President Trump Says It is 'Very Dangerous' When Companies Like Twitter Regulate Own Content (reuters.com)

In an interview with Reuters on Monday, the U.S. President Donald Trump said that it is "very dangerous" for social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to regulate the content on their own platforms. Trump's remarks come on the backdrop of technology giants Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and YouTube ridding select kind of content of their platforms in the recent weeks. On Saturday, Trump argued that social media companies are "closing down the opinions" of conservatives. He tweeted, "They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won't let that happen."

Further reading: Twitter Is 'Rethinking' Its Service, and Suspending 1M Accounts Each Day.

Comments

Both are dangerous

[SuperKendall]

The moment any platform that allows public user comments starts meddling in who can speak, and who can say what - that is dangerous. Even more so when multiple companies collide to prevent one person from speaking as is the case with Alex Jones.

But that should, if anything, be a legal matter; someone I read somewhere said that Alex Jones may well be able to make a restraint to trade lawsuit happen against a variety of companies.

HOWEVER what is even more dangerous is letting the government have direct sway over what actions companies like Facebook or Twitter can or cannot have over users. You have to be able to let them run platforms as they see fit, then let the market of users and financial consequences dictate what actions are appropriate for a company to take.

Even though Twitter banned Alex Jones, you also see people like Will Wheaton self banning - so it's not like there is a balance naturally occurring anyway, even as things are.

For myself, I continue to use Twitter but the way to enjoy it is instantly mute anyone who goes political. Technical Twitter seems OK still.

Re:Both are dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Alex Jones pushed violent attacks on innocent individuals named from his conspiracy theories with no bases in truth. To defend him makes you a nutter, regardless of what the individual reasons platforms game for giving him das boot.

Kendall happily defends traitors and dangerous people, so long as ideologically they agree with him. Otherwise he's for the opposite.

Re:Both are dangerous

[PraiseBob]

I think the courts have been pretty consistent that inciting panic (shouting "fire") and inciting violence do not qualify as free speech, and aren't under the same level of protections. Media companies are reacting in a somewhat reasonable manner in trying to curb and remove the calls for violence that Alex Jones keeps issuing on their platforms. It just so happens that most of the requests for violence are coming from right-wing talking heads. I'd HOPE for the same kind of response if left-wing talking heads kept calling for violence towards their political opponents.

I'm sure there are plenty of counterexamples, but pro-gun groups & people are much more consistent about using guns as their solution when compared to the anti-gun crowd for instance.

Re:Both are dangerous

[HornWumpus]

No common carrier status. They are all now liable for the contents of all posts.

Re:Both are dangerous

[AmiMoJo]

I assume you mean "colluded"... But really Jones has been trying to get himself banned for a long time and given that he posts the same content on all platforms it's hardly surprising that they all banned him around the same time.

Getting banned helps him by fuelling his conspiracy theories.

Re:Both are dangerous

[cdsparrow]

"These platforms are as critical as other utilities like Electricity or Gas"

How is twitter or facebook as important as power or gas? Many people (myself included) don't use these sites and are probably better off for it. Power and water and gas and the like are important to staying alive - facebook, not so much.

Re:Both are dangerous

[WhiplashII]

Exactly - you cannot have both common carrier status and political censoring.

Re:Both are dangerous

[Darinbob]

By removing Alex Jones, they are not "pushing" an agenda. Alex Jones is the biggest creator of fake news out there. His followers have been harassing parents of murdered children and sending death threats. No company should be required to host his putrid content. If a baker can't be compelled to bake a gay wedding cake then a company can't be required to be the voice of an idiotic conspiracy theorist.

The "media" is in no way the same thing, the media has not been pushing conspiracy theories that cause people who show up armed at a pizza parlor. To equate Alex Jones with the media is amazingly stupid.

The first amendment places a limit on the government only. It does not restrict or compel individuals or companies.

Re:Both are dangerous

[Luckyo]

Are you seriously suggesting that serious news organisations do not live to expose people to total garbage?

Your political affiliation should be utterly irrelevant here. Every serious news organisation exposes people to total garbage on daily basis. It's the core of their business.

If you do not comprehend this, you're beyond gullible.

He is right for the wrong reasons :)

[Anonymous Coward]

He is more concerned that far right are being kicked off but the real concern for the companies is once they start down a route of saying what views can and can't appear they are opening a never ending problem for themselves and possibly risk changing their legal status from an open platform to a curated one and hence liable for their content

New services are not stopped by this

[damn_registrars]

Twitter is doing exactly nothing to stop people from starting their own service. If they don't like the terms at Twitter they are free to go start a new service where they can set the terms. Twitter is not obligated to bend to the whims of Trump or anyone else if they fear it would be bad for their bottom line. After all at the end of the day they exist to make money, not to be the mouthpiece of any one man.

Re:New services are not stopped by this

[Tablizer]

If they don't like the terms at Twitter they are free to go start a new service where they can set the terms.

Rupert Murdoch's company, of which Fox News was part of, purchased MySpace in part for that reason. But it flopped.

GOP are hypocrites: They did away with the Fairness Doctrine when radio was booming with conservative pundits. Now they want something like it back for Big Digital Media, which is centrist or left-leaning.

Re:New services are not stopped by this

[Raenex]

There's a handful of companies that control the online public square, by virtue of the network effect and natural monopolies. They're all based out of far-left leaning California. What does it mean to have free speech when your speech is censored by a politically biased oligarchy that controls >90% of the public square?

Would you accept the top-3 mobile companies banning you from their services because they didn't like what you were saying? Right before the midterm elections?

Re:New services are not stopped by this

[drinkypoo]

Would you accept the top-3 mobile companies banning you from their services because they didn't like what you were saying? Right before the midterm elections?

No, but I also don't try to incite violence.

The people to be really mad at are the telecoms, who have collected billions of dollars in tax money which was supposed to be used to improve our internet access but which went into the pockets of telecommunications executives. If not for them, then it would be a lot easier to host your own content. The internet we deserve, even if for no reason other than that we paid for it, would let Alex Jones continue to spout his hatred even without the cooperation of Google. P.S. #netneutrality

Re:New services are not stopped by this

[Raenex]

No, but I also don't try to incite violence.

Phony excuse for censorship. Were all the Republican politicians on Twitter "inciting violence" when they were shadowbanned? Is "hate" speech inciting violence, like criticizing immigration policy? Why is Antifa still allowed on these platforms, when they explicitly practice violence, shutting down the free speech of others?

Keep lying to yourself that the censorship going on is happening for anything other than political reasons.

Re:New services are not stopped by this

[Tailhook]

Nazi

Self righteous name calling; classic moral panic behavior.

I'm okay with that

Said every virtuemonger ever.

Re:New services are not stopped by this

[Raenex]

You know most of those "Antifa" accounts are fake, right?

You mean like the Berkeley Antifa account? The most violent Antifa that resulted in the trend of street battles at demonstrations? Why are any of their accounts allowed on Twatter, when Proud Boys were banned, which never called for violence, and only engaged in self-defense against anti-First Amendment Antifa?

Stop pretending you have any semblance of standards.

But not dangerous for bakers to regulate cakes?

[JoeyRox]

As in who they decide is allowed to buy one? Either you allow all private companies to select who can use their service or you allow none of them to do so.

Re:But not dangerous for bakers to regulate cakes?

[jensend]

That's baloney, and I think you know better and are just trying to be provocative (flamebait).

The bakers were perfectly happy to sell those people standard bakery items. They were unwilling to expend their creative and artistic effort to make a custom cake to support an event they have moral objections to. Similarly, one might expect a Jewish bakery to sell rolls and muffins to neo-Nazis but one ought not expect them to create custom cakes for a neo-Nazi rally.

Re:You all agree with him you know

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so can the crazy. On the actual, non-conspiracy hand, it is Trump who decries the "lying media" and "fake news" whenever he does something stupid, outlandish, against current cultural norms, etc. They aren't lying; he is. But HE would like to regulate what they can say like in China. Who is dangerous here? Facebook for taking a raging nutbag like Alex Jones off for telling people to get their guns ready? Or Trump who would like to stop the press from being mean to him?

Trolls and moderation.

[RyanFenton]

Trolls do tend to say that whenever moderation starts removing abuse dominating a conversation channel.

The other top response is saying that they wouldn't be trolling of only the other side would stop being so wrong.

But to never moderate those things would mean that everything becomes rhetoric - all noise and no signal. It defeats the purpose of having having a channel of communication... which is kind of the point of this modern form of trolling, isn't it?

Ryan Fenton

Re:You all agree with him you know

[Anonymous Coward]

You can compare websites to ISPs when I have more than one viable option for my ISP

But not when the Govenment does it.

[SeaFox]

I'm sure he's perfectly fine with the government regulating social media, and the press for that matter.
Things will be full of the correct facts then... just like in China and North Korea.

He means Alex Jones

[rsilvergun]

And Jones was fine for years until he started doing borderline incitement to violence. It doesn't help that he caters to an extreme right wing base that's been shown to act on the kind of crazy conspiracy theories he specializes in.

BTW, does anyone else think in the "two minutes of hate" from 1984 when watching Jones rant? Serious, that creeped me out more than anything he's done (yes, more than the references to blood libel whenever he criticized someone Jewish).

Re:You all agree with him you know

[Dan667]

your comment is so wrong, you don't have an understanding at all. You don't like twitter don't use it. You don't like the internet, well tough there is only one.

Disreputable source of information.

[Gravis Zero]

If it were any other president, it would be worth debating this. However, President Trump is a compulsive liar, criminal and derides all content he doesn't like by calling it "fake news". Twitter should have booted him long ago but refused to do so because it would hurt their business.

I have no sympathy for sources of disinformation.

Re:Disreputable source of information.

[Anonymous Coward]

NYT just hired a blatent racist editor.
Another NYT editor went on TV to say Trump is going to round up people and murder them.

Fake News is appropriate. Or you are a racist bigot that thinks lying about people is acceptable, and since you are likely a liberal I will assume you are a racist.

Just Like Getting Bounced from a Bar

[Anonymous Coward]

The question boils down to, can a platform control comments in order to push an agenda

No, the question boils down to whether a platform can establish minimum standards for behavior. Nobody would bat an eyelid if a bar bouncer kicked out a shit-talking asshole. Twitter is no different.

Its not like there aren't plenty of other places to go. Jones has his own website and ahole plebs who can't afford their own website, go to gab.ai or stormfront or whatever.

Re: You all agree with him you know

[nasch]

Hillary also did not have an agenda, all she did was attack Trump.

Maybe she didn't publicize it well enough, but she definitely had an agenda. https://www.hillaryclinton.com...

Trump on the other hand HAD an AGENDA "Make America Great Again"

That's a slogan, not an agenda.

The only people who voted for her were airheads who thought having a vagina was a requirement for the white house.

Now you're just being stupid.

The Economy woke up and got in gear the day after the election

Citation needed.

Re:"Conservative speech"

[Z80a]

Hate speech is a vague term that can mean anything, but it's definition is generally enforced by the one that screams the loudest until a corporation take control of it, then everything they don't like will be hate speech.
Bad mouth Comcast for delivering 1/100 of the advertised speed? hate speech. Complain about the apple device that blew your face up? hate speech.
They're just letting you build the tools they will use to fuck you later.

Re:You all agree with him you know

[sheph]

The thing with Alex Jones is that it's fairly obvious that he's off his nut. Do we really need Facebook to protect us from him? Are you incapable of listening to people and coming to the determination as to whether or not they're full of crap? And if not, who would the appropriate party be? Facebook? The government? Some agency? All have potential for abuse. I'd rather hear and see everything and make up my own mind.

Re:"Conservative speech"

[fuqck_slashdot]

Seriously, goolag search "anti white racism on twitter".
The legal definition doesn't exist in this country, so you must be referencing a definition de facto vulgaris.
In which case there's a negative qualification: white people.
Did you miss that whole Sara Jeong thing?

Re: You all agree with him you know

[DaHat]

but Trump did not legitimately win (electoral college).

He didn't legitimately win by... winning in the only way that matters per the system we have today?

How does that work again?

Re: You all agree with him you know

[c6gunner]

The electoral college is itself illegitimate, an arcane abomination that was imposed centuries ago, when it ostensibly served some purpose (but never did) and which still fools people into thinking it protects smaller states or some other bullshit.

That's hilarious. I would argue that, given recent history, it's more important now than it's ever been before. Any system which keeps a handful of cities from dictating terms to the rest of the nation is a valuable one.