compass" [1] has an excellent series
on free speech by the veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig. I highly recommend
it. He covers tech companies, universities, blasphemy laws, etc.

[1] -
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads)

For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of
an imbalance of power between those in authority and the ordinary citizen.
During the Enlightenment, the authorities were monarchs, but even before that,
the origins of free speech can be seen in the Reformation, the authorities
being the established Church and the battles being eg the right to a Bible in
your own language or the right to worship without priests.

In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well,
_authoritarian_. Global leaders & business people who tweet or post on FB
carry an authority _ex officio_ that make their proclamations much more
acceptable to the neutral reader. That in itself is a dangerous situation and
Twitter or FB absolutely need to take control. If these companies want us to
take them seriously as champions of free speech, they have to play their role
to help restore that balance of power, by being _far_ more stringent about
fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for
ordinary posters.

Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech
are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority
that requires a rebalance of power. It is just an established opinion.

~~~
Veen
> Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech
> are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an
> authority that requires a rebalancing of power. It is just an established
> opinion.

A tyranny of the majority—which you appear not to understand is a bad
thing[0]—is a disaster and precisely what modern democratic institutions seek
to avoid. It always leads to the repression of minorities, whether that's
ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or political minorities. I doubt you
would be much in favor of tyranny by a majority of a different political
persuasion.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority)

~~~
kitd
You're right that I worded it wrong. I was trying to say that they see it as a
tyranny of the majority, whereas it is it is just a majority opinion.

------
itchyjunk
Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game
flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror
stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still
struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of
that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment.

Is there no way to consider social media as unreliable overall and not bother
fact checking anything there? All this tech is relatively new but maybe we
should think in longer time scale. Wikipedia is still not used as a source in
school work because that's the direction educational institution moved. If we
could give a status that nothing on social media is too be taken seriously,
maybe it's a better approach.

Let me end this on a muddier concept. I thought masks was a good idea from the
get go but there was an opposing view that existed at some point about this
even from "authoritative" sources. In that case, do we just appeal to
authority? Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view?

~~~
Loughla
> Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view?

This statement concerns me, greatly. Its implication is that facts are merely
point of view statements. That is just, well, it's just wrong.

Facts are facts. The truth is the truth. They don't care what your beliefs
are. If it is empirically true, then it is true.

Why and when did it become okay to hand-wave and dismiss anything you didn't
believe in, personally, just because you don't believe in it? What is this
world?

~~~
2019-nCoV
How can a statement about the future be empirically wrong?

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
So if the president says "The sun won't rise tomorrow", we can't reject that
statement out of hand?

~~~
2019-nCoV
You'd be wise too, but you wouldn't be rejecting it empirically.

~~~
nkozyra
"Empirical" does not mean exclusively present observation. It includes
reacting to observed patterns a priori, for example.

~~~
jmoss20
...observed patterns a priori?

~~~
nkozyra
As in a priori observations can instruct an empirical conclusion.

~~~
2019-nCoV
Only ex post...

------
jjuel
It is crazy to see how well he knows his base and how to get them to rally
close to an election. Making them think everything is a liberal bias against
them, and if they don't vote for his big government agenda they will receive a
big government agenda. This is just one more way for him to get his base to
believe everything he says versus people who actually prove what he says is a
lie. He wants state run media and social media just like China. As much as he
talks about hating China he would love to be China.

~~~
gameswithgo
It isn't that he has a special insight into his base, he is just willing to
abandon any sense of truth or decency to flame it. That is what is remarkable
about him.

~~~
TrackerFF
One can hate or like Biden, but he put it perfectly: This is a prostitution of
the presidency. Nothing more, nothing less.

Republicans are willing to look away, and let Trump run rampant, if it means
that they'll get their part in return (judges, etc.)

Trump, in turn, will say anything. He has no restrains, and knows this - he
can say absolutely anything, and no-one within will do or say anything.

Right now, the presidency (for Trump) is a case of survival. He needs to
remain in power, in order to escape whatever civil charges he'll face.

For his own sake, Trump should have never ran for Presidency. He hates his
job, and got lost in his own ego.

------
tuna-piano
There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet.

After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information
is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every
form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome
(and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries).

So what should the social media companies do? Censor people? Disallow certain
messages (like they do with terrorism related posts)?

They settled on just putting in fact check links with certain posts. Trust in
the fact deciding institution will of course be difficult to settle. No one
wants a ministry of truth (or the private alternative).

So the question remains - do you, or how do you lessen the spread of
misinformation?

~~~
dvtrn
Media literacy and criticism classes in middle school?

~~~
staycoolboy
I used to think this was the answer.

I now think the problem with this is a lack of standards. It is documented
that textbook manufacturers publish different history and science texts based
on the region of the country regarding the civil war or evolution.

Not to be a nihilist, but what makes you think underfunded schools that
struggle to teach basic reading will teach media literacy and criticism with
any success? and will be supported by publishers that feel the same way?

I also think critical thinking is VERY hard. Harder than people imagine. It is
hard to teach, hard to deploy, hard to practice. I'm not sure even 20% of the
population could muster the brain power required to sift through today's
onslaught of zone-flooding garbage.

~~~
dvtrn
_I now think the problem with this is a lack of standards._

That's fair, it's certainly one of many hurdles that this sort of a solution
would have to face.

 _Not to be a nihilist, but what makes you think underfunded schools that
struggle to teach basic reading will teach media literacy and criticism with
any success? and will be supported by publishers that feel the same way?_

Well I'd probably answer that by starting out with an inquiry on how nihilism
is a factor in what is a completely valid question about implementation? A
school's ability to fund this kind of program from textbooks to technology to
training staff and instructors has to be considered, this type of educational
program doesn't happen in vacuum.

So I'd say you're right to ask questions about the disparity in school funding
and how it would affect a media literacy curriculum-even if I'm not sure it's
particularly accurate to describe such questions as "nihilist", they're
completely _necessary_. But by no means am I intending to make any sort of
value judgement about how successful this school or that school will be by
merely suggesting taking a stab at introducing media literacy into public
schooling.

To the questions of publishers, excellent question again. Maybe there are some
models already out there worth exploring and iterating upon to maximize the
value across the various school systems and school models (public, montessori,
et al), a few people have commented that there are comparable programs where
they live, I'd be curious to see if there are systems worth replicating in
this thought experiment.

I think you raise excellent points here, all things said.

~~~
bonoboTP
Funding is a red herring, it's not primarily about money. The whole framework
of school is not geared towards this, because there is just not enough
teachers who have the capability to teach something like this. They themselves
aren't the brightest minds. Now, higher salaries could in principle make
teaching jobs more attractive to the best minds, but it would require a huge
social change, not just shuffling the budget around a little bit.

And from the children's side: It's already extremely hard to teach kids
anything at a deeper level, especially those ones who will later on become
susceptible to misinformation. If I look at my Facebook feed, schoolmates who
got bad grades around age 10 are the ones sharing fake quiz results, horoscope
stuff, "you won't believe what THIS person..." articles, listicles, racist
stuff etc. Sure it's just correlational, but I think we don't have much better
ways than we currently do in school.

If we could go back in time and design some critical thinking curriculum, are
you sure you could teach something useful to those struggling 10-year-olds,
that would keep their adult selves away from Internet bullshit?

~~~
dvtrn
_If we could go back in time and design some critical thinking curriculum, are
you sure you could teach something useful to those struggling 10-year-olds,
that would keep their adult selves away from Internet bullshit?_

Yes. That's why I made the suggestion to begin this thread with. What those
10-year-olds who grow-up to become adults (as we all do) do with that
information is impossible to ever truly know, but I think _something_ of value
could be taught, yes, absolutely.

But I disagree that funding is a red-herring, no it's not _solely_ about the
money, but as I said: curriculum implementation does not happen in a vacuum.
It's relevant, and I don't see many useful discussions about _implementation
specifically_ happening without it. If there's a discussion to be had about
the ethics or merits of media literacy, sure money probably doesn't carry as
much weight--but I'm trying to speak as broadly as possible on the topic to
avoid the trappings of turtles-all-the-way-down kvetching about the stylistics
over how the discussion is framed.

~~~
bonoboTP
It would be interesting to see such a curriculum in the concrete, perhaps some
country has something like that.

For example, we had something approximating it in Hungary, in history class.
The very fist history lesson we had, was on historical sources, how historians
work, "who benefits?", how you can know that a coin saying "minted in 350 BC"
must be fake etc. And then later it was all facts and gospel, no critical
presentation of different possibilities and interpretations and framings.
Because it would be overwhelming.

But to actually train critical thinking, all classes should be redesigned in
this manner, encouraging kids to poke holes in the material, but teachers can
barely venture out of the confines of the curriculum. An elementary school
physics teacher won't be able to explain things to you the same way a
professor could if you raise some criticism or find a plothole in the
simplified lie-to-children presentation. They'll just say, "that's how it is,
memorize it".

It's a very difficult problem and hardly scalable.

~~~
dvtrn
Someone suggested below that it was working in their countries, but the
comment got flag-killed not long after it was posted. If that person is still
following the thread hopefully they'd be willing to share their experiences on
it and what the success metrics look like.

 _That said..._

Reading other more recent comments though I think we're drifting a bit here
and introducing some creep into my initial suggestion: critical thinking and
media literacy certainly have some overlap in the types of class and even
perhaps overlap in topic, but I'm unsure if I'd necessarily agree that 'media
literacy' as a school topic needs to go all the way down the rabbit hole of of
unpacking "critical theory" and "how to think critically" just to hold courses
on what I initially and deliberately called 'media literacy and criticism'.

Your points are nonetheless well met, however-it definitely is a difficult nut
to crack, and I can't help but wonder if it's a type of thing where if the
immediate benefits maybe don't come from _solving_ the problem but manifest as
external results from simply looking at existing similar curricula and going
from there-to maybe lower the initial hurdles of implementation that you and
others spoke of? What do you think?

~~~
bonoboTP
What are example topics of media literacy that you would cover? How to check
the URL bar? How to look for institutional affiliations in an article? Give
them a whitelist of publications they can trust? Warn them to look out for bad
spelling (what if they themselves cannot spell well?)?

Perhaps tell them a story and ask them to rewrite it such that the bad guy
comes out looking like the good guy and vice versa, or similar manipulations
and framing exercises. To pick out manipulative phrases from presidential
speeches, like peace, democracy, our great nation etc. But that would directly
conflict with what they hear in other classes. Or perhaps use the example of
dictatorial propaganda, text and posters alike, point out manipulative stuff.

Perhaps one interesting thing would be to peek behind the curtains. To tell
them how news are made, how books are produced, how science works, what is
peer review, how they can look up the original primary source (but this is too
advanced for kids...). That books and knowledge and articles don't just fall
out of the sky, they are deliberately produced with goals in mind.

I fear that ultimately it would devolve into a "don't believe everything you
read, kids!", similar to "don't do drugs" lectures.

~~~
dvtrn
Example topics:

* How to source and read cited sources of online publications

* Copyright, fair use, associated topics (memes would be a great way to capture the attention of a middle schooler and would be a perfect tangent to these topics)

* Print and online advertising, how print markets have changed and evolved with the new digital landscape and the influence advertising and money has on content production (Youtuber's and patreons, again, a topic relevant to a young captive mind and one they're familiar with)

There's genuinely NO shortage of boilerplate contemporary lesson plans all
across the internet covering "media literacy" as an applied subject matter for
young minds-such that I don't really believe this to be as difficult of a
teachable subject as many people commenting here are trying to make it out as
being[0]

[0] [https://mediaeducationlab.com/topics/Teaching-Media-
Literacy](https://mediaeducationlab.com/topics/Teaching-Media-Literacy)

~~~
staycoolboy
This is what I was looking for with my most recent reply to your reply.
Thanks!

------
metrokoi
Almost no one is ever happy with fact-checking, it often just leads to more
disputes about whether or not the fact-checking is correct or warranted. To me
it seems much more efficient to simply teach people not to take anything
posted on social media seriously and to better think for themselves. One may
say that the president should be an exception because of the number of people
he reaches, but what about a famous actor with millions of followers? Or Elon
Musk? What would the line of acceptable influence be in order to make someone
fact-checkable? The set of fact-checkable people could be very large, and the
manpower required to fact check all of them formidable.

One may also argue that the president harms our country's image but again,
senators and congressmen represent us as well and can also influence large
amounts of people.

That does not mean he must go uncontested; people can still dispute everything
he says by responding (the original form of fact-checking). The discussion
should instead be about whether or not political figures should be able to
block people. I remember that was an issue a while ago, and I'm not sure where
it is now.

~~~
jdashg
We have tried teaching people not to believe everything they read on the
internet already. We need solutions that actually work.

It's wishful thinking at best to believe that Twitter replies can effectively
refute arguments. They don't establish public dialog unless the OP retweets
the responses. You can't call it a dialogue if, effectively, there's only one
person talking. Even simple refutations fail on Twitter.

"We can't fact check one person because it'd be hard to do the same for a
large number of people" is classic perfect-as-enemy-of-good. We get huge bang-
for-buck by handling some obvious outliers and known bad actors, and that's
worth doing.

~~~
umvi
What western democracies really need is an entire government segment dedicated
to fact-checking. We could call it the "Department of Truth" (or "Ministry of
Truth" in UK) and it would be responsible for labeling things on social media
as true or false using little fact checker badges.

~~~
jdashg
Don't strawman.

We literally have agencies that enforce degrees of truthfulness today, such as
the FDA, FCC, and FTC. Our legal system is explicitly designed around
determining degrees of truth in the courts.

~~~
umvi
It was a reference to 1984

------
standardUser
There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be
arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to
annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a
mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to
use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to
communication. The latter is almost certainly a violation of the Constitution.
The former, almost certainly not.

~~~
meragrin_
Perhaps they see it as targeting a political figure because of political
differences rather than trying to prevent the spread of misinformation. I'm
not seeing any annotations on a number prominent members of Congress spreading
misinformation.

Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten companies?
Obama had his share of threats. I'm sure they could find a suitable legal
issue with Twitter targeting Trump while ignoring members of Congress.

~~~
thephyber
> Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten
> companies?

The Articles of the US Constitution aren't an enumerated list of illegal
actions. It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential power.

I love that our expectations of the current president are so low that we will
use excuse them because "the previous presidents did it too!" You aren't
actually saying what he's doing is legal; you are simply increasing the
importance of precedent over the statutory restraints of power -- it's a
_very_ dangerous argument to make.

~~~
gwright
> The Articles of the US Constitution aren't an enumerated list of illegal
> actions. It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential power.

The US Constitution is indeed an enumerated list of federal governmental
powers, including the President's. At least that is the standard
interpretation. Obviously there are an infinite number of ways those
enumerated powers might manifest themselves but the overall scope and nature
of the powers is indeed limited by the US Constitution.

~~~
thephyber
You aren't disproving my statement.

I was being particularly pedantic because it was relevant to my parent
comment.

The Articles of the Constitution are affirmatively defined positive powers of
the branches of government. They are _not_ affirmatively defined negative
powers.

The Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) are closer to that, but they
don't specifically talk about The President and their scopes have had to be
interpreted by courts to determine (1) are the rights they guarantee applied
to {all people, all US residents, all US citizens, etc} and do they protect
against {US government, state/local governments, other private citizens, etc}.

~~~
gwright
Well I guess we are in agreement but I found your formulation confusing. In
particular "It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential
power" is what I was responding to.

Given your followup I now understand what you were saying.

------
qubex
I’m an outsider (not American, don’t live in America) so I’m almost not
entitled to have an opinion on the matter, but it always strikes me as fairly
odd when people of one persuasion or another rail against the ‘bias’ that they
perceive against them in one circumstance or another (including media
coverage).

 _Of course_ people see bias against them. It’s classical confirmation bias:
every time something goes their way, it’s unremarkable, but as soon as
something doesn’t, it’s noticeable.

Isn’t it equally possible —nay, _probable_ even, especially in this case— that
the perceived bias is only the prevailing opinion of the majority against whom
one is in a minority?

~~~
TrackerFF
> so I’m almost not entitled to have an opinion on the matter

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you here. The US is such a prominent
nation, that can make or break the economies other countries, depending on
their political actions.

I've seen a lot of this "It's US politics, so none of your business" writing
when criticizing Trump - but fact is that most countries are not perfectly de-
coupled from each others. The US relies on some countries, while other
countries relies on the US.

Sure, you do not have any right to vote for him, but you sure as hell are
entitled to voice your opinion on him.

~~~
qubex
I most definitely do have an opinion on him, and a very negative one at that.
However, I try to keep that as reserved as possible for a number of reasons,
including:

\- Manifesting my like or dislike of the man immediately places one side or
the other of tribal warfare, and that is precisely what I’d like to see less
of;

\- In my experience Americans are extremely testy and sometimes downright
hostile when foreigners express opinions about their governance (the whole
foundational process, at least as it is taught today, was of a rejection of
ties to the Old Wolrd and its old, flawed ways)... I’ve even had people berate
me online for being a condescending neo-imperialistic foreigner meddling in
their affairs ‘proving’ that the Democrats are traitors who sell out America’s
interests to foreigners (because if foreigners prefer Democrats, it must be
because they get something in return);

\- I sometimes get somewhat annoyed at others when they bring up “pizza,
pasta, mafia” caricatures of my own home country (Italy) so I always wonder
how much of what I think I ‘know’ is simply stereotype.

For all these reasons, I prefer to be as impartial as I possibly can.

~~~
umvi
I have Italian friends on FB constantly voicing their criticisms of US
government. It just strikes me as massively hypocritical when Italy's
government is a complete train wreck. It's easy to criticize, it's harder to
lead by example.

My instinct is to reply "Then show us how it's done with your own government.
It isn't easy, is it?"

~~~
qubex
That’s precisely the kind of response I’m referring to, and it’s why I try to
remain as neutral as possible.

Though if I may be blunt, faulting individuals for living under a political
system that does not engender cohesive leadership isn’t really fair (which is
another reason I prefer not to wade into the American political debate).

------
shadowgovt
Not every day a sitting President threatens a media outlet for exercising
their freedom of the press, but it's not the first time it's happened.

Of course, most Presidents have been constrained by some modicum of
understanding that their oath to uphold the Constitution applies to the whole
thing.

~~~
frockington1
Is Twitter a media outlet? If they want to be classified as such it might make
them susceptible to slander lawsuits

~~~
elicash
Please read this article:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-internet-
law-twenty-six-words-that-created-the-internet-jeff-kosseff-interview)

------
rlyshw
Honestly just more proof that we need decentralization of the Internet.
Handing over control of our digital platforms and identities to 3rd party for-
profit companies is not the way the internet should work.

~~~
bt1a
Aye but with no one in charge, how can the masses protect themselves against
ever-increasing disinformation campaigns?

~~~
ccsnags
If there is control over information, how do the masses protect themselves
against disinformation campaigns coming from official sources?

Conspiracy theories and baseless nonsense is the price you pay to be able to
criticize those in power. It is a price worth paying.

~~~
AgentME
Independent fact checkers not associated with government authorities (like
what Twitter is doing in this case) seems like one solution.

I'm really bugged by the leap of logic that fact checkers will supposedly
always parrot the government line, when even this specific thread itself is
about a fact checker existing that's going against the president's line.

------
exabrial
I once got a strike on social media for posting an article about a German
doctor that recommended whiskey to cure covid19. It was a joke, and any
reasonable adult would know this is false.

It's hard for me to feel sorry for companies that go down the fact checking
route with algorithms; It always ends up causing more damage than value.

12 years ago we didn't have this problem, and I think that's mostly related to
the fact there was some UX resistance to hitting the "reahare" button.

~~~
ojnabieoot
Literally hundreds of people, including children, have died drinking bootleg
alcohol being hawked as a COVID-19 cure. It is simply not the case that “any
reasonable adult” knows your joke is a joke - that may be the case in
developed countries where people have reliable access to actual doctors. But
in developing countries this has been a serious problem.

Misinformation kills innocent people. A harsh no-tolerance policy is
acceptable given this is the worst global health crisis in 100 years.

~~~
exabrial
Completely disagree.

My audience, my friends and family, are all educated reasonable adults.

~~~
jonny_eh
There's no way for a moderator to know all that, and take it into account.

~~~
exabrial
Agree. It lacks context. My friends and family know my style of humor and
sarcasm. Every situation an algorithm will not be able to determine that.

------
djohnston
The head of integrity has unabashedly showcased his strong political bias on
Twitter, and I suspect things will begin going poorly for either him or
Twitter shortly.

~~~
adwww
lol what, he is biased for pointing out misinformation from a prominent public
figure, after years of Twitter being criticised for allowing false information
to proliferate?

~~~
plehoux
I think he is referencing those tweets:
[https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/126545757821512499...](https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1265457578215124995)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's attacking the person rather than the action - were the fact checking
moderations wrong?

Sure, their personal political bias should put them up to a greater level of
scrutiny; but it they can still fact check without bias.

So, have they?

~~~
free_rms
The appearance is disqualifying on its own.

They're gonna get dragged for these tweets any time they fact check anything,
even if their judgment is always impeccable.

~~~
surfpel
> They're gonna get dragged for these tweets

They’ll get dragged for doing anything that doesn’t align with X party. If not
his tweets than something else.

Not saying people shouldn’t have common sense about what they post on a public
forum tho...

~~~
free_rms
Yeah, but why hand them ammo. Like you say.

I'm pretty sure most judges would recuse if they had statements like that
surface.

Sections (a) (1) and especially (a) (5) here, for example:
[https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_code_of_judicial_conduct/model_code_of_judicial_conduct_canon_2/rule2_11disqualification/)

------
Finnucane
It's pretty obvious that DT is not going to shut down the very platforms he
relies on for his political survival. Even he's not that stupid. Nor does he
have any real regulatory authority that could be employed that wouldn't also
bite him back. So this is just him trying to bully the platforms into letting
him say whatever without being exposed to any criticism or being called out
for bullshit.

~~~
dathinab
Sure, but such bullying is rather dangerous.

Normally such threads come from people which are somewhat in the process or
trying to de-mantel a democracy. So a US president saying something like that
is quite worrying even if his intentions are not to undermine the US
democracy.

~~~
techntoke
That is exactly his intentions. He is an idiot for using Twitter in the first
place. He should have been advocating for a decentralized Internet where his
followers could live in a bubble catered to them.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Aren't the algorithms probably better at curating that bubble than people
would be themselves though? If I started using Twitter and I followed Trump, a
few people posting weird pro-Trump memes about him at the top of the comments
on his tweets, and pro-Trump media, wouldn't the algorithm curate me a pretty
nice bubble feed? Twitter always spam my feed with random things people I
follow liked/replied to, surely they'd do the same for people with that sort
of account too?

------
collegecamp293
Twitter has opened a whole can of worms. There are several official state
agencies with their propaganda PR arms on Twitter. Will they fact check them
too and risk being banned in those countries?

~~~
Cthulhu_
It's a moral question that Twitter has to answer for themselves; are they
willing to risk getting banned in those countries? Are they willing to risk
having the government of the country they operate from shut them down?

I mean I want to say they should let that happen, but the US is toothless in
that the population wouldn't revolt if it happened. Twitter would end but
nothing would change.

But it's not going to go there, Twitter will sit with the government, they'll
make a deal, some palms will be greased and they will bow to their government
overlords.

Companies are fucky like that; on the one hand they influence public discourse
and voting behaviour, on the other they're morally flexible and will grovel
for their government masters if they get to earn money there (see also Google
and China, Hollywood films and China, etc).

------
shiado
How can the "private platform so they can do whatever they want" crowd
reconcile their views on election interference using social media in 2016 with
this latest move by Twitter? If they can do what they want with their platform
why did it matter in 2016 and why does it not matter now?

~~~
beart
I can't directly answer the question. However, I think what complicates this
issue is the political actors involved. Twitter may be a private platform, but
when the President posts a Tweet, that is very much a public, political,
government message.

For example, a federal judge barred Trump from blocking followers, despite
Twitter being a private platform.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/23/trump-cant-block-twitter-
fol...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/23/trump-cant-block-twitter-followers-
federal-judge-says.html)

~~~
rtkwe
The big difference here is the judge was restricting Trump as a government
actor from doing something while the Twitter side of things is Twitter doing
something on their own platform. Trump very much was using Twitter as the
official place for announcements for a while and if it's the official place to
learn government policy you can't block people from seeing it.

------
myspy
Well, Facebook and Twitter are currently used in cyberwarfare to destabilise
western democracies and the result is pretty impressive, because it works.

Give people their Facebook but remove the algorithms from the timeline and
close all groups to make it harder for people to spread misinformation and
group together to celebrate it. Or close it all together, social media doesn't
have that many upsides. My observation from more than ten years with those
tools.

No idea where the problem lies in Twitter but marking tweets with lies and
conspiracy stuff is a step in a good direction.

~~~
cryptonector
Social media can't not have algorithms for limiting what you get to see,
otherwise you'd be swamped with items on your timeline and you'd stop using
them. Oh, I see what you're doing. Yes, they should get rid of the algorithms!

------
pwdisswordfish2
One alternative is to ban politicians from using these private websites as
"official pulpits". As private websites they are under no legal obligation to
allow anyone to use them. If politicians want to communicate with
constituents, then let them do so through government websites. Why does the US
government not create its own "Twitter" service? Government websites are
subject to laws and regulations that private websites are not. Unlike private
websites they would be required to honour free speech protections under
existing US law.

As we know, the private websites have incentives to allow politicians to use
them as pulpits because it drives "engagement" and, in some cases, because
they want to sell political ads or ad services.

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
The term "private websites" might be ambiguous. What I mean is "privately-
owned websites".

------
zachware
This gets to the issue of property rights. It's not unlike the tribal debate
over mask requirements in private businesses.

If you are a conservative you believe in property rights. Thus, private
companies can make whatever rules they want...with their property...and if I
don't agree with them, I go elsewhere.

The same is true with Twitter. So it makes this whole fiasco so hypocritical.
If you claim to be a conservative but you don't respect a business' right to
set its own rules, you're a charlatan.

------
ausbah
As usual he is just playing the victim when people call him out on his lies.
What makes it different and worth watching is when the platform instead of a
user does it.

------
foobar_
This should have happened a long time ago. Flag people / tweets but don't
taken them down. Ignore flagged tweets. Create public black lists of
spammers/trolls.

People are still waiting for twitter to clear up all the bots. From what I am
aware the challenge is not bots but people masquerading 1000s of accounts
manually, so it's actually a misnomer to call them bots.

------
qubex
Wasn’t it Voltaire who said “ _I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend
to the death your right to say it_ ”?

Nonetheless, this is pretty much par for the course for what the world has
come to expect.

Edit: It turns out that though phrase is often attributed to Voltaire, it was
actually Evelyn Beatrice Hall, as noted by the poster below, to whom I am
grateful for the correction.

~~~
ceejayoz
Would he defend your right to say it _in his living room_ , though?

(Let's also not lose sight of the fact that Trump hasn't even had his tweets
deleted or censored in any fashion. Just a note added underneath.)

~~~
qubex
Clearly broadcast and social media are a new occurrence that needs to be
factored into the discussion somehow, and if you were to argue that applying
Enlightenment political theory to the current situation is an anachronism, I
would tend to agree.

I’d also like to see social media and search engines legislated as
utilities... but I’m in the EU so my opinion scarcely matters, to be perfectly
honest.

~~~
Reelin
> I’m in the EU so my opinion scarcely matters, to be perfectly honest

That's not really true (I say this as an American). Sure, the US government is
highly unlikely to change their policies based on what people living in the EU
think. That doesn't mean the EU can't legislate such things within their own
borders though. There's no technological reason a search engine or social
media platform couldn't be based in the EU; for example, Qwant exists
([https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com)).

------
methehack
I don't have to let trump stand on my front porch and scream lies at top
volume, and twitter doesn't either. Twitter is protected by the first
amendment here, not trump.

Twitter's platform is private, not public. Twitter should waste no more time
in making that crystal clear.

If you own the printing press, you get to decide what you print. If it were
otherwise -- if the government, or anyone else, could control what we said and
didn't say with our private resources -- well, that's not anywhere any of us
really wants to live.

------
bardonadam
He tweeted his threat to shutdown Twitter, gotta love this.

~~~
shadowgovt
He has to. He doesn't have another media outlet where he's as directly visible
to his primary constituency as he is on Twitter.

~~~
bardonadam
Ironic, isn't it?

------
fareesh
The existence of such a diversity of views on whether or not the statement was
factual or not factual is enough of a good reason to see why this feature is
not a good idea.

The discussion being had between diverse perspectives is not helped when the
platform starts flagging things with its own hand-picked opinion.

------
kauffj
However you feel about this, Twitter did it in pretty much the worst way
possible.

1\. They had someone with a clear history of strong anti-Trump and anti-
Republican sentiment take the action
([https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/126545757821512499...](https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1265457578215124995))

2\. Twitter chose a _prediction_ rather than a _factual statement_ to fact
check ("Mail-In Ballots will be..."). Why not start with a truly factually
wrong statement about the past?

3\. They picked something that is actually debatable! A bipartisan committee
concluded it carried some risks in 2005: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/heed-
jimmy-carter-on-the-danger...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/heed-jimmy-carter-
on-the-danger-of-mail-in-voting-11586557667)

The notion that a company can ever be trusted to "fact check" (aka determine
objective truth) is just completely laughable. The closest we can come is
labeling agent beliefs about truth ("X says Y is false").

Doing nothing would be better than doing this. Even better would be building
solutions that allow community-based (and ideally personalized) derivations of
consensus (this is what we're doing at LBRY).

~~~
nautilus12
Wow a comment that isn't just calling trump a racist and is calmly laying out
the facts....

------
krn
I wonder, at point is Twitter supposed to block the user for constant spread
of disinformation on its platform? Or would that violate the user's right to
"free speech"? Could the user protect himself by claiming, that he is simply
expressing "his own opinion"?

~~~
chadlavi
Free speech means the government can't come after you for statements. Anyone
claiming a company is infringing on their free speech is at best ignorant of,
and at worst purposefully misconstruing, the bill of rights. You have no right
to post whatever you want on a private company's platform, they can ban you
whenever and for whatever reason they want.

~~~
krn
In other words, the only reasons for Twitter not ban such a user are 1)
business (that he might be driving a substantial amount of traffic); and 2) PR
(that banning him would bring much more negative than positive coverage for
the company)?

------
shadowgovt
I notice this post is flagged.

HN will do what it do, but I can't escape the feeling that in an era where a
President uses Twitter, HN will become less relevant as a technological
discourse destination if it lacks the will to touch the ramifications of
technology and politics combined.

~~~
majewsky
We have enough forums that allow or encourage political discussions and then
inevitably devolve into hyper-partisan shitshows (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit,
etc.). It's nice to have a refuge that's mostly free from this dynamic.

~~~
shadowgovt
Good point. I respect the right of people to have a safe space. I hope HN can
continue to be one.

These are interesting times we live in, with a President leveraging modern
communications technology in a way that hasn't really been seen since the
fireside chat era of the Roosevelt administration.

------
doublesCs
Cue republicans outraged at the president's attack on the first amendment.

..

Lol joking, they love it.

~~~
sixstringtheory
Not like there’s any real impact here. Now if Twitter were in the cake
business, it’d be a national security imperative to defend their rights as a
private entity.

------
awakeasleep
It's really hard for people to put aside their personal political views and
look at things from a legal point of view.

The issue here is whether these private companies are actually making rules
within their own private domain, or if they control a public space.

If you feel like you intuitively know the answer to that question, take that
as an indication that you haven't loaded enough of the prerequisites in your
mind to actually understand what is at stake.

There are simple arguments for both sides of the equation, but the details
become maddening before you even get to the complications of how it's all
subservient to advertising, personal data tracking, and in a realm that is
testing our current definition of monopoly.

~~~
ghostpepper
If you have any resources you can point me toward, I would love to read the
best arguments for each side.

The best I've found so far is a supreme court case called Marsh v Alabama
which has nothing to do with the internet but does touch on the application of
the first amendment to a private physical space.

------
jdhn
Putting aside concerns about overreach government powers, would ending social
media as we know it really be a bad thing?

~~~
raziel2p
How? Forbid all of it? Forbid what, exactly - any app that allows
communication between more than 1 person?

Even if Twitter were to go bankrupt tomorrow, something else would come to
replace it.

~~~
ImprobableTruth
Social media can only survive because of safe harbor provisions. If sites
become responsible for the content they host, social media as we know would
instantly die out.

~~~
rwmj
So would a vast number of things. github, blogs, cloud, public web hosting of
almost any kind.

~~~
ImprobableTruth
Sure. I'm not saying that I think it would be good, just that it's possible.

------
ProAm
Twitter will kowtow to the President here. He is the reason alone Twitter
survived the last 6 years and they have shown publicly that politicians and
celebrities play by different rules on their platform.

~~~
bearjaws
In the last 15+ years we have heard this same story, "X platform wouldn't
exist without Y user". This has never turned out to be true for any large
scale social media platform. For the platforms that have failed, it was always
a better platform that took their place, not one single user causing a mass
migration.

Look at the_donald, which had a mass migration off of Reddit, and everyone
said Reddit was going to shutdown without their ad revenue. Still waiting...

~~~
ProAm
I agree but I really think Trump saved Twitter. The company was for sale and
couldn't find a buyer remotely interested. They couldnt find anyone willing to
take the CEO seat so they asked Jack Dorsey to come back. They were in the
dumps as a company until Trump started to tweet like a madman. I really do
believe that Trump saved Twitter. I dont remember people thinking Reddit would
fail if they lost the_donald subreddit?

------
pseingatl
Don't forget that the largest shareholders of Twitter, after its own founders
are the government of Saudi Arabia acting though Walid bin Talal. Censorship
is not unknown in Saudi Arabia.

~~~
ojbyrne
Oh?
[https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...](https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=TWTR&subView=institutional)

------
nxpnsv
Why not just kick him off for tos violation and be done with it. That would be
an article worth reading...

~~~
node-bayarea
He is the President of the United States! And 50% of the people like his
policies (if not his personal behavior)

~~~
ascagnel_
Only a little under 25% of the US affirmatively voted for him in the 2016
election (a little over 25% voted for his opponent, and roughly 50% chose to
not vote at all). Included in that 25% would be people who either voted
against his opponent, or voted on a single issue that overrode all other
considerations (in the US, blocking legal abortions is the single biggest
driver of these voters).

~~~
metrokoi
If people chose not to vote, I don't think their opinion matters too much.
Excluding people ineligible to vote and people who didn't vote out of protest,
although a better choice would have been to write in a vote.

------
cwperkins
Its evident to me that our strategy to combat misinformation is not going
great at the moment. I've been on Reddit for over 13 years and the site has
gone through many changes.

What if we changed our thinking from removing/flagging bad content to
fostering rich discourse?

I'll use r/politics for example, I currently do not think there is productive
or rich discourse being had there. If you have had a different experience
please let me know.

I think for the political arena it would do us good to try to emulate the US
House of Representatives where representatives are given equal time to address
the floor. In this way you will be exposed to other perspectives. The ways we
can achieve this are similar to the approach NYT has taken to comments. You
can still sort comments by most recommended, but there are also "Featured
Comments". Featured Comments are chosen by a team at NYT, presumably from
ideologically diverse perspectives, and they choose comments that are
insightful and rich in information without toxicity. Does anyone else think
that would be a good idea?

I think its important because I truly believe Americans are far more alike
then different and just about everyone feels like they are under attack or
have been violated. Its time to heal and listen and understand that we are in
it together and the people that we really should be castigating are the people
filled with prejudice to the point where they have shut themselves off from
hearing other perspectives. I believe there is a vast middle in the USA, but
its currently getting drowned out and it should have a louder voice.

~~~
Do4oolu5
Is it really a technical problem, though?

If the majority of people _want_ to fight and is more willing to act in bad
faith to hurt the opponent / win the argument rather than willing to correct
their opinion by discovering facts, I don't think any technical solution
could, nor should, try to correct that ("nor should", because it could quickly
turn into some sort of oppression).

That being said, I commend you for looking for such solution, if only because
masses' mood swings faster than technical solutions are implemented, and your
features will be there when people are fed up with constant conflicts.

~~~
cwperkins
I think it is to some extent. The "Tyranny of the Majority" on internet forums
pushes people to finding safe spaces for them. It's great that you can find
subreddits for your interest and I even think they should exist for political
ideologies, but I think it would do us a big service to see the main political
arena to be more like the US House of Representatives.

For me, I see the main problem is that we need to create demand for fair and
balanced news sources. I really don't like when you only hear about
perceptions of other perspectives from pundits/activists, instead of hearing
the opinion from its source. I think this is breeding prejudice. I think there
is a vast amount of misrepresentation and the backlash we see is from people
who often don't feel like they have the proper avenues to express themselves.

I try to be part of the solution, by paying for subscriptions for Bloomberg
and WSJ. Its a hard problem, that's for sure.

------
_aleph2c_
This could be an extinction level event for the right. They have managed to
circumvent the conventional media by going directly to the masses. If social
media is mediated by the highly educated, and typically left leaning staff;
there will be no way for the right to send out there message. The left leaning
staff think they are doing the right thing, but what they are doing will
extinguish the oxygen to the other side.

------
scarface74
And this is the government that the HN crowd is screaming to “regulate tech”?

------
nraynaud
In a lot of European countries nazi speech is forbidden, and I would posit
that it works: the police murders less minorities, the difference in earnings
and life expectancy are narrower, and generally violent deaths are lower.

Maybe it's time for the US to become a member of the international community,
by adopting common codes.

~~~
anewdirection
So censoring hitler online means less police violence?

Please do show me the data.

Baseless nationalism is just as unwelcome from any country as it is fron the
USA. Stop it.

~~~
nraynaud
"Europe" is not a nation, this word is like garlic for the nationalists.

------
thephyber
There seem to be a lot of different threads of argument here and lots of the
discussion seems to meander between them.

The way I see it:

    
    
      - The "town square" concept (and whether individual social media apps/websites constitute what is historically called that in the legal realm). Can a person say something which should get them banned from a town square? What if multiple town squares coordinate their actions against a single user/content?
      - Private party "censorship". Is what social media companies do "censoring"?
      - The role of 1st Amendment in "protecting speech" of private individuals against private companies (which historically is not covered by the 1st Amendment, but is covered by the principle of Free Speech)
      - The role of 1st Amendment in "protecting speech" of private companies against the president (which might be covered under the 1st Amendment, depending on other factors)
      - Whether the 1st Amendment protects from threats from government officials, as opposed to actions of officials
      - Private sector companies using their own moderation rules+workforce (including vague rule definitions and no ability to get a judgement about where "the line" is)
      - Brigades of political activists using the moderation systems against their adversaries
      - Whether the political tendencies of employees at the relevant social media companies have any significant bias for/against specific users/content
      - Whether a private sector company is allowed to curate content on its property (and the sub-arguments which revolve around ToS/EULA/contracts)
      - Legal responsibilities+liability of social media "platforms" under "Section 230" (and some people misunderstand this industry to be under Common Carrier laws, which regulates more commoditized telco systems)
      - Second-order effects of account bans, including loss of access and content under shared accounts (eg. getting banned from your Facebook account also leaves you locked out of any account you connected with Facebook Connect / OAuth)

------
thebouv
So he just admitted that fact checking is suppressing conservative voices?

That's awesome.

~~~
krapp
He's also admitted that voter suppression is the main reason Republicans even
get elected[0].

God help us if we ever get a competent authoritarian into office who's cunning
enough not to say the corrupt part out loud.

[0][https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-
vot...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-voting-
republicans/)

~~~
mark_l_watson
To your point, Trump being out in the open with his BS is probably what his
base likes. I have family members who think that he is a great president, go
figure.

BTW, I view most politicians from both parties, DNC, and RNC to be corrupt,
controlled by special interests.

Not to go to far afield here, but I will vote for either a democrat or
republican based on public records of who their donors are. Turns out that
based on this criteria I usually vote for Democrats but not always.

~~~
shadowgovt
"Controlled by special interests" is half the story.

The other half is to realize that in the US representative democracy, the
people who change policy are the ones who are dedicated enough to the task to
make a career out of it, at the expense of other things they could be doing.
Because the system isn't managed by the will of the people; it's managed by
the will of the subset of the people who put the (quite large amount of)
effort in to be known and heard. Most Americans don't even do the base work of
showing up to vote in every election (and the turnout numbers are too low to
explain that effect by voter suppression alone).

Those with other things to do and not enough time to be devoted full-time to
policy-craft label those who do "special interests."

The NRA is a special interest, but so is the ACLU. And the NAACP. And the AFL-
CIO. And the EFF.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Well, the ACLU and EFF are my personal special interests, but I think you
probably know that I am talking about corporate lobyists buying the votes of
democrats and republicans in congress, of corporate news media that sways
public opinion.

~~~
shadowgovt
Right, but the ACLU and EFF are part of that story; funding SIGs that have the
human expertise to interface to politicians efficiently is one of the
mechanisms corporations "buy votes." Not all corporate lobbying is by people
with the corporation's name in their title; corporations outsource by
supporting SIGs aligned with them.

The EFF has received millions in funding from both Google as a corporate
entity and one of Google's co-founders as direct donation.

This is one of the reasons campaign finance reform is such a wicked problem;
if the real goal is to diminish the corporate voice relative to the voice of
the common citizen, one has to account for the fact that money can buy
basically every mechanism by which voices are amplified. It can even, subtly
applied, buy the opinion of the common citizen.

------
brodouevencode
Readers beware: it's basically useless to argue either side of this position
because the level of nuance, complexity, and convolution involved in such a
discussion is beyond the limits of what a threaded comment board can
accomplish.

~~~
cryptonector
And yet the argument must be had.

~~~
brodouevencode
I agree. Here is not the proper place.

------
randyrand
The fundamental question is, do people have a right to free speech on the web?

The web is nearly entirely privately owned, which makes answering this
question difficult.

On one hand, the web is where we do 90% of our communication these days.

On the other hand, the web is privately owned not public.

I’m convinceable either way. Did telephone companies have a right to censor
land line speech? Should ISPs be able to censor? Should Cloudflare? AWS? If
telephone companies would have run afoul of the 1st amendment to regulate
phone speech, It seems like other “foundational” industries like ISPs and
Cloudflare should be regulated to be “dumb pipes”.

Where social networks fall is less clear.

------
tom-thistime
I don't always see eye-to-eye with the President, but closing down social
media platforms sounds like a win for the country. Tough, bitter medicine but
exactly what we need in the long term.

------
dang
We changed the URL from [https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-threatens-
close-social...](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-threatens-close-social-
media-platforms-twitter-fact/story?id=70899912) to one that doesn't contain an
auto-playing video. (via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322719),
but the comments have been moved thence hither).

------
Ididntdothis
I feel like we are slowly reaching the state the movie “Idiocracy” describes.
I feel very torn about this. On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it
up to companies like Twitter to censor things. On the other hand I find it
hard to believe that the president is constantly claiming things without any
evidence backing up. It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters
in 2016 and the commission they started disbanding quietly after finding
nothing. And now publicly spreading rumors about killing somebody.

It’s insane how little respect the US has for the integrity of its political
system. As long as it may hurt the “other” side everything is ok without
regard to the damage they are constantly doing the health of the system.

~~~
thatwasunusual
> On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like
> Twitter to censor things.

Is it really _censorship_ to fact check tweets? I mean, Twitter hasn't
_removed_ (i.e. censored) any tweets from Trump, just added an annotation.

~~~
nkkollaw
Yes, of course it is. Most people will all of a sudden ignore someone's
message.

I have no idea why anyone would argue in favor of Twitter. When has it become
required to be an expert in the field to be granted the privilege of leaving a
comment on a forum? When has it become unacceptable to lie? People lie all the
time. Advertisements lie to you, politicians lie to you, your mom lies to you.

It's really annoying that the truth police is going to go and check your
tweets or comment—even if you ignore the fact that the line between facts and
opinions isn't always easy to see. Even facts like Taiwan being its own
country or part of China or the Armenian genocide can be denied, and people
should be able to say that—and perhaps rightfully get shit for that, but still
be able to say it.

We're going back to the Middle Ages, where if you say Earth isn't flat or God
doesn't exist (replace with global warming isn't caused by humans, Covid-19 is
man-made), you're executed.

Sad.

~~~
mplanchard
There’s a difference between you or I saying something incorrect (willfully or
not) on the Internet and a world leader doing the same. Twitter already
distinguishes famous people, world leaders, etc. in a variety of ways. It
seems reasonable that this would be one of them, given that the potential
reach and impact of anything they say far, far exceeds that of your average
Tweeter.

~~~
nkkollaw
Is there, though? Why should Twitter be in charge of deciding who's a world
leader or famous enough to get checked?

Who is Twitter to fact-check world leaders?

When world leaders rarely tell the truth, how can anyone realistically think
that such a system could even work, even if it made sense?

~~~
bostik
Well, here's the funny bit: Twitter doesn't _need to decide_. If someone in a
major power, such as a G20 member country, is in a government position, they
are a world leader. And because things are always contested, that same
category can be extended to high-ranking members of opposition.

I'm going to take you at your word and accept that world leaders rarely tell
the truth: so they should ALL get the same treatment then. But instead of
stamping their output with just "fact-check this", why not unilaterally label
all of it with: "may contain lies, omissions and half-truths"?

~~~
nicc
> why not unilaterally label all of it with: "may contain lies, omissions and
> half-truths"?

Even if Twitter's motive was to help its users, that's just common sense. Does
Twitter have such a low opinion of its users that it needs to treat them like
5-year-olds?

------
A-Train
Believe it or not but Sasha Baron Cohen made a great argument to everyone who
thinks that Twitter should not interfere with freedom of speech.

Basically quoting Sasha's argument "freedom of speech is not the freedom of
reach". Spreading lies, hate and false information is everyone's right if they
do it in their home alone but they shouldn't be allowed to reach bigger
audiences.

Video here: [https://youtu.be/PVWt0qUc0CE](https://youtu.be/PVWt0qUc0CE)

~~~
legolas2412
Very much disagree. If I cut your reach to 0, I denied you the freedom of
speech. If cut your reach in half, I still affected your freedom of speech.

The question is whether fb/Twitter should be subjected to freedom of speech
restrictions or not

~~~
darkwizard42
Your reach on Twitter being cut to 0 is absolutely constitutionally allowed.

~~~
legolas2412
Sure, I'm not contesting that. It is a different question if freedom of speech
regulations apply to Twitter or not.

But freedom of reach is a part of freedom of speech.

------
mrlonglong
I'm getting extremely tired of his Twitter tantrums. I suspect many feels the
same way. I shan't shed not one tear if he get voted out in the November
elections.

~~~
GordonS
I'd be fed up if he wasn't the president of the USA. The fact that he is, and
constantly spouts stuff like this, and gets away with it, is... _terrifying_.

------
Kephael
Why doesn't Twitter "fact check" the fake photo of the MN Cop in
discriminatory clothing that's been trending on Twitter all day?

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Make%20Whites%20Great%20Agai...](https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Make%20Whites%20Great%20Again%22&src=trend_click)

They are working as editors which does not provide them FCC section 230
protection.

------
frankzen
After listening to the conference it just boils down to whether these social
media companies are public forums protected from liability or publishers. Once
they made the move to edit content, they became publishers. It's actually
pretty clear. All that is happening is that they're losing their public forum
status, rightfully so.

------
wsatb
The comments here are surprising, to say the least. I just ask that some of
you actually take a step back and realize what you're defending here.

~~~
thebouv
The comments defending the fact checking?

Or the comments defending it is okay for big government to step in and
threaten to close a private company over fact checking?

~~~
wsatb
The latter.

------
thoughtstheseus
Remove the monopoly that large tech companies have by regulating open access
to user generated and uploaded content so others can compete with different
service offerings. I know it’s an unpopular opinion but geez, if there are
hundreds of millions of user generated content pieces each day that are only
accessible through one platform it’s a monopoly.

------
programmarchy
He won't do any such thing. This is just red meat for his base to distract
them from the fact he hasn't done anything for them.

------
INTPenis
I'm not saying this is related in any way but in the last few days I've seen a
lot of toots from new users introducing themselves to the fediverse. And a lot
of them are mentioning twitter.

I hope this means we finally get some big profile names in the fediverse. A
lot of celebrities are talking about the issue but I have yet to see anyone
mention valid alternatives.

------
rlewkov
A private company is not obliged to publish anyone's Tweets, blog posts,
opinions, etc and it is not a violation of free speech.

------
squarefoot
How curious. I don't recall him reacting the same way when he was on the
receiving side before the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
Repost from duplicate post:

Obviously, based on his history, it is just a reaction, but not necessarily an
idle threat. I am both hesitant and interested at the same time. It is a
little like his stance on FISA. It it clear any changes are just to benefit
the president with other benefits being an afterthought, but some of the power
held by FISA and social media should be curbed

------
jliptzin
If he doesn't like it, he could easily have one of his supplicants build a
twitter clone for his rage tweeting. There is nothing hard about building a
twitter clone, the only hard part is getting the users in the door, but that'd
be easy for him with 40% of the country treating him like he's a god.

~~~
saym
I was surprised to see Gab as a top reply to one of his tweets. Gab has a
verified Twitter account, and it was offering itself as an alternative to the
'censorship'.

I don't find it surprising, but do find it sad. Few people understand how the
internet works, and that there's probably an alternative to every platform,
utility, or library out there.

------
avsteele
The problem Twitter is going to face has nothing to do with Trump.

By doing 'fact checking' like this they they open themselves up to the charge
that anything that doesn't have the little (!) meets some standard. Expect 10x
more people @jack, @twittersupport etc... every time they see something they
find misleading.

This is a bad move.

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
Written above “utterly unsustainable”. I can see no long term win here, esp
when the arbiter they chose clearly has his own issues.

~~~
heurist
I could see partnering with independent journalist corps to investigate
flagged tweets. Guessing They'd only do it for verified accounts. They'd have
control over the corp quality and bias, so could offer a reasonably neutral
fact checking service if they choose to.

Interesting to see public information warefare playing out in real time.

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
I absolutely want to agree with you, but we’ve already seen controversial fact
checkers ranging from, politifact, Snopes, mediamatters, Hillary Clinton‘s
campaign, and in this instance Twitter’s own employee with his own colorful
statements.

The issue becomes with what fact checkers omit, who’s statements are
scrutinized and whose are the ignored as “jokes”, what part of a statement
they choose to focus on, or any sort of perspective at all. If you’re an adult
you know that life is shades of gray.

Was Biden being racist when he said “you ain’t black” if Blacks don’t vote for
him? How would a fact checker properly handle this?

“Fact checking“ even with the best intentions, is it game I don’t think we
want to play.

> Interesting to see public information warefare playing out in real time.

Agreed

~~~
heurist
It's not easy, that's for sure. But this is also not a new problem. The field
of journalism exists to address these complicated issues, which emerge from
basic human communication rather than any recent technological advancement. In
a real sense, truth is whatever society wants it to be and every attempt to
fact check will be a political battle shrouding/suppressing potential physical
violence. I'm not sure what the solution is other than our society finding a
baseline of common truth first before addressing points where we differ.

Also, the US previously had the fairness doctrine which seems to have worked
well in comparison with this era without it (though I have not done much
research into it, and I can see how an administration like the one we have
today would abuse it).

------
hedora
I really hope they he makes demands they’re unwilling to agree to, and they
simply suspend his account instead.

------
ALittleLight
I think a better solution for Trump, since he obviously doesn't have the power
to 'close' social media, would be to create a competitor. There should be a
public social media company, tied to real identity, that would support
something like Twitter. You could post your thoughts or essays there, follow
people, comment, etc. Put out a request for design proposals, the emphasis
should be on sharing thoughts attributed to your real identity, keeping your
account safe, recovering passwords, and things like that.

Having a national social media would have the side benefit of allowing a
better identity system than social security numbers which are a travesty. I
have to share my social security number with many people, but also somehow
keep it safe? Instead, I should have a public and private key pair, and this
could be associated with my National Social Media account for a single
identity, and sign messages with my private key if I need to apply for a loan,
or a lease, or whatever.

The National Social Media account could enshrine the same protections afforded
by the US constitution - free speech, you cannot be censored top down, only by
people blocking you. The government cannot spy on your usage patterns or edit
your messages, and so on.

If Trump were to get such a thing created, and it worked reasonably well, and
he started using it exclusively instead of Twitter, I think it would gain a
lot of traction. I know I would try it out.

~~~
jedieaston
It seems like this could be achieved with login.gov, if anyone wanted. It
requires MFA (password + U2F/TOTP) which should be sufficient to prove who you
are and that you are signing something. There’s integration docs for
government services.

------
dionian
I'll believe Twitter's new actions are pure once it starts fact-checking
politicians of all stripes.

------
unexaminedlife
Somehow technology needs to help bridge the divide here. Literally the ONLY
argument that needs to be had is "what are facts and logic". Unfortunately not
enough people know what these are, which is severely hampering our country's
ability to function as a democracy.

~~~
cryptonector
Complete objectivity is impossible. This is why Ayn Rand's Objectivism
philosophy was so broken. It's not just that humans can't be completely
objective -- any AI can't be either, and you can't write have a human write an
algorithm that yields 100% objectivity. It can't be done. There is no short-
cut. The arguments have to be had. Consensus/democracy/institutions is all
we've got, and we have to and will make that work.

~~~
unexaminedlife
Not sure we're disagreeing here. But, an important point would be that we
should be striving for objectivity. In Trump's world objectivity is not a
goal. To him it's an obstacle.

~~~
cryptonector
Certainly we should be striving for objectivity. But our political divisions
run deep, and many people have a hard time seeing the other side's point of
view. Your assertion that "[i]n Trump's world objectivity is not a goal" is
indicative that you aren't open to the possibility that he's being more
objective than you think, therefore, if your view is less objective than you
think, then clearly you're part of the problem. Of course, maybe you're right,
but you don't seem open to the possibility that you're wrong. And _that_
simply illustrates my point about the difficulty of arriving at objective
truth in matters where we're so deeply divided.

~~~
unexaminedlife
I may seem "closed" to the possibility that Trump is being more objective than
me. Then again we all have over 3 years of observations on which to base our
conclusions.

I will be interested, and open-minded, when reading your treatise explaining
how one could conclude that Trump has been an objective reasonable President.

~~~
cryptonector
Ah, but I wouldn't argue that he's an objectively reasonable President. I
would argue that there are people who believe that he is, and that we all have
to be open to the possibility that either (or even both) sides are similarly
objective as to their view of that question.

------
ceilingcorner
1\. Is Twitter going to fact-check every political figure? Every public figure
with more than a million followers?

2\. Who decides what is a viable source? As a part of their "fact check",
Twitter linked to CNN, which is almost as bad as Fox News these days. This
really isn't helping their case for supposed neutrality.

3\. I don't like Trump, didn't vote for him, and find his tweets embarrassing.
But I don't need Twitter to tell me what to think.

~~~
remarkEon
>But I don't need Twitter to tell me what to think.

I think what this discussion is revealing is that a lot of people, and a lot
of people that work it tech it seems, actually _do_ want _someone_ to tell
them what to think. Which may be part of the baseline or mean human condition.
Thinking and deciding for yourself is hard, and when other people think and
decide for themselves in a different way than you it seems to generate an
immune response and a reaction that calls for intervention from above.

------
stubish
Twitter and other media platforms will be terribly upset if it becomes illegal
regulate content published on their site.

I await with popcorn. It is going to be hilarious if tweets from 4chan become
constitutionally protected.

------
christiansakai
I actually don’t mind if this happens. Just close social media already.

------
olivermarks
Rising have a good discussion of the ramifications IMO
[https://youtu.be/pY8xnMXXlqI](https://youtu.be/pY8xnMXXlqI)

------
Communitivity
Good luck with that (not). Today we have decentralized social networks
specifically designed to combat that kind of censorship, and other problems
with centralized control.

For videos, see [https://joinpeertube.org](https://joinpeertube.org) or
[https://libry.tv](https://libry.tv)

For micro-blogging, see [https://joinmastodon.org](https://joinmastodon.org)

For photos, see [https://pixelfed.org](https://pixelfed.org)

For others, see [https://fediverse.party/](https://fediverse.party/)

~~~
jmull
Adding a link to a factual counter-argument is not censorship. Even adding a
link to a non-factual, non-sensical rant is not censorship.

You're actually suggesting that posting dissenting information is
censorship?!?

Black is white! Good is bad!

~~~
Communitivity
No, I am suggesting that closing down Twitter because they ban content that is
harassing, that is censorship.

------
carapace
(I think we need a semantic refactoring tool for threads like this one to
extract the minimal graph of argument-and-counter-argument; DRY for
discussions.)

------
swebs
Good, I hope this forces them to decide whether to be neutral platforms or
publishers. They've been having their cake and eating it too for far too long.

~~~
tzs
If that's a reference to the protections under section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, it doesn't work that way. The whole point of
section 230 was to say that being non-neutral does _not_ subject a platform to
liability for content supplied to that platform by users.

I'm not sure why, but a lot of people seem to think it is the opposite: you
have to be neutral to be protected. There was a court case that ruled that way
before section 230. Congress wrote 230 specifically to reverse that.

~~~
casefields
"The Trump administration’s proposal seeks to significantly narrow the
protections afforded to companies under Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act, a part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Under the current
law, internet companies are not liable for most of the content that their
users or other third parties post on their platforms. Tech platforms also
qualify for broad legal immunity when they take down objectionable content, at
least when they are acting “in good faith.”

------
WhyNotHugo
What amazes me about the US, is that there's no accountability for any
actions.

If I start lying to me team at work, I'll have a very uncomfortable meeting
with my boss.

If our sales people start lying to clients, the company may get dragged into
courts.

If head of state lies when publicly addressing the country in many other
countries, they'll be held accountable before congress.

But US seems to be about absolute freedom, and not about following ANY rules,
no matter how basic. I never get why people accept such a system.

------
spicyramen
I have worked in one of those so called social networks. Yes Google,
Facebook,Twitter in the heard of Silicon Valley the majority are liberal
companies. Hard to talk about religion, 2A, traditional family values without
being treated as a racist or a Trump supporter... There is a case against
Google (YouTube division) from PragerU which claims yes you can't be a public
forum and restrict people's opinions, you can't have it both ways. In a
nutshell, private companies are that and should be regulated if they control
the narrative (politics)

------
Animats
Twitter must have automation for this, since they do it for tweets generally.
How do they do that? Anybody know?

------
amadeuspagel
Imagine a future where billionaires buy stakes in twitter to influence their
"fact-checking", corporations use their ad-spend as a lever to get twitter to
"fact-check" stories critical of them while various levels of government try
to use everything from privacy law to building permits to pressure them to
"fact-check" their opponents more and themselves less.

------
Arubis
For those missing the context, Twitter didn’t actually remove or censor
anything; they added a small call-out next to a politically motivated tweet.

Trump responded in an aggressive manner that can be perceived as threatening.
That’s one discussion, and one I’m not currently capable of engaging in
rationally.

The other discussion is whether Twitter did right in this case. Rather than
tell Twitter they’re out of place, I actually think they did the right thing,
provided they’re willing to do it _more_, to shift towards having this
performed by a group with some transparency around it, and to reference
sources when they do so.

Seeing politicians I can’t stand called out in public for lying is deeply
satisfying, but won’t change my mind about anything. I’d be interested in
seeing what happens when fact checks on all politicians are considered
expected & there’s a purported neutral party doing so. Can that be done
without the process itself being eaten alive by political agendas? Would I
personally be open to fact checks on politicians that I myself favor, and
would it change my perspective on them? It feels worth trying to find out.

Ultimately, even if we end up deciding that an approach is unworkable, I
applaud anyone willing to at least try to clean up our discourse right now.
It’s ugly enough to have created a divide that will eventually threaten
violence at scale if not addressed.

Edit: curious why the downvotes; this was deliberately civil.

~~~
whatshisface
I feel like if Twitter fact-checked one tweet from a high-profile Democrat for
every one they did of a high-profile Republican, there would be a lot less
outcry over the situation. I know the president happens to be a high-profile
Republican, and as a result he's a more salient target for fact-checking, but
lying and being wrong are both bipartisan strategies. The accusation is that
Twitter is almost completely staffed by Dem voters and that they're biased as
a result. Everyone knows the premise of that accusation is true, so a little
formal knod to dispel the conclusion would be welcome.

~~~
Arubis
My emotion-driven reaction here (“ha! They’d run out of lies from side A
before scratching the surface with side B!”) is _exactly_ why trying something
like this would be a good move.

------
jwalgenbach
What a maroon.

~~~
qubex
Moron?

~~~
overlordalex
Likely a reference to a Bugs Bunny catch-phrase:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NYFq7ZJg4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NYFq7ZJg4c)

~~~
Eldandan
I always thought maroon was actual slang for "idiot", when in fact it was just
a cartoon rabbit ironically mispronouncing the word moron.

~~~
krapp
Bugs Bunny is also the reason "nimrod" has become slang for an inept person.
Nimrod in the Bible is a powerful warrior and capable hunter, but Bugs used it
ironically against Elmer Fudd.

------
megablast
Is it even possible for the president to shut them down? Does he have the
authority?

------
iron0013
I’m seeing a couple of red herrings dominate these comments, which really have
no relevancy to the issue at hand.

1\. The veracity of twitter’s fact checking. This absolutely does not matter,
since Twitter may host or refuse to host whatever they want on their own
website, including incorrect fact checks if that’s how they get their jollies
(not that there’s any evidence that their fact checks have been incorrect so
far, because there isn’t). On the other hand, Trump doesn’t have the same
right, because he doesn’t own Twitter.com

2\. Hate speech, and whether it is ever justified. Again, this doesn’t matter.
Twitter has the right to remove (or visibly flag as the case may be) any post
they want on their website, for any reason they want. They might do so because
a post is hate speech, but they’d be just as firmly within their rights to do
so for any other reason.

I think all of the confusion in these comments exists because the law is very
simple, but many folks here don’t like the conclusion:

1\. Twitter may fact check, flag, or remove the posts of Trump or any other
user completely at their discretion, even if their fact checking turns out to
be incorrect. Nothing about this violates Trump’s first amendment rights in
any way.

2\. I had hoped this was obvious, but in case it’s unclear to you, Trump and
the US government absolutely do not have the power to shut down or punish
Twitter in any way just because they don’t like the way that Twitter has fact
checked Trump’s posts. This would in fact (obviously) violate Twitter’s first
amendment rights.

Finally, there is no legal distinction between a “platform” and a “publisher”
that in any way restricts the control that a business has over their own
website. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply incorrect, and not worth
listening to.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
Obviously, based on his history, it is just a reaction, but not necessarily an
idle threat. I am both hesitant and interested at the same time. It is a
little like his stance on FISA. It it clear any changes are just to benefit,
but some of the power held by FISA and social media should be curbed.

------
ycombonator
Let’s face it Silicon Valley is run by leftists. Nothing to see here move on.

------
5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV
Offtopic: The difference of reading newssites with and without JavaScript
enabled is so insane, it's crazy how my flagship phone on a 200k WiFi
connection grinds to an halt on the first few seconds (apart from the jarring
experience of jumping content)

------
etaioinshrdlu
If major platforms become regulated to legally ban censorship, this could
actually be a good thing... These platforms could become more like public
utilities.

Although it also sounds like it would be great for entrenched incumbents and
cause barriers to entry.

------
laumars
Direct link to Tweet (TC doesn't really add any detail and people have moaned
about their cookie-consent dark patterns before):

[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12656016113107394...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265601611310739456)

~~~
0-_-0
Nitter link (for anyone who doesn't like opening Twitter links):
[https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status/126560161131073945...](https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status/1265601611310739456)

------
tibbydudeza
Somewhere in a another universe there exists alternative facts.

------
jkingsbery
As a Republican and as an American, it pains me to have that man as the
standard barer. Even when he makes a point that I think main-stream circa
2006-2014 Republicans would have agreed with, he does it in such a bad, ham
fisted, way that nothing changes. Even though Trump spent almost his entire
adult life as _not_ conservative, he's now what people associate with the
term. But he's not "conservative" in any sense of the word: he's not
conservative in temperament, he's not conservative in his use (or threat to
use) of government power, he's not seeking to conserve any precedents. It
makes it impossible to make any sort of debate on the actual point, because
everything becomes about him.

~~~
czzr
Will you still vote Republican? Just curious, please ignore this question if
you think it too personal or impertinent.

------
sabujp
"Close" doesn't refer to the social media platform as close , the social media
platform itself is a closely-integrated platform rather than a closed one.

------
jamisteven
Headline is a bit taking things out of context. He is basically saying they
can either allow all free speech or cease to exist, I would tend to agree.

~~~
sixstringtheory
It's literally using a word he used, hence the quotes.

No speech was disallowed, so this would be much ado about nothing.

------
beepboopbeep
Ok. Do it.

As with all things trump, the man spends his days flailing about from one
tantrum to the next with no actual focus or initiative. Bluster all day, every
day.

------
miguelmota
Twitter tweeted this out recently:

> We added a label to two @realDonaldTrump Tweets about California’s vote-by-
> mail plans as part of our efforts to enforce our civic integrity policy. We
> believe those Tweets could confuse voters about what they need to do to
> receive a ballot and participate in the election process.

[https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1265838823663075341](https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1265838823663075341)

------
goatherders
His account should have been closed long ago. The only reason it wasnt is
eyeballs and dollars. This is a late but welcome development.

------
zestyping
Call his bluff. Suspend his account.

------
ezoe
Considering purely on the freedom of expression.

It's Twitter's web server, which is a private property of the for-profit
company. They don't have a contract with the Trump that they distribute the
expression of Trump without modification. So it's their right to express their
idea on their web server.

If the Trump want to distribute a true unmodified expression to the public, he
can easily do so by setting up his own web server.

------
dboreham
Finally a policy I can get behind.

------
aabhay
I want to see an actual statistical analysis of how many of Trump's "threats"
on social media/Twitter have resulted in genuine legislative action. I
remember a few years back now my alma mater (UC Berkeley) getting extremely
upset of Trump threatening to withhold "federal funding" for the perceived
anti-conservative action of canceling some trashy public speaker shill whose
name now escapes me.

------
padseeker
Am I the only one that sees the irony that

A) Twitter, a private company, was merely adding a warning to his tweet which
doesn't restrict his speech at all, and has long been defended by
conservatives that private companies restricting speech is not a violation of
the first amendment

AND

B) Trump threatened to use the powers of government to stop someone from
violating his speech that is not protected by the first amendment is ACTUALLY
VIOLATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

------
Consultant32452
Trump stated an opinion about what he personally believes will happen if mail-
in ballot use is expanded. He might be incorrect, but Twitter singling this
out to promote opposing opinions is by no means "fact checking."

This is a campaign contribution with a real economic value that should be
calculable. So let's just let the FEC figure out the value of this
contribution and all of the existing regulations will apply.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Any media source that earns its revenue via advertising must be considered
entertainment.

Fact checking entertainment is nonsense.

------
mancerayder
First, some government authorities (such as at airports) ask for social media
information. Employers can, as well, when doing background checks.

Next, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become de-facto presence for
political figures, companies and individuals. Erased from here, they cease to
exist. Almost like scrubbing a Google search result.

The above points COMPEL the U.S. government and any other government to
consider the possibility that they are now a public utility (like electrical
companies) and an _essential service_. The argument that they are private
companies and therefore should forever be removed from the jurisdiction of the
1st Amendment (in the case of the U.S.), since this only applies to
government, is extremely antiquated. Did smartphones and Presidential tweets
exist in 1776?

If electrical companies and railroads can be regulated and for-profit, then
why would "my company, I do what I want" magically apply forever to Faceook,
Twitter and Instagram?

I am NOT defending what Trump was quoted saying here. I AM making a case that
we need to update our legal framework to account for modernity. And to account
for a heretofore unpredictable and unfathomable technological achievement of
an instant network of human ideas and presence that is controlled by a few
California companies. I'd bet money that the question will be considered in
the coming few years by the high courts, and there's a non-zero chance they'll
agree with what I've just said.

------
dmode
I wish we could just all tune Trump out. In this 75 years of existence his
contribution to humanity is a big fat zero. His tweets are useless, only exist
to peddle conspiracy theory, to deflect, to self congratulate and to rile up
his base. I don't know why we pay attention to him and forget about the vast
kindness that exist is our day to day life.

------
nullc
If _anyone_ else used twitter the way Trump does, twitter would have removed
them from the platform long ago.

I thin that their transparently profit motivated move in treating him so
differently-- by not banning him-- weakens their moral case against
regulation.

Twitter's relationship with Trump isn't about anyone's right to free speech,
it's about twitter's income stream.

------
Animats
"Trump to sign executive order on social media Thursday." \- White House press
secretary.[1]

[1] [https://thehill.com/policy/technology/499847-trump-to-
sign-e...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/499847-trump-to-sign-
executive-order-on-social-media-thursday)

------
dakna
Brilliant move by Trump's team forcing Twitter into this. He can now visibly
blame another media outlet and continue building the narrative that the
election results need to be challenged in case he lost. While also making sure
voter turnout is high enough because his base thinks they need to "fight" this
because it's deemed unfair.

------
scarface74
Y’all wanted government regulation over tech - here you go. Be careful what
you ask for.

------
pmarreck
Considering the fact that every fact checker in existence has consistently
rated Trump the least accurate candidate (or president), unless you believe in
an evidenceless conspiracy that there is mass manipulation of the broadly
accepted truth going on, this should not be the least bit surprising

------
quantum_state
clear sign of stupidity ... nothing else needs to be said ...

------
classified
Who would have thought that being a massive a-hole can be such a successful
brand? Trump misses no opportunity to demonstrate his unwavering commitment to
despotism. He will make a great dictator once his presidency runs out.

------
russellbeattie
Twitter's leadership is a bunch of cowards who are only now taking the
smallest steps to do something about Trump's lies and demagoguery. They should
have banned him years ago.

I stopped using Twitter on January 20th, 2017. I had been a user since they
started, but I went through and programatically deleted every tweet, like,
follower, etc. I now just have my name and I never use the site. I wish more
people would do the same. Don't delete your account, just stop using it.

If Twitter had just held everyone on their platform to the same standards, I
would be somewhat accepting of them as a neutral platform for free speech. But
they decided to ignore the threats, lies, bullying, name calling, racism,
sexism and more coming from not just Trump, but all of his followers. So they
can go to hell for all I care now.

------
gotoeleven
Fact Check: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

------
adrianN
When Trump closes down social media we can finally go back to the version of
the Internet were people just had personal blogs and you curated your "feed"
yourself by subscribing to their RSS.

------
OliverJones
A "conservative" government threatens to shut down private businesses. Wait,
what?

Maybe the billionaire hotel magnate from New York should arrange a leveraged
buyout of the business he doesn't like, and shut it down when he owns it.

~~~
bilbo0s
Just to distance myself from the current "conservative" establishment, I would
argue that their views are not conservative so much as they are a relatively
newer form of fascism. Typically with fascism there is nationalism that
prioritizes the citizens of the nation above all else, but with this new
"conservatism" in the US, the nationalism is a bit more race-based. But other
than that it's much more close to fascism than what we in the US typically
considered "conservatism".

Maybe we need a new word for it altogether?

~~~
krapp
>Maybe we need a new word for it altogether?

It's called the "alt-right[0]."

And at the fringe of the fringe, right-wing accelerationism[1].

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-
right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right)

[1][https://www.vox.com/the-
highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accele...](https://www.vox.com/the-
highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accelerationism-white-supremacy-christchurch)

------
dangoljames
Can you say 'Dumbass'? I knew ya could :D

------
lordvon
This ‘fact check’ makes unfair biases way too easy. It is not a soulless
algorithm or natural law that chooses the target and contents of these ‘fact
checks’, but unaccountable individuals. Like communism, good in theory, but
hard to implement. I hold my vote to be extremely precious, and would like to
protect its value, and we should be vigilant about ways to do that. Mail-in
voting seems too easily hackable, especially considering almost half of
Americans don’t even vote (e.g. lots of opportunity for illegitimate mail-in
voting).

------
hn2017
A new controvery for Trump so people ignore his previous Controversy of the
Week. More airtime for Trump, it's a repeat of 2016. Unfortunately.

------
philipkglass
I think that "fighting terrorist propaganda" is actually the origin of social
media building tools for moderating politics. Most people seem to date it to
the 2016 US presidential election, presumably because they weren't following
Middle East politics as closely as US politics.

I really saw a chilling effect in r/SyrianCivilWar after the rise of ISIS.
Media showing graphic violence would remain on the site for several more years
-- r/WatchPeopleDie was removed only last year -- but videos considered to be
"supporting" ISIS (even if only because they showcased recent advances by ISIS
or allies) started being removed from Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and other
places. I think that even LiveLeak eventually started removing some of these
videos. Reddit itself started banning pro-ISIS posters.

There was plenty of all-sides hand-wringing before 2016 that social media
wasn't doing enough to suppress terrorist propaganda.

"After the recent spate of terrorist attacks inspired by the so-called Islamic
State, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for greater
cooperation from social media companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in
combating hate propaganda."

[https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/08/how-social-media-cos-try-
to-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/08/how-social-media-cos-try-to-keep-
terrorists-out.html)

The social networks banned a _lot_ of content that would be legal to publish
in the United States. They went well above and beyond removing only the
"imminent lawless action" speech that falls outside of First Amendment
protections. And with good reason. Plenty of lawmakers were ready to make
their lives miserable if they _didn 't_ take an aggressive anti-terrorist
stance.

It's fun to daydream about big American social media companies removing only
such speech as would be unprotected by the First Amendment. But sites like
YouTube have _never_ offered that much latitude. Even in the pre-Google days
YouTube didn't allow porn -- not even perfectly legal, mainstream porn. And of
course it's perfectly legal to advertise locksmith and dental services but I
don't want platforms overrun with high volume advertising for those businesses
either. Finally, both Republican and Democratic legislators were talking less
than 5 years ago about how social media had a responsibility to curb
terrorists' propaganda, regardless of the stronger protections enshrined in
the First Amendment.

I don't really like where we are with social media, but I wish that the
discussions we had around these issues on HN were more historically grounded
instead of centering on partisan polarization around the 2016 presidential
election and its aftermath.

------
freen
Obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

------
onion2k
He won't though, obviously.

~~~
sp332
Complaining loudly that social media platforms are "biased" is a way to get
special treatment without any official enforcement action.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Indeed, hence why Facebook fired their reviewers for public content during the
2016 campaign.

But given that that worked out so well, I'm sure there's no problem :P

------
akhilcacharya
I'm old enough to remember when conservatives accused the left of being
against "free speech".

~~~
anewdirection
It switches sides every 15-25 years, as youd notice, surely.

Parties have little in common with what they were even 20 years ago.

------
sjg007
Twitter should just ban Trump.. seems straightforward. He breaks all their
rules.

------
boomboomsubban
From a free speech/free press standpoint, private company Twitter absolutely
has the right to editorialize Trump's tweets, while Trump trying to silence
Twitter would be the government infringing on the right to free speech/press.

~~~
nautilus12
But if that were true then they would be personally liable in a court of law
for tweets that break the law. Seems like they want to be treated as both an
"editor" with the right to change user content and "just a distribution
platform". They can't have it both ways.

~~~
nautilus12
This comment aged well...

------
markvdb
How do you even fact check a powerful cognitive dissonance generator? Because
that's what Trump is.

Trying to fact check that kind of person makes no sense. The man himself makes
no sense, and he knows. He's a troll and also the US president.

------
dekhn
This isn't really news because Trump doesn't have the power to do this, and
none of the people with the power want to do it. I think people really need to
learn to tune out (and not amplify) Trump's ravings.

------
koolhead17
Trump exists because of social media.

------
VBprogrammer
Can this even be considered a free speech issue? They aren't deleting his
tweet, only displaying it alongside a fact check. Of course you can try to
call into question the impartiality of the fact check but that is a long way
from not deciding not to show the content.

~~~
m-p-3
And if he decided to "close" Twitter, it would actually be a clear case of
censorship from the government and a violation of free speech.

Twitter is merely labelling a tweet as being factually incorrect, it's not
hiding the content.

~~~
Bombthecat
But isn't that what all the tweets under the tweet from president probably do?
They correct him? What would be the difference?

The difference would be one is a company, the other a real person. No need for
the company to get involved.

People who ignore the correctios and other tweets will ignore the company
anyway.

~~~
voxl
What are you trying to argue? That the company shouldn't bother because the
factual information _might_ be present below Trump?

Surely you understand that the company posting a fact checker is a more
credible source, and that there are _plenty_ of twitter users who, even if
they disagree with Trump, may not be aware of the facts.

~~~
Bombthecat
I'm trying to argue that this is a slippery slope.

Would you trust Elon Musk to put truth under tweets from his company? With his
behaviour in the last month(s) I wouldn't trust him with shit.

The next step is Google putting "fact checks" beside search results? Or what?
Or a ministry of truth?

Im from Germany, and we see what's going on in America. And we all saw it
happening already here, years back.

But I guess every nation needs to go its path and needs to fix their problems
on their own.

------
falcolas
Free speech is not just an American constitutional right; many countries
throughout the world consider free speech to be a human right.

So, yeah, many of us get a bit worked up when people are kicked off platforms,
because they are being silenced, sometimes to the point of being shut out of
the modern internet entirely (when their rights to a DNS address are
comprehensively removed).

Hate speech and lies are terrible, but they’re not the only thing being
silenced.

~~~
Traster
Okay, so I think there's some nuance there, I think there's a pragmatic line
to draw - I don't think someone has a right to say anything on twitter, I just
don't think that's twitters role is to be neutral. But I think there's a line
where we go from a product that's curated and moderated - something like
twitter, to something that is truly infrastructure. The DNS example is great,
I don't think a DNS company should be able to refuse to service based on the
content that's being served because the role of the DNS is simply to resolve a
name to an address. What's served on that address is immaterial. I think we
draw a bright line between those two types of things, although I'm sure it's
more difficult than that when we're trying to design a law.

~~~
falcolas
If Twitter wants control over what's published on their site, then they give
up their rights (their 'free harbor'-alike protections) to not be held
responsible for the content they censor and let through.

Twitter _et al_. are where modern speech happens. They pushed themselves into
this position, and thus upholding the human right to free speech also falls
upon them.

So long as Twitter is not shut down, then ___perhaps_ __some government
oversight (to the limit of holding Twitter responsible for what and who they
censor) is appropriate.

Free speech, in this case, trumps my intense dislike of our current
administration.

~~~
ChrisLomont
>If Twitter wants control over what's published on their site, then they give
up their rights (their 'free harbor'-alike protections) to not be held
responsible for the content they censor and let through.

Where is this in US law? Are you confusing DMCA safe harbor issues with
speech?

All platforms take control over content - otherwise they could not remove
child porn, PII, etc., and they don't lose DMCA safe harbor exemptions, which
only applies to copyrighted items posted by users.

~~~
falcolas
It appears like you are conflating the removal of illegal content with the
censorship of legal content. Two very different concepts.

~~~
ChrisLomont
I didn't conflate anything. You claimed Twitter loses "rights" by exercising
control over content, and I asked where you got that idea. Where is the law
that backs your claim? Do you have one?

------
2019-nCoV
> Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and
> their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!

[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12656495454107443...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265649545410744321)

$TWTR already down 5%.

------
2019-nCoV
Twitter brought this upon themselves. It's going to be 2016 all over again.

------
busymom0
It seems like any remotely political post on HN gets flooded and upvoted with
provable incorrect comments. Twitter team which is doing "fact checks" is
severely biased and factually wrong.

Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth boasts on his LinkedIn that he is
in charge of "developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules".

> “He leads the teams responsible for developing and enforcing Twitter’s
> rules”

Here's a few of his tweets:

> Massive anti-Trump protest headed up Valencia St. San Francisco.

> I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine
> for a reason.

> The “you are not the right kind of feminist” backlash to yesterday’s marches
> has begun. Did we learn nothing from this election?

> Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of
> feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

> How does a personality-free bag of farts like Mitch McConnell actually win
> elections?

> “Today on Meet The Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the
> first 100 days…” —What I hear whenever Kellyanne is on a news show

This same person doesn't stand up to his own purity tests:

> It wouldn't be a trip to New York without at least one big scary tranny.

> "Trans is a category worth being linguistically destabilized in the same way
> we did gay with 'fag,'" he wrote. "Sorry, but I don’t subscribe to PC
> passing the buck. Identity politics is for everyone."

Twitter's "fact check" is literally wrong. Until few years ago, every one
agreed that mail-in ballot has massive fraud:

> “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be
> compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth,
> statistics show.”

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-
vote-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-
faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html)

Just 1 week ago: Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over
3K Ballots Seemingly Set Aside - A county spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail
ballots were received, but the county's official results page shows 13,557
votes were counted — with uncounted ballots representing 19%

[https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-
pater...](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-paterson-
vote-plagued-by-fraud-claims-over-3k-ballots-seemingly-set-aside/2425813/)

> California Secretary of State confirmed double-voting in one case and
> suspected double-voting by a number of other registered voters on Super
> Tuesday:

[https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-
Duplicate-V...](https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-
Voting-Response-to-EIPC)

Yesterday, WEST VIRGINIA – Thomas Cooper, a USPS mail carrier in Pendleton
County, was charged today in a criminal complaint with attempted election
fraud, U.S. Attorney Bill Powell announced.

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndwv/pr/pendleton-county-
mail-c...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndwv/pr/pendleton-county-mail-carrier-
charged-attempted-election-fraud)

In 2004, Jerry Nadler (Democrat) asserts that paper ballots, particularly in
the absence of machines, are extremely susceptible to fraud:

[https://streamable.com/tbzu47](https://streamable.com/tbzu47)

Future head of the Democrat Party Debbie Wasserman Schultz opposing mail-in
ballots due to the risk of election fraud in 2008:

[https://streamable.com/2tyqp1](https://streamable.com/2tyqp1)

West Virginia Mail Carrier Charged With Altering Absentee Ballot Requests:

[https://time.com/5843088/west-virginia-mail-carrier-fraud-
ab...](https://time.com/5843088/west-virginia-mail-carrier-fraud-absentee-
ballots/)

Also Twitter’s Trump ‘Fact Check’ Does Not Disclose Company Partnered with
Groups Pushing Mail-In Ballots.

\-----------

[https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/822654925217873921](https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/822654925217873921)

[https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823312544425132033](https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823312544425132033)

[https://twitter.com/catfashionshow/status/298477704666300416](https://twitter.com/catfashionshow/status/298477704666300416)

[https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/890812999874691073](https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/890812999874691073)

[https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823260235796094978](https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823260235796094978)

~~~
tehwebguy
Sorry, do these data points prove that votes cast by mail are not "less likely
to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested
than those cast in a voting booth"?

~~~
busymom0
Did you read my full comment?

~~~
tehwebguy
Yes, and I saw your examples. But do they prove that mail-in votes are:

1\. less likely to be counted 2\. more likely to be compromised & 3\. more
likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth?

Or are they just some examples of mail-in voter fraud? (Some aren’t even that,
still just discrepancies being investigated)

~~~
busymom0
The NBC news article I quoted explains exactly what you are asking:

> Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over 3K Ballots
> Seemingly Set Aside

> A county spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the
> county's official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted — with
> uncounted ballots representing 19 percent of all votes cast

> The spokesman later told the Paterson Press that the additional 2,390
> disqualifications were due to the election board comparing signatures on the
> ballots to those previously on file for voters, and the new ones not
> matching up. The spokesman also would not explain the breakdown of what ward
> those ballots were from, or which candidates were voted for in those
> disqualified ballots. According to the Paterson Press, four wards had more
> votes go uncounted than the winner's margin of victory — meaning the
> uncounted ballots possibly could have tipped the election in favor of one of
> the candidates.

I think it’s not worth debating political topics on HN because all I get is
comments flagged (aka disappears), downvoted and people being intellectually
dishonest. Seems like no one clicks on any of the sources before downvoting
and attacking.

~~~
implements
A persons signature often changes over time - it’s a _ridiculous_ reason to
void a vote.

All that should matter is the form being delivered to the correct address of a
registered voter, and that voter only voting once - with the obvious identity
/ address checks being undertaken on registration.

------
c0wardthr0waway
"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives
voices"

Reddit is the best example of that. I don't want to defend him but look at
every single news and politics related sub from /r/news, /r/worldnews,
/r/politics etc.

But that happens here too. Honestly I blame the upvote downvote system more.
Reddit and HN are both really wrong with it

~~~
zozbot234
Reddit literally censors the actual Donald Trump campaign subreddit: it's
hidden behind a scary warning screen and demonetized
[https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Donald](https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Donald) .
Hilarious. They don't even pretend to be unbiased or to care about their
userbase that's equally on both sides of the political spectrum.

~~~
ceejayoz
Reddit resisted doing that for _years_ , until the violations of Reddit's
site-wide rules became too blatant and widespread to continue ignoring.

~~~
zozbot234
Where the "violations" of Reddit site-wide rules involved having lots of users
and being able to push stuff up to the frontpage merely by upvoting it, like
any other subreddit would. Of course when /r/politics does it, they don't call
it "violating site-wide rules".

~~~
ceejayoz
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759967/reddit-
quarantin...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759967/reddit-quarantines-
the-donald-trump-subreddit-misbehavior-violence-police-oregon)

> Media Matters for America pointed out posts where r/The_Donald members
> fantasized about or encouraged violence related to Oregon’s recent climate
> change vote where Republican lawmakers fled the state Senate to prevent a
> climate change bill from passing, one of them even implying that he would
> respond to any police action with violence. r/The_Donald members posted
> comments like “none of this gets fixed without people picking up rifles” and
> “[I have] no problems shooting a cop trying to strip rights from Citizens.”
> The posts were later removed.

Various other bits of misbehavior ensued:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Quarantine,_restr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Quarantine,_restriction_and_successor)

> In November 2019, the subreddit's moderators attempted to evade Reddit's
> imposed quarantine by reviving and promoting a subreddit called r/Mr_Trump.
> This subreddit was banned by Reddit's administrators in accordance with its
> policy that "attempting to evade bans or other restrictions imposed on
> communities is not allowed on Reddit." Days later, Reddit's admins warned
> the subreddit's moderators about trying to out the alleged White House
> whistleblower in the Trump–Ukraine scandal in violation of Reddit's rules on
> harassment and inviting vigilantism.

and Reddit bans the left-wing equivalents for similar actions:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-
sander...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sanders-
chapo-trap-house.html)

> Over the summer, the “Chapo Trap House” message board, which has nearly
> 153,000 members who chat about the news and memes of the day, was censured
> by Reddit, which hosts it. The page now has limited reach and is in a sort
> of digital purgatory, where it remains.

------
systematical
Uh huh...

------
RyanGoosling
Good.

------
artur_makly
If this happens, we can always make better Trump tweets:
[http://TrumpTweets.io](http://TrumpTweets.io)

------
aty268
Twitter banning Conservatives from the platform for fair talking points is far
more concerning than the government threatening to punish companies for
silencing their users.

Clearly competition is not solving this problem. So should the federal
government do something about it? Maybe.

------
phkahler
If Twitter wants to fact check, fine. But posting links to pieces by anti-
Trump news outlets is not fact checking.

~~~
whateveracct
Calling normal news outlets "anti-Trump" is just falling for his crybully
antics.

~~~
phkahler
Not really. They do have a bias. Regardless of that it's still not fact
checking.

~~~
whateveracct
It's not black and white. Framing them as "anti-Trump" makes it seem like they
are extremist against Trump. If anything they are "anti-Trump" because 1)
Trump is anti-them and 2) they report on his plain daylight criminality.

------
tibbydudeza
About bloody time twitter.

------
socrates1998
I mean, social media should be more regulated and laws should definitely be
enacted to hold those companies more liable for the content that is published
on their platforms. The problem is that I definitely do not want Trump
deciding on how to do it.

Right now, social media is a pretty bad cesspool. No one takes the blame for
allowing sociopaths to dominate those platforms.

------
matwood
The oddest part of of this whole thing is that Trump supporters are typically
the personal freedoms above all else crowd. Yet Trump openly talks about
having/wanting authoritative, dictator level power.

~~~
IgorPartola
They really aren’t for personal freedom. That group is basically hoping he
stays on as a dictator because they believe he is the only one who can save
the nation. I wish I was kidding.

------
jameskilton
Is no-one going to talk about how this is _explicitly_ what "freedom of
speech" means? That Trump is one of the few people that "freedom of speech"
_doesn 't_ apply, because it's protection FROM HIM doing exactly this kind of
thing.

Twitter has every protected right to criticize the president (which they
should have been doing a whole lot more of but that's a different discussion).
That's the _whole point_ of "freedom of speech" in our Bill of Rights. Our
government literally cannot do what Trump wants to do, and to try to say that
he can is to explicitly say that the Constitution is meaningless and void.

~~~
commandlinefan
> Trump is one of the few people that "freedom of speech" doesn't apply

No, Trump is one of the few people that the _first amendment of the
constitution of the United States_ doesn't apply. Free speech is broader than
any specific law, whether you think people deserve it or not.

~~~
akhilcacharya
You mean the first amendment being trampled on by a president threatening
legal action against a private company?

~~~
Cthulhu_
The first amendment isn't a catch-all freedom-of-consequences thing; if (to
use a straw man argument) Twitter did not remove ISIS propaganda, the US
government would shut down.

While technically proclaiming the virtues of joining an army to fight for them
can be considered freedom of speech and should be protected, in practice it's
not because they're a deplorable terrorist organization.

~~~
ImprobableTruth
This argument makes me pretty uneasy, since it seems like it can essentially
be used to censor whatever you want. If e.g. the people fighting for climate
justice get branded as ecoterrorists, wouldn't removing their 'propaganda' be
ok under that line of thought?

I think the right to free speech isn't some enshrinement of the right to spew
garbage, but the realization that restrictions of free speech can very easily
be turned against 'good' causes.

------
orwin
I'm really not outraged by that fact that twitter burst the Donald Trump info
bubble, but the fact that they don't do the same thing when a member of an
opposite party is also partial with the truth is a bad sign. Tbh they should
have started with a controversial anti-trump statement before enforcing this
in trump.

Also they should not have called that "fact checking" or "debunking".

~~~
sp332
What's a better word?

~~~
swebs
"Rebuttal" would work better. Calling it a fact check implies "I'm right,
you're wrong. The debate is over."

~~~
dbbk
Calling it a fact check implies that there are facts. Facts are real things,
they are not up for debate.

~~~
robertlagrant
This is silly. Everyone knows there are facts. What you're replying to assumes
this already.

~~~
shadowgovt
> Everyone knows there are facts.

The notion of "post-truth politics" is one of the major issues of the day.
"Everyone knows there are facts" is not actually a given in modern discourse.

------
rchaud
The powers that be in Beijing and China must be pinching themselves; none of
their predecessors had gotten this fortunate, for this long. Every day the US
leadership appears committed to demolishing its outward image of a prosperous
and stable democratic order. Meanwhile, they can continue running roughshod
over political opposition and bullying their neighbours, totally unopposed.

Russia has used the past 15 years to take South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea
and cement Putin's now-lifetime grip on domestic institutions.

China, free of US pressure has refined its global logistics and supply chains,
increased its military buildup and has becomes the world's go to vendor for 5G
solutions. While also keeping Taiwan, HK, Xinjiang and South China Sea firmly
under its thumb.

Meanwhile, the US stumbles from crisis to crisis, with a good chunk of its 99%
literate population now thinking that mail-in ballots, a cornerstone of its
voting system are rife with fraud, and that wearing masks is a political
stance.

Oh, and Hacker News, in response to the country's chief executive's blustering
about closing down social media, ponders if fact-checking is a 'solved
problem'.

~~~
heurist
American dominance was pure luck after escaping from WWII unscathed and in a
relatively strong financial position. The major economically prodictive
technologies we rely on today came of age in the first half of last century
and we used them to build an inefficient glass castle without considering the
deleterious effects of rapid population growth or hyperconnectedness of human
minds.

The political order the US created under those circumstances is unraveling.
Americans across the US should be focused on making the communities they live
in food-secure and energy-independent. It's time to plan for environmental and
economic resilience. The next century will be rocky and the US is unprepared.
The US will not be the largest producer in the world, but if we can revitalize
local production then we can at least be the hardest to kill. The revolution
we need it localism.

~~~
rchaud
> The revolution we need is localism.

Agreed. All politics is local after all. The problem is that the economic
incentives are pointed in the polar opposite direction. Startups can't get
funding if their ambitions are limited to their city, or even within the
borders of their country.

As was mentioned in an article I can't locate, a lot of the world's top
technical talent is stuck working at well paid jobs, on products that simply
don't matter relative to the challenges humanity is facing.

~~~
heurist
Startups are hard but if we want to escape the cult of Silicon Valley, we need
to put in the effort and make progress without them. It's so strange to me as
someone living thousands of miles from California and New York, I know more
names of people popular in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and NYC than in my own
state. How did that come to be, what can be done to fix it? I believe there is
relatively low-hanging fruit that can start making a dent in these problems.

I also don't feel bad for tech talent getting fat off ad revenue. There are
alternatives that contribute more to society but you have to be willing to
sacrifice for them.

------
JSavageOne
The hypocrisy of the Pro-Business Republican party is really astounding. One
one hand they fight for deregulation and small government so that coal and oil
companies can pollute the environment (because you know, according to Trump
global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese. Yes he really believes
that), and now they want to censor and shut down social media platforms? Trump
was impeached and should have been kicked out of office, but thanks to the
Republican party, he is still in office. I can't even tell what the Republican
party even stands for anymore. Low taxes and reduced safety net? Climate
denialism? Christian values?

I honestly think you could pick a random 16 year old kid off the street and
they'd make a better president than Trump. That's the sad and embarrassing
state of affairs that is U.S. politics. I tend to err on the free speech side
when it comes to social media platforms, but when you're the U.S. president
and spreading baseless conspiracy theories and blatant lies with real
consequences, then you damn well should get fact checked and called out on
your nonsense.

Never been a more embarrassing time to be an American.

------
ThinkBeat
I hope he does.

These gigantic centralized silo monopolies that recreate the experience of AOL
online.

They have way more power than any American (or any other country) company
should have in the world. Their reach is global, what they do, impacts
millions of people who have no say whatsoever.

I long for a much more distributed system. (Doesn't have to be some fancy
federated system.

I would be happy with real competition by a few hundred companies distributed
around the world.

Closing down, or neutering the behemoths would be the most useful thing Trump
will ever do.

He will soon realize that he cannot, or maybe he just forgets about it, or
maybe he tries and the supreme court strikes it down. I cannot imagine how
much money is flowing from the silos to lobbyists in Washington right now.

~~~
shadowgovt
He's extremely unlikely to take real action because Twitter is his primary
channel for reaching his political base. It's not guaranteed they'd migrate to
where else he may choose to go (ever helped a relative figure out how to
install a Zoom-alike videoconferencing app on their phone? Like that, but
multiplied by millions of people. The science of engagement and stickiness
tells us about half wouldn't bother to follow if they had to install one more
app to hear the President's words).

------
tinco
Of all the things Trump has said, why add a fact check on this point that
includes all kinds of vagueness?

How is it a fact that mail-in ballots will not lead to rigged elections? Just
that there's no evidence to support it doesn't mean it can't be true (however
unlikely). If we're really to police politicians, surely it should be only on
absolutely logically false points?

The point about that only registered votes will receive ballots and not just
anyone might be a real correction, but it sort of depends on who can be a
registered voter, I don't know the details of that. It also seems like a
relatively minor point.

And the third correction is just horrendous. Trump targeted California, and
they add a "get the facts" that other states also exist. How is that
categorically relevant? Obviously Trump is concerned with leftwing influence,
so he's singling California out, it's most certainly valid.

So Twitter releases what's possibly the most culturally significant feature
they've released in 10 years, and they fuck up 2 out of 3, and the only one
they might have gotten right has not enough information and seems to be minor?

To me it seems there's only 2 rational explanations: whoever made the check
the facts did so without oversight or involvement of a committee, and will be
fired, or Twitter simply does not want to actually do this, and tries to get
out of the public pressure to do so by making a weak attempt and then giving
up. I hate to be cynical, but the first one option just doesn't seem very
likely given the gravity of the situation.

edit: if I was the CEO of Twitter and I would have given the final 'go' on the
"what you need to know" it would have looked like this:

\- In the state of California only registered voters receive ballots.

So: no hear-say about evidence that is missing, no accusing a politician of
lies and definitely not naming that politician in every line. Just the facts,
and let the reader figure out how that reflects on the tweet the politician
made.

~~~
FireBeyond
> Just that there's no evidence to support it doesn't mean it can't be true
> (however unlikely).

That's the thing. If there is no evidence to support it, it cannot be asserted
as an unequivocally true statement. Trump doesn't claim that it "might" be
true, or he "believes" it to be true, he says, effectively, "this is the
unarguable truth". And Twitter says "not so fast".

~~~
tinco
But the whole idea of democracy is that we elect politicians based on their
beliefs and ideals. We pick either conservative or progressive, not based on
any evidence of their efficacy but on our feelings about those views. And the
idea is then that the aggregate of those feelings (especially over time) leads
to a prosperous and stable nation.

Maybe I have to yield this point, and say that Twitter should also call out
politicians on making baseless statements. (Which will be all of the time
because twitter doesn't have a very neat way of including footnotes, and
politicians are not known to publish tweets as academic papers) but even then
the commentary should be something like:

\- the trump administration has not published evidence to support the
statement that mail-in ballots lead to rigged elections.

Which is _very_ different from just saying it's a false claim in my opinion.

------
wegs
For the most part, I support platform neutrality. I don't agree with all the
Google censorship of misinformation and "misinformation" on their platforms. I
think Facebook should have less evil algorithms (it seems designed to
encourage polarization), but I wouldn't want censorship or commentary their
either.

This case is an exception. Twitter drew a line in the sand. It is in exactly
the right place.

The PoTUS is threatening to shut down elections in November: he seems to be
doing everything in his power to have a national emergency then when people
can't vote, to shut down post offices, and to ban voting by mail. Any other
problems with the PoTUS, we should address in the ballot box and through
citizen activism (not through corporate activism). But when the PoTUS tries to
shut down the ballot box or shut down citizen activism, that's different.

I don't think he's likely to be successful, but I didn't think coronavirus
would hit us this hard either. In January, it was a manageable billion-dollar
problem. We did nothing. Now, it's a multi-trillion dollar problem. Right now,
Trump trying to cancel the election is a manageable problem too; by his
personality, if he doesn't get traction, we're done. He'll move on. But if he
does get traction, we'll have a completely different scale of problem on our
hands.

~~~
50ckpuppet
"The PoTUS is threatening to shut down elections in November:"

linkage ??

~~~
wegs
If there's a public health crisis, and people can't safely leave homes and
can't vote by mail, there is no meaningful election.

Right now, he's:

* Doing everything in his power to have a public health crisis (which means people can't go out to vote)

* Working to bankrupt the USPS so people can't vote by mail

* Threatening to go after states which support vote-by-mail (that's the tweet and similar statements -- withholding federal funding to states which vote by mail)

That's a concerning set of signals.

That's not a verbal threat like a declaration of war, if that's the link
you're looking for. It's a threat like when a country conducts military drills
on your border, or like when there's a new virus outbreak on the other side of
the world. Problems might or might not materialize, but you should take
actions to be ready both to minimize the odds of problems, and in case they
do.

Our current PoTUS is an opportunist. He hedges and hangs out ideas to see if
they'll get traction. If he gets any traction on an idea, he exploits it very
effectively. If he doesn't get traction, he moves on. That has upsides and
downsides, but in this case, it's to everyone's advantage that he doesn't get
traction.

And the response should be very similar. If a country appears to be preparing
to invade, you prepare to defend yourself. That doesn't mean you need to be
obnoxious about it or try to provoke a war (politeness pays), but you do want
to respond to the threat.

I apologize if I was imprecise in my wording. The word 'threat' has multiple
meanings. I don't want to vilify the PoTUS, but I do want to make sure the
checks-and-balances stay in place. That take vigilance against threats, both
real and potential.

~~~
whateveracct
"Logical" HNers will say that those bullets don't amount to a bad faith attack
on the election. They basically give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

You can't give authoritarians the benefit of the doubt. They'll take that inch
and turn it into miles and miles.

Trump is well beyond benefit of the doubt bankruptcy.

~~~
wegs
They don't amount to an attack. They amount to a threat.

Threats to our democracy need to be checked.

This isn't about Trump or about giving or not giving someone the benefit-of-
the-doubt. If it were Obama, Warren, Bush, or whomever else, I wouldn't want
to give a path to cancelling an election either. The PoTUS doesn't have that
kind of power, and it the PoTUS is making moves suggesting that kind of power
grab, they need to be checked on it by the rest of the system, whoever it is,
and regardless of intent.

That's the point of checks-and-balances: they're something we should be able
to agree on regardless of whether we trust the individual. They're about the
system and not about the person.

------
haunter
>Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives
voices

Not wrong tho especially if you just look at the mainstream media

~~~
sp332
_Andrew Bosworth, a top corporate executive considered a confidant of
Zuckerberg, said in a post in December that Facebook was “responsible for
Donald Trump getting elected” in 2016 through his effective advertising
campaign_

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/20/faceboo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/20/facebook-
republican-shift/)

~~~
frockington1
I'm sure they would have taken credit regardless who won. Have to keep the ad
money flowing

~~~
sp332
Possibly, yeah. But given that they ran millions of dollars worth of his ads,
claiming that he was "totally silenced" is a bit silly.

------
TechBro8615
Forget about the free speech albatross. To me, what Twitter is doing looks
like a clear case of election interference. They are basically giving free ads
to the opposition of Trump. He tweets something, they annotate it with a link
to media sources that are heavily biased toward the democrats.

Will they be giving the same treatment to @joebiden? He has been known to lie
and plagiarize throughout his political career.

Who qualifies as a reliable source for fact checking? I see links to sources
like CBS and CNN, neither of which are known as bastions of truth, and both of
which have failed many fact checks themselves, in recent memory.

~~~
myvoiceismypass
If Biden lies in a tweet, they should flag it!

I suspect, however, that he does not have the time to sit tweeting trash all
day long while “leading” this country.

~~~
TechBro8615
Just looking at Biden's twitter timeline, I see plenty of tweets that could be
"fact checked," if we're using Trump's voter fraud claim as an example of what
needs to be checked. Yet somehow, I doubt any of them will.

Examples:

\- "36,000 Americans could be alive today if President Trump had acted
sooner." [This is entirely speculative and impossible to prove, similar to
Trump's mail-in voting claim]

\- "The hard truth is Donald Trump ignored the warnings of health experts and
intelligence agencies, downplayed the threat COVID-19 posed, and failed to
take the action needed to combat the outbreak." [This is false, and certainly
not a "hard truth". He took early action including closing the borders to
China, which Joe Biden deemed xenophobic at the time.]

\- "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: No company pulling in billions
of dollars in profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and
teachers." [This is highly misleading, and could benefit from context, e.g.
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-amazon-really-pay-no-
taxes...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-amazon-really-pay-no-taxes-heres-
the-complicated-answer-11560504602)]

\- "In the middle of this crisis, President Trump is trying to cut food
assistance. It’s morally bankrupt." [This is misleading. He's not cutting food
assistance; the USDA is attempting to add a work requirement to SNAP
benefits.]

\- "In the middle of the worst public health crisis in our lifetime, President
Trump is actively trying to terminate health insurance for millions of
Americans. It's unthinkable." [Highly misleading if not outright false.]

Are any of these black-and-white false? No. But neither is what Twitter is
fact checking Trump for. If they were to apply fair standards, they would
"fact check" Biden too. But they won't. And we all know why. Maybe it has
something to do with the fact that the person in charge of this new policy has
called Trump a "nazi" and a "racist tangerine."

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So much simpler: one guy says outlandish, easily disproven things 100 times a
day. Its just shooting fish in a barrel - lazy.

------
mabbo
> Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government
> can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to
> listen to your bullshit or host you while you share it.

> The 1st Amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences.

> If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show cancelled, or get banned from
> an internet community, your free speech rights aren't being violated. It's
> just that the people listening to you think you're an asshole, and they're
> showing you the door.

[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

~~~
gtCameron
[https://stratechery.com/2019/tech-and-
liberty/](https://stratechery.com/2019/tech-and-liberty/)

~~~
devurand
I think the position of this article requires a poor assumption with regards
to the "marketplace of ideas." It assumes a majority of rational, fact-
checking, good-faith actors which is just not the case in the real world. And
without that particular check in place, falsehoods gain an undeserved
advantage in the "marketplace of ideas."

~~~
gtCameron
So in this view, who gets to determine who is a "rational, fact-checking,
good-faith actor" who should enjoy the privilege of free speech, and
conversely, who should not have those same rights?

------
askl56
The problem inevitably has flared up: Twitter's head of integrity leading this
push has previously tweeted that Trump is a Nazi and accused the flyover
states of being racist.

[https://twitter.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1265463081997484032](https://twitter.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1265463081997484032)

This isn't going to end well, and unless Twitter is going to exercise this
impartially (which is impossible given a human is involved), they are going to
lose their platform status, and justifiably so.

~~~
ChrisLTD
What’s “platform status”?

~~~
jonfw
You can either be a 'platform' for other people to speak, where you aren't
held responsible for the content you host, or you can be a 'curator' where you
control the content and are responsible or what you host.

The trouble with Twitter (in some people's view) is that they play both sides-
they're just a public platform when there is something illegal that they're
hosting, but they're a curator when they don't like what you've posted.

~~~
fooblat
You can also be both.

Like every newspaper website that has a comment section. They are responsible
for the parts they publish but not the user generated comments. There is no
legal requirement to be one or the other.

For whatever reason, most people seem to get this backwards.

Here is the relevant legal code Section 230 C1: “No provider or user of an
interactive computer service, a platform, shall be treated as the publisher or
speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

There is nothing in the law that says a publisher is responsible for user
generated contact (even if they moderate it). In fact the law says just the
opposite.

Edit: added note in parenthesis

~~~
ImprobableTruth
>There is nothing in the law that says a publisher is responsible for user
generated contact. In fact the law says just the opposite.

I think you're misunderstanding the section. A publisher of content is very
much responsible for it. After all, it says that "no provider [...], a
platform, shall be treated as the publisher" i.e. a platform is not a
publisher (so therefore a platform is not liable).

However, if you stop being just a 'platform', you could become liable for the
content you host. I think moderation in general is fine, but if you started
curating the content I think you could get in trouble.

~~~
fooblat
This is not how the experts explain it. Section 230 is not about splitting
providers in publishers and platforms. That is the common misunderstanding.
The Verge has done several articles on this very subject[0].

0\.
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-internet-
law-twenty-six-words-that-created-the-internet-jeff-kosseff-interview)

~~~
ImprobableTruth
Section 230 is not about splitting them, but the first amendment itself
already makes that distinction (as your article points out).

I think the article's headline "says it doesn’t matter if you’re a publisher
or a platform" is incorrect, because if sec 230 eliminated that distinction it
would be in conflict with the first amendment. The interviewee also never
makes this claim. It's more so that current rulings of section 230 simply say
that you don't "publish" but "platform" user generated content.

As far as I know the contention is where the limits of this are. There
definitely is a point where it stops, since a digital magazine very much is a
publisher and responsible for the articles it puts out. Some people think
heavily curating already means that it's not just user generated content,
while others think it's fine.

In the end, I think this is something that will eventually be decided by a
(supreme?) court ruling. Trump won't get to decide this alone, but I don't
think it's impossible for him to escalate this.

------
Cthulhu_
I hope he goes through with it, then gets dragged for abuse of power. But
that's not likely to happen; the president has too much power, and there are
no checks and balances in place. He is only still in power because his party
voted to keep him in a sham 'trial', and they only voted in favor because else
their party would look divided.

~~~
akhilcacharya
It's remarkable that Trump has consistently been against free-speech but still
has the support of a non-trivial number of self-described "libertarians" like
Thiel. This is in the 1st amendment sense as saying he wants to open up libel
laws in 2016 [0] to his comments on video games [1] and flag burning [2] to in
the broader sense in his anger at the kneeling protesters [3].

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/02/26/do...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2016/02/26/donald-trump-vows-to-open-up-libel-laws-to-make-suing-the-
media-easier-heres-how-he-could-do-it/)

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-
tru...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-
suggests-video-games-blame-mass-shootings-n1039411)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/15/no-
braine...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/15/no-brainer-
trump-tweets-support-amendment-banning-flag-burning/)

[3] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-
nfl...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-nfl-players-
who-kneel-during-national-anthem-maybe-n876996)

~~~
dashundchen
Or the guns rights activists barely flinching at "Take the guns first, go
through due process second". Just trying to imagine their reaction if the
previous officeholder had said that.

The anger at the kneeling protestors is especially revealing considering the
debate centered around whether the private NFL could interfere with the
expression of the players.

~~~
FireBeyond
Because in Trump's case, the slippery slope of "first they came for" doesn't
apply.

They know exactly who he doesn't want having guns, and why, and it's not them,
and they agree, so there's a strong silence.

------
frays
I wonder what percentage of people in the tech community voted this guy in...

And I wonder how many of these people will vote him in once again... How can
there be so many smart people in the US yet this guy ends up as their leader?

------
AzzieElbab
It really isn't about fact checking. No social media company is in position to
do so, especially when dealing with unknown. It is about blocking the message,
which IMHO is the same thing as tired old deplatforming. I am not taking sides
here, but would it not be fair to have every journalist and politician who
keeps tweeting about the Russian collision marked for fact checking or banned
now that "official" sources disagree?

~~~
hadtodoit
If companies want to allow user generated content they should be liable for
moderating it. The legal protections that these companies have thrived on
should be repealed. They don't seem to have trouble removing content they
disagree with so illegal content shouldn't be any more difficult.

------
lordvon
It seems like most people here believe there is no evidence of mail-in voter
fraud (for some reason...). Here’s a huge list of convictions for ‘fraudulent
use of absentee ballots’:
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-
voterfraudcases.pdf)

Edit: some might think this list is comprehensive, but the first page says it
is a ‘sampling’, a 400-page sampling.

~~~
ForrestN
This list proves the total irrelevance of voter fraud. Going back _30 years_
there are only 1000 such cases in a country of 300M+!

To justify severely hampering the public’s right to vote you would need to
demonstrate a pattern of recent fraud efforts that _swung elections to the
side committing the fraud._ as far as I know there are exactly zero of those
at the federal level, and probably near zero at any level of government.

There is no legitimate independent body studying this who believes voter fraud
in the United States justifies the widespread disenfranchisement strategy the
GOP is applying in so many elections across the country. Full stop.

~~~
lordvon
Hmm. It is a rather arbitrary condition that we should be able to prove that
voter fraud swung an election before we should be worried about it. There are
a lot of recent convictions, which should not happen at all. And I don’t see
how a ‘small‘ amount of evidence can prove the point against the evidence.

It should be worrying that this is happening at all. Our vote is one of our
most precious forms of expression. This list of convictions is just the ones
the author knew of, the ones that just got caught.

Oh and I would love see any evidence on the disenfranchisement you mentioned
to update my worldview with. Don’t worry, if you give me a little bit of
evidence, I won’t take it as proof that you are ‘wrong’.

~~~
ForrestN
On the contrary, these random, isolated incidents, many in tiny local
elections, should give us great confidence in our electoral system. Such a
tiny rate of problems means our democracy is incredibly strong with respect to
fraud.

From an article by Ian Millhiser:

‘ Voter fraud is a fake problem

Despite Trump’s claims that enhanced access to mailed-in ballots will increase
voter fraud, such fraud barely exists. The state of Oregon, for example, has
provided more than 100 million mail-in ballots to voters since 2000 but has
only documented about 12 cases of fraud.

Similarly, according to the Brennan Center for Justice’s Wendy Weiser and
Harold Ekeh, “an exhaustive investigative journalism analysis of all known
voter fraud cases identified only 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud from 2000
to 2012” — and billions of votes were cast during that period.

Thus, Weiser and Ekeh write, “it is still more likely for an American to be
struck by lightning than to commit mail voting fraud.”

These negligible examples of voter fraud, moreover, need to be weighed against
the potential impact of a pandemic. If voters are either unable to leave their
homes to cast a vote or unwilling to do so due to fears of becoming infected,
hundreds of thousands or even millions of voters could be disenfranchised if
they are unable to vote by mail.

So even if Trump’s warnings of voter fraud are offered in good faith — and not
merely as an excuse to reject voting rights policies that, in his own words,
do not “work out well for Republicans” — the president is proposing that we
disenfranchise thousands or even millions of voters in order to prevent a
small handful of fraudulent ballots from potentially being cast in 2020.“

This is in the context of systematic efforts by the current administration in
concert with right-leaning local governments to suppress voting in ways they
think will help them win the election.

[https://www.vox.com/2020/5/20/21264821/trump-michigan-
nevada...](https://www.vox.com/2020/5/20/21264821/trump-michigan-nevada-
funding-cares-act-unconstitutional)

------
cyberowl
Gonna play some devil's advocate

Freedom of speech is a concept, and a legal definition in the US. It's true
that Twitter has no _legal_ obligation to uphold free speech since it's not a
government entity.

But if you support the _concept_ of free speech, Twitter is stiffing
conversation by playing a moral judge on what is considered truth and what's
considered lies.

The Constitution was written 200 years ago without any of the today's
technology. Back then, all "speech" happens either live in person, or by
individual printing presses. Government back then was the biggest threat to
the concept of free speech, so it's indoctrinated in the constitution as a
legal concept.

Today, public discussion space has moved onto social media platforms.
Government is no longer the biggest threat to speech (because of the
Constitution), but private companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc who
can just ban anyone at will and cause them to lose the ability to reach their
followers. If you want to protect free speech as a concept, then we need to
update our legal concept to include any platform or service that's identified
as critical to public discussion.

Similar to how electricity companies are regulated as utilities companies
because they're so crucial to people's daily lives, social media platforms
should be regulated as speech platforms because they're so crucial to today's
conversations happening in society.

This is the hard truth. You won't like it because you hate the man. But it's
the truth / end devil's advocate

