This is great news! Twitter and the rest of the rotten and censorious platforms could use a proper shake-up. Hope the authoritarians and political repressives and anyone who works on the content moderation team all resign in protest! Good riddance!
In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”
His grandfather (Dr Joshua Haldeman) was head of Technocracy Inc:
Honest question, and not snark: We have 4chan and 8chan. Those are absolute free speech. Don't we already know how "absolute free speech" works out on digital platforms? Why do we need another one?
Those are free speech but also anonymous. In real free speech you still have to put your name to what you're saying. If you suddenly stuck everyone's real name on every single comment they wrote then it'd suddenly become a lot more civilized.
Conversely, because there are no identities, there's no way to follow specific people you agree with.
I guess the problem with those platforms is that most privately censored speech is still the actual hate speech stuff like Nazism/racism/homophobia/etc, so those platforms have taken on all of those aspects because those people have nowhere else to go.
But Twitter is not already a cesspool of those things, and I guess the feeling is that loosening up on the reigns a little bit won't suddenly cause Twitter to turn into a neo-nazi dominated platform. You'll just have things like not banning Donald Trump or not squashing factually correct NYPost articles – which of course are things that you can still debate the merits of but are different from Twitter becoming 4chan.
It’s easy to call for change without actually having to build any of it.
Odds are zero things change about Twitter’s content policy, as it’s about as permissive as you can get while operating in the US.
There’s a lot less sinister intent than one might think at first blush; Twitter wants users to stick around, banning them is a really bad way to do that.
What's to build? Twitter already built all the tools to ban, censor, and editorialize content. OP is simply suggesting that Twitter use those tools less.
Since when is "published" a meaningful quality barrier to content?
Any idiot with a WP site can "publish" a "news story".
Besides, if I reply to your tweet, "My child just died in a fire." with an article about how fire deaths are among the most painful ways to die, it doesn't really matter much how "published" that "news story" is, it's hateful and has no place on the Internet.
Well that’s where we (you and I, but also us collectively as a country, it seems) disagree.
I don’t care that it’s hateful, and I think it should have a place on the internet, and so long as we allow monopolies on the internet, then it needs to have a place on whatever monopoly platform there is.
Anyone who thinks they should be deciding what is “hateful and has no place on the internet” is EXACTLY who should NOT be deciding such things.
You're totally right, I was trying to do a two part thing and I ruined it by saying, "no place on the Internet".
I should have said, "No place on Twitter." On the Internet? Yeah, totally in agreement.
On Twitter? Couldn't disagree more, and my one-two punch of a point was going to be that 1) it's up to Twitter to decide that, and 2) they've landed at about as free as American society will tolerate.
1) because Twitter has rights too. If we actually respect freedom of speech, we also have to respect Twitter's right to decide who to associate with and,
2) Twitter is completely tolerant to many things we'd probably consider offensive. My example probably isn't even enough to get banned on Twitter for, even though I think Twitter would be wise to avoid associating with people who get that mean in their trolling.
I think the only way to support free speech is to support Twitter's right to decide who it allows on its platform. I don't think they should let Trump on their platform, for example, but that's up to them, and they can change their minds. And now, apparently, (at least partially) up to Elon!
Above you said that twitter was pretty much as permissive as they could as you can get while operating in the US. Don't you think you're moving the goalpost in your response here?
I don't see how anyone could seriously sustain an argument that twitter is as permissive as they could be lawfully. (Nor would I argue that they should be /that/ permissive in any case, the law in the US is a very very low bar, in part because we recognize that there are other ways to deal with bad speech than prohibiting it by law)
I didn't mean legally, I meant what the US population (western population generally), as an aggregate market segment, will tolerate. Twitter, as a company, should be allowed to pursue whatever market they believe will best provide value to their shareholders, and if that market includes "Americans with typical sensibilities" then I doubt they'd be able to pursue that market while allowing hate speech and harassment on their platform.
I think it's only fair we defend Twitter's right to freely associate as a form of free speech just as vigorously as we defend the right of people to be able to say whatever they like (with some exceptions around protected groups).
Thanks for correcting my misread. That makes a lot more sense. I don't think I agree there, certainly twitter's policies are more restrictive than say-- google-- which is used by a much larger portion of the country. But you've taken a defensible position, which I wouldn't care to debate.
There are not many of us here, it wouldn't make sense for some small percentage of the US population to dictate how the entire population is forced to engage with one another on a website run by a private (as in not-government run) organization.
Twitter should be able to seek profits, and if maximal profits exist by creating a set of rules that can be violated with non-illegal activity, they should be allowed to chase those dollars.
There was a ban hammer for breaking out the news that Hunter Biden lost a laptop , containing sensitive emails and compromising photos. Twitter even blocked NYPost for this. 1 year later both NYTimes and WAPO both reported the laptop as real (and at least some damaging emails as real too) - that kind of news story. This kind of ban does not belong in a democratic society, it's a banana republic move.
It's undemocratic to allow Twitter to decide for itself what content it wants to allow on its own private website?
Wouldn't it be undemocratic for the government to force Twitter to publish content it doesn't want to publish, content that would, in Twitter's estimation, harm its ability to make money?
Well, you said it. If Twitter publishes content, then it should be responsible for that content. But Twitter does not want to do that, they want to have protections like they are a public square, but also heavily alter the discourse. It's like the phone company can disconnect you if you swear on the line - it should not be possible. I would be supportive with Twitter and Facebook taking on a full editorial role, and be responsible for everything on their platforms.
And let's be honest about it. It was never about Twitter making money, for example Trump was making money for Twitter hand over fist. And NYPost publishing about a potential viral news story was not going to make Twitter less money...
It was about shifting the political discourse, which is what it's making this an undemocratic bad move. And I was wrong, it's not really a banana republic move, it's more of a communist regime style move. It was the same back then: if you said the wrong things, the censorship will come in full swing and "cancel" you. It didn't have to be the state censorship, oh no, you were censored way before that: by your boss, by the company, by the public opinion etc. Communist Romania in the 1980s and what I see here today are eerily similar: you wouldn't go to jail for your opinions, but you would be "cancelled" from any good career and public voice.
You're missing the part where Twitter is not part of the federal government. And for the federal government to step in and order what a private company must publish is an actual banana republic move.
