Let's talk first amendment, and social media

[notimp]

That's not accurate. His posts have been flagged in the past.

But not censored.

Also this entire instrument of providing context to some of his posts - before that was considered 'not enough' and some of them where taken down - was invented specifically for him, and as a political instrument.

 

[FAST6191]

I agree that their hate and violence speches needs to be moderated

Why would hate speech as it is termed need to be moderated?

 

[Pedro250]

Why would hate speech as it is termed need to be moderated?

First we must define what is hate speech rigth?

 

[Cryoraptor]

I'm somewhere in the middle of this one.

People are allowed their opinions. Removing someone because they stated a controversial opinion is not ok and is authoritarian. Making an edgy joke one time also doesn't justify ruining a person's life.

But when it comes to being the leader of the most powerful country in the world, if you act like a toddler and shit stir for your whole term, and then when you don't get re-elected you willfully spread misinformation and stir the pot, and indirectly cause acts of real-life violence and terrorism, you are now a dangerous individual and are borderline breaking the law, and I think social media is justified in removing Trump for what he's been doing for the last 4, nearly 5 years on those platforms.

If someone is invading a conversation, which happens here a lot, and starts harassing people with racial, homophobic or whatever else abuse, that isn't acceptable, but if they are purely making a statement about their personal beliefs, so what? It doesn't matter how disgusting you think that is, they have not caused harm to anyone. The innate problem with something like 'hate speech' is that it's subjective; anyone can say any speech they don't like is hate speech. Thus it isn't a good concept to go by when dealing with this sort of thing. Grow a thicker skin and move on; it's only worthy of reporting to either social media or the police if it's genuine harassment and abuse, such as what was seen in the Parlor screenshots: That is actual threat, racial abuse and incitement of hatred, and is objectively not protected under free speech. However, saying 'To be honest I think x group are ruining the country' or 'On the real I don't approve of x', that's not hatred and it's not abuse, and it's certainly not harassment of any one person. There's a difference. Too many people see things in black-and-white, good-versus-evil these days. No, I think both sides of the argument have points and also both have problems with their stance.

 

[Deleted User]

you willfully spread misinformation and stir the pot, and indirectly cause acts of real-life violence

Not indirectly.
Think of it this way. Trump reheotric to his base was "the election was stolen"
When he mentioned essentially marching to the capital, he directly incited it.
An example, me saying there is a fire in a theater when there isn't one, and someone call 911. And the come to a fire that doesn't exist.
My words caused action, I directly brought out the events.
If I didn't call out "fire" none of it would of happened.

Same for Trump. Trump was the one calling fire, this caused those around him to act.

 

[Cryoraptor]

Not indirectly.
Think of it this way. Trump reheotric to his base was "the election was stolen"
When he mentioned essentially marching to the capital, he directly incited it.
An example, me saying there is a fire in a theater when there isn't one, and someone call 911. And the come to a fire that doesn't exist.
My words caused action, I directly brought out the events.
If I didn't call out "fire"

Same for Trump. Trump was the one calling fire, this caused those around him to act.

Fair enough. I meant it in the sense that he didn't literally tell people to come and storm the Capitol, but ok. We agree in principal.

 

[Deleted User]

I meant it in the sense that he didn't literally tell people to come and storm the Capitol, but ok. We agree in principal.

he did. It's just not verbatim.
He riled up his base. he told his followers he would walk them to capital hill.
He didn't tell them to storm the into capital. But when you got an angry mob that believes an election was stolen?
What else do you think is going to happen?



I would even go further on the record to say that he knew it was going to happen, or to some extent.
When he was telling his followers to go home.
"We love you, your very special"
You don't tell that to essentially terrorists. Unless of course, you still want them to follow you for some other action.
And the police there, didn't arrest on the spot, but escorted them out of the building. Under any other circumstance, there would be a fuck ton of charges right on the spot and arrests.

 

[D34DL1N3R]

But not censored.

Also this entire instrument of providing context to some of his posts - before that was considered 'not enough' and some of them where taken down - was invented specifically for him, and as a political instrument.

Nope. He was never censored. End of story. He said exactly what he wanted to, 100% free of censorship, and he faced the consequences.

 

[notimp]

Nope. He was never censored. End of story. He said exactly what he wanted to, 100% free of censorship, and he faced the consequences.

Which werent outlined for a political person of his standing beforehand, and changed in action for no communicated reason.

Several times.

Reason given for the ban (which I do count as censorship) was "immanent danger", which is a reason to rectify everything without having to resort to proof.


edit: Also - the way I hear, that this happened internally at twitter, was that a group of 300 people mounted a protest to deplatform. And within a day - even a shopping platform for merchandise material joined.

This is a great way to project "we are strong" in signaled values, but unfit to run a democracy by.

After that a purge of 70.000 QAnon related accounts was issued - which is the only action this scene had discussed as a potential way to curb the disinformation problem two years prior. There literally is no other action that would have been discussed for the past two years in those cycles. To which my response is and always will be - you cant be serious. This cant be the way you try to enact your social responsibility.

Wait until a hashtag is hated by everyone - then ban the 70.000 people associated with it.

To which the response currently probably still is "but immanent danger".

 

[FAST6191]

First we must define what is hate speech rigth?

That can be a stumbling block. The main question though would be is it something that should be deleted under the force of law? Why would you not be allowed to post saying "all purpled eyed people are bastards"?

 

[UltraSUPRA]

Nope. He was never censored. End of story. He said exactly what he wanted to, 100% free of censorship, and he faced the consequences.

It doesn't matter if something goes against the rules, censorship is censorship.

 

[osm70]

Did the banning of Trump break Free Speech as defined by the first ammendment? No since it doesn't apply to private companies. They don't have to follow the first ammendment, they don't even have to follow their own rules. If they decide to ban you for absolutely no reason... or if they decide to not ban you even after you constantly break the rules over and over again... they can do that. It is their legal right.

If you want to make sure no private company censors you, go ahead and make your own platform. Now you might argue about Parler being denied their Amazon hosting... but again, Amazon doesn't have a legal obligation to host for anyone. So, you better have your own hosting. Buy a few servers, set it all up on your own and you are safe from being shut down and/or censored by anyone.

Now for the other issue: Did the banning of Trump break the philosophical idea of Free Speech? Technically... yes. Yes it did. In order for speech to be trully free, it must be absolutely unrestricted and unmoderated. Which means the platform in question cannot have any rules. It also cannot ban ANYONE or remove ANY POST.

Is it possible to have a platform with trully free speech? No, not really. The moment you don't have any rules, all sort of interesting things start popping up on your platform. You know, things like child porn. And the moment child porn appears on your site and you do nothing to remove it, the government is sure to step it.

OK, so maybe child porn will not be allowed but anything else will. In that case, it isn't technically a TRULLY free speech, but maybe that's enough for you. But the thing is, you decided to ban a certain thing from your website. And now you have to ask yourself what else you should ban. Violence? Doxxing? etc,etc... and eventually, you might or might not fall back to removing things simply because you don't like them. The point is, where do you draw the line?

 

[Foxi4]

There's a lot of misconceptions and misinformation in regards to 230, one has to look at these things in context. When the law was originally written, there were genuine liability concerns in regards to user-generated content. The often-touted example is a phone call - if person A calls person B over a landline (medium) using the AT&T service (platform) and they discuss an illegal activity, is AT&T liable, or an accomplice, for making that call happen? Well, no - of course not. AT&T provides an open platform and it's the users who have engaged in an illegal activity. The same thought process has been applied to the early Internet in an effort to enable its growth without too many worries in regards to liability. No website is treated as a publisher of content generated by a third party, which makes them immune to most civil liability.

The situation today is quite different - online platforms do deploy heavy moderation and selectively choose what is and is not acceptable on their platforms, and this selection goes beyond what is and isn't legal. By definition, they have now chosen to publish some content and not other content, in a manner that goes beyond the Good Samaritan element of the law. By choosing what they are unwilling to publish on the platform, they are unwittingly also outlining what they're happy publishing, which should prompt a revisit of the Communications Decency Act as a whole.

We can parrot "it's a private company, they can do what they want" all day, but they're a private company that can't be sued like any other private company in any other sector of industry. Moreover, there's a fair bit of shady anti-trust practices going on in regards to new, alternative platforms, which is highly suspect. The Parler situation should frighten people, it shouldn't be celebrated, regardless of the alleged content in question.

First you're removed from online storefronts (simultaneously, mind you), then you're denied web hosting (with AWS owning the majority of this space, then Microsoft in second place, then Google) and your domain is stricken from the registrar, the last step is payment processing denial, which may have already happened. Once Visa and Mastercard decide that you're high risk and you end up on the MATCH list, you effectively cease to exist - I fail how that system of dominoes doesn't encourage monopolistic practices. We keep hearing "build your own platforms", but it's looking like people are expected to build their own Internet infrastructure and banking system also. This is a dangerous precedent.

At some point the government will have to step in, or something's got to give in the hosting and credit card processing space. Section 230 has to return to its original intent - providing a shield against civil liability in return for creating open platforms as long as the content posted is legal. Anything short of that will only lead to more purges, more resentment and more division. This is not the way the Internet was supposed to work.

 

[D34DL1N3R]

It doesn't matter if something goes against the rules, censorship is censorship.

Except it cant be censorship unless he was censored.

 

[Foxi4]

Except it cant be censorship unless he was censored.

There's actually a case to be made that he was, and it has nothing to do with the election, or even his term as a whole. Trump was a very prolific user of Twitter, often cited online both by individuals and by publications. Suspending his account is one thing, removing access to all of his content made over the years is another. It's one of the largest cases of "link rot" in recent history:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/9/22222371/trump-ban-twitter-link-rot-embedded-dead-posts

Long story short, whoever quoted Trump's tweets, in whatever context, even in the distant past before his presidential run, is now linking to a void instead of often necessary context.

It's not a very good policy by Twitter, not even the stringent GDPR regulations require this level of a purge - normally when an account is deleted, only personally identifiable information is removed. Twitter restricts access to all data, presumably to further distance itself from the accusation of being a publisher. It was never seen as a big deal as it's rare to see accounts with such huge followings and so many tweets suspended. In a way, it disrupts the Internet's archival capabilities.

 

[KingVamp]

YouTube has suspended Trump.

 

[notimp]

YouTube has suspended Trump.

For a week (currently).

(Important Imho.)


Everyone still in the mood of ganging up against a fashist movement within your own state, not only by shunning and ostracizing them - but also by silencing their views from the public sphere, we know how this ends:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/533919-fringe-social-networks-boosted-after-mob-attack

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...-the-easy-spontaneity-of-intergroup-conflict/


So this:

US military leaders blast 'insurrection' at Capitol

Top ranking members of the US armed forces have decried the far-right violence from Donald Trump's supporters and confirmed that Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20.

https://www.dw.com/en/us-military-leaders-blast-insurrection-at-capitol/a-56208092

Has little value, other than reminding people that they arent winning.

So now you are putting people in positions where you are trying to grind down the insurrection. And if your move to try to interrupt their power to organize ant attract doesnt work... Attrition will?


Biden the "Fire and brimstone" candidate?

Here, get riled up a bit more:

 

[UltraSUPRA]

Did anyone see what's happening in Uganda? Seems like Twitter is getting a taste of their own medicine.

 

[notimp]

Did anyone see what's happening in Uganda? Seems like Twitter is getting a taste of their own medicine.

Uh yeah, the coveted ugandan anti social media, free speech crowd...

Beginning in 1894, the area was ruled as a protectorate by the UK, which established administrative law across the territory. Uganda gained independence from the UK on 9 October 1962. The period since then has been marked by violent conflicts, including an eight-year-long military dictatorship led by Idi Amin.
[...]
Uganda's current president is Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who took power in January 1986 after a protracted six-year guerrilla war. Following constitutional amendments that removed term limits for the president, he was able to stand and was elected president of Uganda in the 2011 and in the 2016 general elections.[13]

src: wiki

They will serve as a glowing example of how free elections are hold. *cough*

We know Trump to a certain extent had those 'ruler for life' ambitions. Doesnt mean, that they are good for a country, or bad for Twitter, if the ugandan government blocks all social media - prior to elections.

 

[Blaze163]

I'm English so I can't really comment on the US Constitution. It was mostly written to spite us Brits, to be honest. But in my humble opinion this is a time where rules need to be flexible for the greater good in the moment. Amendments and whatnot were designed to protect decent people from horrible things. The first amendment has been abused here. It was clearly never designed to allow a blatantly tyrannical despot to say whatever he wants in an attempt to position himself as Emperor Of America. Didn't you guys declare independence to get away from crap like this?

There are exceptions to every rule and Trump is one of them. He may be constitutionally sound with what he says on Twitter but at no point was it true (how many posts get flagged for misinformation?) or in the public's best interests. His lies and delusions cause chaos, the events on Capitol Hill stand as testament to that. So if banning him helps keep people safe but is technically breaking the rules, then those rules need to be rewritten to allow for such scenarios. Updating rules as time goes by is how a nation evolves and grows. Sticking to rules written hundreds of years ago that couldn't have conceived of the issues of modern times means you're playing with half a deck, you're not at full strength. There's respecting traditions and being blinded by them.