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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.
Further reading: Twitter Is 'Rethinking' Its Service, and Suspending 1M Accounts Each Day.
Your Comcast analogy is highly flawed. But then, you knew that.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
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 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
You can compare websites to ISPs when I have more than one viable option for my ISP
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.
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).
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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.
...this poster was claiming that fact checking was tantamount to silencing alternative viewpoints. It's... an interesting corruption of the notion of truth. This person was equating "being incorrect" with "having a different opinion."
In an era when we have The President of the United States of America having a personal lawyer who says, "Truth isn't truth anymore!" that's not as much of a corruption...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
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.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Twitter is a colossal cesspool and no amount of regulation or non-regulation, internal or external, will fix it. I long for the day when Tweets weren't newsworthy.
This. Exactly this. Every time I'm presented with some HuffPost list-of-random-people's-tweets-masquerading-as-news my blood boils.
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.
Uhh you have your terms mixed up. Twitter provides a service, but isn't an internet service provider. This falls exactly in line with pro net neutrality views.
It's almost like you, and whoever moderated you up, didn't bother to read the last half of my post whatsoever...
To make it REAL CLEAR for the mouth-breathers out there, I am 100% against government regulation of platforms like Twitter, and most things in general for that matter. As far as free speech goes though I don't believe in banning any speech.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The page you linked to mentions that Brandenburg (1969) held that political speech which may be politically dangerous is protected. That's because the first amendment was written with political speech in mind. Brandenburg in no affects the proverbial "shouting fire in a crowded theater".
Just five years later, SCOTUS held in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), there is "no constitutional value in false statements of fact".
Falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater would be a "false statement of fact" for which there is little protection, and the government has a strong legitimate interest in protecting from deaths and injuries from trampling and other injuries caused by such an action.
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.
No, what I do agree with is Alex Jones' Terms of Service of InfoWars:
If you violate these rules, your posts and/or user name will be deleted.
Remember: you are a guest here. It is not censorship if you violate the rules and your post is deleted. All civilizations have rules and if you violate them you can expect to be ostracized from the tribe.
Funny how Alex Jones is being a huge hypocrite when he gets banned from other websites and then claims he's being censorwd.
Is this a joke? Yes, there are tens of thousands of them. You posted your question right here on one of the (formerly?) more popular ones.
Well, they don't have the capacity to censor me, even if they all ganged up and worked together to try. But I assume you're actually asking about what if they didn't let me post on their websites. What would happen? Um, I'd post somewhere else. Or I'd bring back my own website.
With everybody else. Seems you might be a little too attached to Facebook's well-lit alleyway.
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.
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.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
antifa is the American equivalent of soccer hooligans. Just a bunch of Angry men. I haven't seen a lot of Black Lives Matters violence since, well, the entire point of the movement is to _stop_ violence, but I suppose it's possible. Again, if any such exists they should be prosecuted as normal.
I really, really wish those antifa schmucks would stop already, btw. The Left is way, way worse at violence than the right. They're not as well organized (what with being an anti fascism movement and all) and they're mostly just being baited by the right wing so they can be used as an excuse to crack down. Meanwhile we spent $100k a piece protecting the right wing protesters...
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The 1st Amendment of the US Constitution just keeps the government from censoring your speech. Since social media is not the government, they can do whatever they want: allowing you to speak unfettered, closing your account, censoring what you say. There's NOTHING illegal or wrong about that; it's only a problem when the government starts censoring your speech.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
As in heâ(TM)d like to regulate free speech similar to the way they do in China.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
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?
CNN along with the sea of left media and celebrities is more addicted to, and obsessed by, Trump's tweets than any of Trump's followers.
How about 2,300 examples and counting?
http://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/
It's not defined anywhere and kept vague on purpose so it can be used to persecute anyone that go against the group.
And when it gets taken over, it will be kept just as vague.
Epic Freudian slip...
Left wing kooks are scarier if you are paying attention. At least right wing kooks are not beating their own into submission - for the offense as grave as carrying a flag.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He didn't legitimately win by... winning in the only way that matters per the system we have today?
How does that work again?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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.
Yeah, I don't doubt that you could compile a huge list of lies for just about any politician, from Obama ("You can keep your doctor") all the way back to that time when George Washington promised his troops that there would be cake on the other side of the Delaware.
But the thing about Trump is, he lies by default. He lies reflexively. He lies about shit that doesn't matter. "Biggest inaugural crowd in history," that kind of thing. Trump would literally piss on your shoes and tell you it's raining.
That part is new and disturbing. It suggests that he's not only a typical lying politician, but some sort of psychopath.
Insults are not arguments. I'll bet you're a liberal - because insults are all they have.
That's beautiful.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's obvious Trump is off his nut, but he still got elected Resident of the White House.
It was obvious there was only ever going to be less money for the NHS on leaving the EU, but a side of the bus slogan still swung the Brexit referendum.
It was obvious the Internet was originally Title 2, but many Americans still naively believe Obama created network neutrality by executive order.
It is obvious that the planet is warming faster than it has ever done in the past 250 million years, and that the isotopes show it's carbon put there by human activity, but still people blame volcanoes and sunspots or pretend it isn't happening at all.
There are still people who think that the modern Microsoft isn't their father's Microsoft, despite identical tactics, which they excuse on the grounds of slogan.
Based on various measures of knowledge and cognitive ability relative to what could be expected at a given age, Americans underperform on average by about 19%. The British by 18%. This matters, as suppressed cognitive function is linked to paranoia, a swing to the right and violent tendencies.
(I'd point out that this does not mean that there aren't highly intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate people on the right. This is an impact of inability, you can't reverse the statement and assume it's true. See logical fallacies.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Oh, I'm hardly a libtard. I just have enough going on to know when I'm being sold a bill of goods. I really believe Alex Jones exists to keep people who would look from looking at the things that really matter. Maybe you ought to put down the bong and learn how to think critically.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Nobody on the right has ever said anything of the sort and been accused of "inciting violence". You're quite simply lying.
Maxine Waters never incited violence. Period. You're being willfully dishonest. You can't even quote her inciting violence, instead you invent some persecution nonsense and pretend to be defiant hoping the issue will go away.
It's not. You're a liar. You're relying on the racist trope (I'm British born, believe me I noticed these things when I moved here) of black people being violent to hope that people just assume you're right. You should be ashamed of yourself.
But you won't be. If there's something we've learned since "conservatives" allied with neo-nazis and white supremacists at the last election to elect someone running a blatantly fascist, racist, campaign, it's that the mainstream right wing right now has no shame. There is no low to which you'll stoop.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.