
Twitter says it will restrict retweeting world leaders who break rules - coloneltcb
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-break-rules/
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
At what point does Twitter restricting world leader tweets become election
interference and foreign policy interference. Will Twitter have to register as
a foreign agent in Europe?

~~~
Meekro
I've had people telling me for the last 3 years that it's definitely election
interference if a private Russian company pays some people to write tweets
about US politicians. But now, apparently it's not election interference if
Twitter itself applies special restrictions to the accounts of foreign
politicians it doesn't like?

~~~
atomi
One is a private American company abiding the law and exercising it's legal
right. The other is a rogue state sponsored disinformation/psyop campaign
detrimental to our sovereignty. How is this that difficult?

~~~
weberc2
Why does it matter that it’s a state compromising our democracy vs a private
company? Anyway, I maintain that Twitter and other major social networks
represent such an overwhelming volume of our speech that they are not simply
“private companies”. To the OP’s point, their sheer power over the political
process is the entire alleged Russian attack vector.

~~~
r00fus
Guns and wars that’s why. Twitter doesn’t have an army and can’t dictate laws
without getting its chain yanked.

Russia/China/USA etc is a whole different story.

~~~
weberc2
Then you misunderstand the debate. Russia’s attack model isn’t guns and wars,
it’s subverting our democracy by influencing who sees what via Twitter et al.
If the Russians can change our laws by using social media to covertly
influence elections, then clearly Twitter can as well. And “Twitter getting
its chain yanked” depends on our ability to audit Twitter’s traffic shaping,
which is nonexistent—there is no transparency.

------
fortran77
There are several world leaders that I'd be happier with if they weren't
leaders. (And some local leaders too! There are city councilmen I would send
to Mars if I could.)

But I absolutely want and need to know what they're saying. A platform that
provides a direct way for them to speak shouldn't be interfering with that.

~~~
metalliqaz
That sounds awfully naive to me. World leaders have all kinds of options for
communicating with the public. Official press releases, for example. Press
releases are preferable because when they tell falsehoods, they can be fact
checked in the press. We have no obligation to allow them to use social
networks for propaganda purposes.

~~~
ctdonath
The fact checkers are too often biased/liars/propagandists. I want to hear
what someone has to say. As an adult I don’t need someone to translate a tweet
for me, nor protect me from its contents. Most media is propaganda today;
Twitter is the closest to live news we have, and @Jack is eager to end that
too.

~~~
michaelmrose
If you think Twitter is informative and actual news is all fake news I invite
you to in depth fact check 10 pages of news stories and 10 pages of your
favorite tweets and tell us how it goes. Blog about what you learn even.

~~~
pdonis
_> If you think Twitter is informative and actual news is all fake news_

That's not what he said. He said he wants to see what people say directly, not
filtered through anyone else. Then he can decide for himself what is
informative and what is fake news. I feel the same way.

~~~
michaelmrose
You are yourself a filter as is every useful aspect of human civilization. A
tiny fraction of the sensory data around you becomes your perceptions a
microscopic portion thereof is communicated to other people. We filter for
quality and 90% of everything is crap or noise.

One wouldn't learn physics by seeing what the entire human race had to say on
the subject because virtually the whole of humanity knows next to nothing on
the topic. We instead filter it by people that are known to be knowledgeable
on the topic. People that are paid to teach it, people that work in relevant
fields, people that have published papers in journals that themselves act as
filters.

When people say they prefer twitter it is because given the entire population
of users its trivial for any person to find people who reinforce what they
already think no matter how silly. If you believe the flat world was farted
out by a goat there are fellow goat worshipers that will by happy to make you
feel good by expounding on the topic.

~~~
pdonis
_> You are yourself a filter_

Sure, that's the point. I want to do my own filtering, not depend on someone
else's.

 _> One wouldn't learn physics by seeing what the entire human race had to say
on the subject because virtually the whole of humanity knows next to nothing
on the topic. We instead filter it by people that are known to be
knowledgeable on the topic._

But how do we know who is knowledgeable? There are plenty of websites out
there with crackpot content whose authors claim to be knowledgeable.

One common way is to accept some kind of credential that is supposed to
correlate with being knowledgeable. For example, person A is a professor of
physics, and person B is a random person on the Internet with no credentials,
so person A is much more likely to be knowledgeable about physics.

However, that still doesn't mean you should believe everything person A says
about physics, because, unfortunately, person A is probably not going to be as
careful as they should be about distinguishing actual proven physics, physics
that is confirmed by experiment, from their own opinions. Watch a Brian Greene
or Michio Kaku special on quantum mechanics and, if you don't know much about
physics beforehand, you will come away thinking that Star Trek style
transporters are just around the corner. Read a pop science article by a
string theorist as a lay person with no background knowledge and you will come
away thinking that physicists have experimental proof that a multiverse of
10^500 universes exists.

And this is in physics, a hard science, where we can do experiments that
confirm particular predictions of our best current theories, General
Relativity and quantum field theory, to thirteen or fourteen decimal places.
Imagine what it's like in softer disciplines. And the more important the
consequences, the more likely it is that people who are thought to be
knowledgeable will fail to distinguish between what's actually known and
confirmed and their own opinions. Physicists misleading people about quantum
mechanics or string theory is regrettable, but nobody is advocating huge
public policy choices based on quantum mechanics or string theory. That's not
true in other disciplines.

So the unpleasant fact is that I can't trust others, even experts in their
fields, to filter for me. I have to do my filtering for myself. That's why I
don't want people to give me their opinions and spin about things. I want to
see the raw data so I can decide for myself.

------
Brendinooo
Not sure who will end up being satisfied with this.

People who want the "world leaders" deplatformed will be mad they they're
still online, and people who like said leaders will cry persecution every time
this is invoked, whether it's intentional or some automated system being
tripped.

A sizable chunk will not hear about any of this and will wonder why they can't
like a tweet (unless this problem is solved with the right UX).

Does the Streisand Effect apply to this too? Does this end up with more quote
tweeting?

~~~
vonmoltke
The TC article linked to the blog post announcing this, but didn't link to the
page describing how the public interest feature works:
[https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-
intere...](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-interest)

In short, it's not just silently making the Tweet non-interactive (as the
article implies). It's similar to the existing "sensitive content" UX.

~~~
bertil
Thank you for the link.

I understand the general rule against violence, but I feel like, when dealing
with elected officials, you have to specify a difference between legitimate
military action and calls to civilian violence. I don’t think anyone would
object that Twitter hosts an announcement from the Staatsminister of
Netherlands that she has decided to join the coalition of the willing and to
send troops to Afghanistan, but that’s a clear call to violence and people
will die because of that decision.

------
iron0013
I honestly don't understand why "world leaders" aren't banned as soon as they
break the rules, just like anyone else would be. If I said even a tiny
fraction of the things "world leaders" have said, I'd be banned from Twitter
in a second, and rightfully so.

~~~
chrisseaton
Because nations and their leaders are different to people.

When Britain declared war on Germany in WW2 were they ‘threatening violence’
and would that get them banned from Twitter?

~~~
throwaway_bad
Instead of a hypothetical you can just use the example from the article:

> Twitter said it would not ban President Trump despite incendiary tweets,
> including allegations that he threatened to declare war on North Korea.

~~~
chrisseaton
Right, but using the example of Britain and Germany back in WW2 removes it
from current politics and allows us to think of an example of a clear and
direct incitation of violence that almost everyone thinks was legal and
morally just and would have been appropriate to Tweet.

------
SI_Rob
What organization or individual ever in history could claim to have this kind
of power over world affairs? There's never been anyone quite as potently
leveraged as Jack Dorsey.

As much as I am in favor of the (superficial, at least) spirit of this
decision, I'm torn about the huge corner we're turning as a civilization here.

edit: Downvoters, if you are interpreting this as a veiled swipe at Twitter or
indirect support of Trump (& friends), that's neither the intent nor
representative of my opinions about these actors in the least.

This may be a touchstone event that bottlenecks perception of the
international system in a way that makes the particular provocateurs about as
relevant to the long term outcome as Gavrilo Princip was to the formation of
NATO or the UN.

~~~
brlewis
> What organization or individual ever in history could claim to have this
> kind of power over world affairs?

If I could find my copy of the book, "The Media Monopoly" I could give you
numerous answers.

~~~
SI_Rob
I understand that "the media" has held this kind of sway for a long time. But
here we are with a single, publicly identifiable organization (and ultimately
a private individual) casually invoking their power to mute every world leader
at will, with the flip of a switch. This is a new normal.

------
beezischillin
All I read between the lines is "election season is coming up and this is the
path of least resistance we came up with".

Twitter + Politics is probably a net negative on the world.

------
michannne
Twitter can make it's own decisions, not my position to tell them what they
can and can't do, but

>The company said the move will help its users stay informed about global
affairs, but while balancing the need to keep the site’s rules in check.

Is a baseless lie. And I can't believe they're brazen enough to propose
limiting the outreach of world leaders on the site while saying

>help its users stay informed about global affairs

Twitter has been around for over a decade, yet only now are they deciding to
take this approach, meaning, regardless of what triggered this new policy, is
not rooted in any sort of desire to "keep the site's rules in check".

~~~
perf1
As soon as they delete and curate content they are also endorsing the content
that stays online. If this endorsed content is slander they should be liable.

------
codezero
I'm not sure that anyone concerned with Twitter's policies/content has focused
on the retweet-ability of rule violating world leaders. This is a super
shallow effort.

Edit: Though the article mentions that violating tweets are totally un-
interactive, except that they can be quote retweeted. Still pretty shallow but
slightly less than my original comment.

With that said - it's un clear to me what constitutes a rule violating tweet
for a world leader. They should come out with some examples of what is and is
not a violation, they should also better specify what a world leader is.

~~~
Waterluvian
Regardless of the conversation about this being insufficient, I think it will
still have a significant impact if actually employed.

Not only does it actually reduce the proliferation of these tweets, it signals
that a line was crossed by a particular tweet.

~~~
codezero
The big problem I see, is this still does nothing to inhibit distribution to
followers. In an echo chamber, everyone still sees it. It just protects people
who already were going out of their way to not interact with it.

~~~
thosakwe
Twitter is not an “echo chamber.” A site that big simply has way too many
conflicting opinions for that to be true.

~~~
baud147258
It's not one echo chamber, but depending on who you follow, you could find
yourself in one

------
pupppet
The US govt. shouldn't be using some third party tool to communicate with its
citizens. Post a blog on usa.gov and say whatever you want, problem solved.

~~~
jonas21
The White House [1], and just about every US government department and agency
(e.g. [2], [3], [4]) already has a blog. The fact that most people are unaware
they exist is precisely why they also post to third-party platforms.

[1] [https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/)

[2] [https://www.energy.gov/news-blog](https://www.energy.gov/news-blog)

[3] [https://www.usda.gov/media/blog](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog)

[4] [https://blogs.nasa.gov/](https://blogs.nasa.gov/)

~~~
ninkendo
Perhaps if they didn’t post to third party platforms, we would be more likely
to know the blogs exist?

~~~
oh_sigh
More likely blog excerpts would just be reposted on Twitter

------
Solvitieg
> We decide whether a Tweet that would otherwise violate the Twitter Rules is
> in the public interest using the following criteria and process:

Feeling blessed knowing that Twitter Safety is deciding what information is
best for the American public.

~~~
bertil
If you think someone else should, I’m sure that Twitter would be happy to
delegate that role to anyone more legitimate… Anyone, really. They probably
would also love to pay that person. Facebook is trying to set that up, for
instance — with very generous conditions: dotation covering a full-time staff,
etc.

Dealing with that is a nightmare for specialists and no software developer
would want to be embroiled in that.

------
ggm
How much "harm" would be done to society at large if twitter didn't exist?

How much "harm" would be done to society at large if all social media didn't
exist? (including things like USENET)

How much "harm" would be done to society if the Internet didn't exist?
(excluding things like email)

How much "harm" would be done to society if email didn't exist?

I never lived in a time without a telephone, but I did span the "international
calls have to be pre-booked" time, and some of the 'no international
subscriber trunk dialling' time.

I remember a time before all this stuff, distinctly/discretely. They don't get
identical answers.

------
CobrastanJorji
> "We want to make it clear today that the accounts of world leaders are not
> above our policies entirely..."

Thakn you, Twitter. Your bold stance will make it clear where you draw the
line, and also where you draw the new line after the President tramples over
your line.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
>Any user who tweets content promoting terrorism, making “clear and direct”
threats of violence, and posting private information are all subject to ban.

I wonder whether threats of military intervention (technically) counts.
Interesting food for thought.

------
dev_dull
The only thing worse than vague rules is their inevitable selective
application.

------
bjt2n3904
So much for the free speech wing of the free speech party. :(

~~~
metalliqaz
Daily reminder that free speech entitles you to protection from the
government. It doesn't grant you rights to verbally puke all over any social
network you please.

~~~
inimino
Daily rejoinder that this argument is getting really old when most political
speech has moved to online fora controlled by a small number of corporate
players which have more power than any traditional publisher ever did due to
network effects.

~~~
freehunter
It's amazing to me how many people on Hacker News, a technical forum full of
the most technically capable people in the world, seem to forget that the
Internet is still a thing, domain name registrars (and failing that, IP
addresses) still exist, and anyone can put almost anything they want on the
Internet regardless of their political views.

So many people here seem resigned to this idea that Twitter and Facebook are
the _only_ ways to communicate online. I would have thought the most
technically capable people in the world would remember that HTML can be served
from basically any Internet-accessible computer in the world.

~~~
50656E6973
What about the Network Effect?

What does it matter if anyone can have a say if they don't get heard?

~~~
thatswrong0
What do you mean? The freedom to communicate your ideas is not the same thing
as a guarantee to an audience.

------
NightlyDev
Restrict retweeting? Ban the damn account instead.

Normal users gets banned, and one would expect world leaders to usually behave
better than the average user and actually read the terms of service.

If Twitters simple terms of service is to complicated for world leaders then
they should probably stay away...

------
xg15
Interesting side effect:

> _We haven’t used this notice yet, but when we do, you will not be able to
> like, reply, share, or Retweet the Tweet in question. You will still be able
> to express your opinion with Retweet with Comment._

I think, not able to like/retweet is less of a big deal than unable to _reply_
\- not the only way to comment on the tweet is using a quote-tweet, which can
only be seen by your own followers. This seems to make it impossible to get a
full overviews about the replies to a tweet unless you already know the people
that you expect to reply.

I may be wrong, but this seems like a step to _increase_ the filter-bubble
effect and potentially strengthen the effect of such tweets instead of
restricting them.

~~~
jakeogh
Exactly. Modern social media platofrms derive their power from their ability
to control preception.

------
k_sze
“The social media giant said it will not allow users to like, reply, share or
retweet the offending tweets, but instead will let users quote-tweet to allow
ordinary users to express their _opinions_.” (Emphasis mine)

And that, my friends, is exactly the problem with Twitter.

The format of the platform encourages opinions, not substantiated arguments.
I’m not saying you _can’t_ have substantiated arguments, I’m saying the format
doesn’t _encourage_ them. The whole point of Twitter is for influencers to
post short quips to evoke emotion and get followers. As McLuhan said, “The
medium is the message”. It’s a losing battle.

~~~
jakeogh
They cant afford to let users gauge opinion. That's _their_ job.

------
Beltiras
Twitter leadership has shown they are not a good arbiter of truth. This is a
sticky problem. While deplatforming does work for obvious instances of
hate&exclusion, I'm not sure handing authoritarians the weapon of "they are
silencing me" will help the situation.

------
lr
I think Twitter should add a “save” feature so that those who want to actually
save a reference to a tweet don’t actually have to “like” it. I wonder how
much this would change the “heart” counts for world leaders...

~~~
thosakwe
They’ve had this for months; it’s called “Add to Bookmarks” in the popup
options on a given Tweet.

------
Bantros
Possibly the worst platform to ever grace the internet, and that takes some
doing when you have Facebook as your competition.

The sooner it kills itself from within the better

------
panny
The US company that is broadcasting Chinese propaganda about Hong Kong [1] is
going to start suppressing what the US President has to say. Despicable.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/19/twitter-u...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/19/twitter-
under-fire-for-running-chinese-ads-attacking-hong-kong-protesters/)

------
jstewartmobile
We'll just take screenshots and post those.

People have already been doing this for quite some time, since the media has
been rather brazen about "disappearing" articles that expose either their own
corruption or the foibles of their paymasters.

------
tasogare
Would be fun if affected world leaders backslash by restricting Twitter in
their country.

------
gsaga
Well you can serialize tweets into text and then tweet that:

    
    
      Leader tweeted:...

------
mlb_hn
Have there been any studies on how many people actually see those tweets, and
of those, how many remember the content and then agree/disagree? I'm a bit
unsure how data based any of these actions are.

~~~
jcadam
What? Who uses twitter anymore? I mean, besides politicians and celebrities.

------
ProAm
How about hide the tweet if the tweet breaks the rules. Like a reverse mute.

~~~
dev_dull
...like shadow banning?

------
alex_duf
Users will retweet and like screen-grabs instead. I don't think it will solve
the issue. It's a step in the right direction though.

------
hinkley
Sure would be great if certain world leaders felt bound by the Rule of Law.

But in the meantime maybe we can at least get them to follow Twitters TOS...

------
ReptileMan
And since we all know who is the world leader this is aimed at - seems like
Twitter is begging for regulation as retaliation strike.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Maybe they want regulation. Currently they get attacked no matter what they
do. Regulation allows them to wash their hands of their messiest issue and
when anyone gets angry, they can point to the regulations and blame the
government.

~~~
ReptileMan
Honestly the best solution is social networks to be declared as public fora or
something definition based on common carrier - they are forced to not
discriminate about speech, but they are immune. California has a something
about the fora in the state constitution that was relevant about right to
protest in malls.

~~~
tzs
So if I run a forum for discussion of chess, and someone keeps posting long
rants about how all the <vulgar word for black people> are low IQ thieves who
should be deported to Africa, Jews are keeping white people down and its too
bad Hitler was stopped before he finished what he started with them, and also
posts his Death Eaters gang rape Hermione fanfiction, and none of this has the
slightest thing to do with chess...I should have to leave these posts up and
not ban that account, unless I want to take responsibility for everything
anyone says on my forum?

~~~
ReptileMan
Make a chess forum with couple of billion users that use it as main form of
communication and then lets sweat after that question.

------
diminoten
Can't people just retweet with comment? Not very familiar with Twitter, so
genuine question.

~~~
bertil
Yes:

> let users quote-tweet to allow ordinary users to express their opinions.

~~~
diminoten
So this changes absolutely nothing?

~~~
bertil
The tweet appears hidden, replaced by a text explaining that it’s unacceptable
and a link to reveal the original message.

It seems little but it does send the message that the content is not welcome.
I don’t know of any large scale attempt at using that approach to reduce
unwanted content. Other approaches, for instance, flagging links as proven
false by fact-checkers, has significantly back-fired so I’m curious.

~~~
diminoten
Okay, good to know. It wasn't clear to me what the actual consequence was of
forcing a, "retweet with comment" would be, if the comment could just be "."
or something.

------
self_awareness
Power of a corporation over the government: The world of Cyberpunk is closer
and closer.

------
bashwizard
How about restricting world leaders who break the rule instead?

------
teekert
Don't say what you want, slave! Or, Uhm World Leader...

------
heroHACK17
Aaaaaand que Joe Rogan Experience: Jack Dorsey vol. III

------
notadoc
Where has social media been a good thing for society?

~~~
simonswords82
We'll look back on Twitter in years to come as one of the worst things to
happen to public discourse since the Internet came to exist.

I just wish it would go away.

------
OrgNet
just what we need... more censure in the US... /s

Now if they fail to block something illegal or something else of that nature,
can they be held liable?

------
breadandcrumbel
Tech companies are getting into politics too much

------
nelcevest
I think it's excellent that they're restricting the Iranian leader's tweet
where he says that Rushdie's death sentence still stands. I think it is
equally wrong not to restrict Trump's tweets where he threatens to destroy
countries like Iran or North Korea, which is obviously the threat of a
terrorist act, involving the murder of millions of innocent civilians. That
being the case, it seems clear to me that Twitter is not impartial.

------
artur_makly
Luckily, there will still be [http://TrumpTweets.io](http://TrumpTweets.io) to
fill that gaping void.

------
nobrains
How will they remove bias, as already mentioned in the article:

"Last year, Twitter said it would not ban President Trump despite incendiary
tweets, including allegations that he threatened to declare war on North
Korea. However, in the case of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali
Khamenei, he had one of his tweets deleted from the site."

------
tagrun
Right. We're all equal but some people are more equal than others. So it's OK
they're above the rules for commoners.

Twitter is rationalizing their unequal treatment of people for the sake of
their network traffic and $$$, but what's amazing is people are actually
buying this.

I wonder how those same people would rationalize their opposition to other
outrageous situations like universities saying "professors can say racist
things in the university press and classroom because there is public interest
in their words", "CEOs of big international corporations can do hate speech
because there is world wide public interest", "it's OK for evil governments to
stream threats and false narratives because there is public interest" etc.

~~~
throwawayxrr2
Anyone with a verified account gets away with incitement and harassment on a
scale that lesser accounts would be sanctioned for. In the one case I saw
where a verified account was sanctioned, their friends (actually I suspect its
a paid Tweet ring) rallied their hundreds of thousands of supporters. Given
that journalists rely heavily on Twitter (its true source of power), they can
amplify this outrage.

Twitter is held hostage by its power users.

~~~
harlanji
I got mobbed and threatened with violence from none other than the leaders of
the Bay Area Clojure meetup, published author(s), and found my Twitter account
instantly suspended on Muni home—guessing somebody in the group knew somebody
inside the big T to make the suspension happen, or they just got a big mass of
reports in. I was physically at the Meetup when these calls for violence were
happening, unbeknownst to me since I don’t use my mobile while at meetups, but
it explains some if the eratic behavior. I don’t know where to begin seeking
recourse, this was earlier this year. It’s terrifying, indeed.

~~~
freshbagels
Wow, this sounds insane. Do you mind sharing the backstory?

------
dvtrn
I don’t believe them.

------
marmada
A lot of people are making claims about a "loss" of free speech due to this
change. I don't see how this is an issue.

Twitter's rules are impartial. I don't see how impartial rules can be
exclusionary. Well I can to some degree, in the sense that impartial rules
such as "no politics in esports" prevents people from protesting injustices,
such as Hong Kong, but Twitter's rules are more about not actively promoting
violence.

It is entirely possible that these impartial rules may disproportionately
affect certain groups/political parties (white nationalists, Trump, etc.) --
this just means those parties need to get in step with baseline moral
standards that simply claim actively promoting violence and exclusion is bad.

Also Twitter is a private company. They can choose who is able to use their
platform or not. (At least I think that's how it works, maybe not).

~~~
username90
The problem is bias. Just like how making hiring based on race illegal people
still do it. So if the admins are biased in favor of one party then they will
be very lenient against it and very strict against the other. They might have
reasons for every ban "You can't incite hatred" while also have reasons for
not banning your own "The hatred is justified in this case as the other side
is worse", but the end result still becomes very biased.

So in essence the more liberties you give your admins to ban or silence people
the more biased your platform becomes.

------
xmly
Who decides whether the leaders break rules or not?

------
xg15
OT, but Verizon's GDPR prompt/privacy policy is exceptionally scary and even
more infuriating than the usual policies. Could we maybe post a link from
another source?

------
buboard
Would be good if all retweets needed a comment.

------
not_a_cop75
And who will guard against them breaking their own rules? Who will watch the
watchmen?

------
JasonFruit
What's a "world leader"? That sounds like something you might claim to be but
that should under no circumstances be allowed.

~~~
detaro
> _What 's a "world leader"?_

A head of state of a country, especially but not exclusively of an influential
nation.

~~~
JasonFruit
I'm pointing out that the term implies more than the truth, and that it's good
there aren't real world leaders. Apparently people don't appreciate my
approach to communicating that.

~~~
nl
"World leader" is an extremely common term for a leader of a country. They are
called "world leader" because they are involved in world affairs.

You seem to believe it means a leader of some kind of whole earth government.
That isn't implied at all.

~~~
JasonFruit
I know how people use it. I think it's an idiotic term.

~~~
nl
So your question was rehtorical and all your protests about how it was
"chilling" were just to create drama or something?

Great.

------
ComodoHacker
The whole thing looks like a clever PR move pursuing several goals: a)
advertise to leaders who hasn't joined jet; b) appeal to authoritarian leaders
who like to ban/firewall platforms in their countries, and thus gain
competitive advantage; c) please Trump.

And the whole thing feels disgusting.

~~~
diminoten
How is this going to please Trump?

------
mplewis
Yawn. They've said this how many times over the last couple years?

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detaro
As far as I remember, never?

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patagonia
Retweeting is not free speech. The original tweet is free. Everything after
that is leveraged speech. Leveraged by the platform. And the platform is co-
responsible for leveraging speech. If Trump’s (or whoever’s) followers want to
subscribe to what he has to say, awesome. But if Twitter (or whatever
platform) functions as a megaphone for hate speech, or incitement to violence
speech, or dangerous and obvious misinformation speech, it should be held
accountable. And if it is being held accountable it should have discretion
such that they can behave as a responsible megaphone. I’m all about free
speech. But building multi billion dollar echo chambers that can be co-opted
with impunity in the name of free speech makes zero legal sense and zero
common sense.

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stale2002
What about my individual freedom of expression to repeat what someone else
said?

If someone else says something first, am I not allowed to repeat it?

Like, let's say I heard something in the park. It would be ridiculous for
someone to try and stop me from physically saying the same thing that someone
else said.

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polynomial
To be fair, Jack Dorsey doesn't own your park.

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acjohnson55
Good. "World leaders" should be subject to some facsimile of the rules that
apply to regular people. This strikes a good balance of neutral reporting and
responsible platform stewardship, in my opinion. Note that the media has
always exercised this type of judgment, and as imperfect as that judgment is,
I think it's better than neutrally amplifying whatever people tell them.

