President Trump Accuses Twitter of Political Bias (bloomberg.com)

President Donald Trump has accused Twitter of targeting his followers for removal from the social media platform, amid complaints by conservatives that social media companies have been discriminating against right-wing voices. From a report: "Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join -- they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all," Trump said in a tweet Friday. "A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?" Trump and some other Republicans have complained that Facebook, Alphabet's Google and Twitter have censored or suppressed conservative voices. Democrats have called that a diversion from concern over Russia's use of social-media platforms to influence the 2016 presidential election and over the proliferation of offensive content. In his opening remarks during a meeting with state attorneys general in September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions raised concerns that social media companies have a political agenda and have the power to manipulate public opinion, according to Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh.

Comments

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is not a government entity. They can do what they damn well please. They don't have to obey the 1st Amendment. If he doesn't like it, he can quit using the service (don't we all wish)....

Re:So?

[Z80a]

Yes, they can, but they can't have the safe harbor provision as they show to be checking for every post with a system, so they should be liable for every single copyright infringement on the platform.

Re:So?

[penandpaper]

What impact can social media have on our elections? Apparently, a lot if Russian ads on Facebook are believed to swing 2016. Are you comfortable with private entities able to control elections to such an extent as to be able to silence people from national dialogue and get their preferred politician elected because the power they wield over people?

Here I thought the left was against large multinational companies abusing their positions of power over regular people. I don't know what the right answer is but I think we are in a precarious position as the technology matures to be able to, in real-time, silence and condition the dialogue people have. That is more dangerous to democracy than Trump or any president could ever be. It's even more terrifying that there are so many quick to support that kind of power for any kind of entity especially one without accountability or transparency. I don't care if it was Jesus Christ that is too much power for one company, platform, person, industry, government, anything to have.

Re:So?

[Mashiki]

Doesn't actually matter if they're not a government entity. Twitter has testified that they consider themselves the "new public square" for political discussion. They promoted that as well. There's been a whole assload of cases on this whereby a company presents itself as a public square, 1st amendment rules apply.

So really it boils down to this: Either the 1st amendment rules apply, in which case they're far more broadly protected and so are people. Or it doesn't, in which case they're not only curating content, but the people allowed to post there. In which case CDA S.230 no longer apply and they become liable for anything posted there. The "reasonable" defense section only applies if they allow access but don't actively curate, something they stopped doing a few years ago, when they made the change of how people become verified and in turn stated that they support the views of the people who are verified. This again is something they've openly stated.

Re:So?

[lgw]

Twitter is not a government entity. They can do what they damn well please.

That's not how it works in America (or anywhere, really). They can't e.g. ban you because you're Black. The more you open your business to the public, the more you have to bake that gay cake, like it or not. And there's a spectrum defined in law, from "group of people who all know each other" to "common carrier". For the former, the rights of the owners dominate, for the latter the rights of the customers dominate, and there are several stops in between.

Twitter needs to be held to some legal standard. Are they a common carrier? Then they must respect the first amendment rights of their users. Are they a publisher? They they get 100% control of content, and are 100% legally responsible for what they allow. So what are they?

Re:So?

[bobbied]

Twitter is not a government entity. They can do what they damn well please. They don't have to obey the 1st Amendment. If he doesn't like it, he can quit using the service (don't we all wish)....

Yes, as a Trump supporter, I DO wish he'd lay off his tweeting, at least for the most part. Some of it has been helpful, but the bulk of it has been anything but helpful or appropriate in my view. But one must also acknowledge that the media's reaction to these tweets has been at least partly responsible for the whole three ring circus. Trump is obviously the ring master, but the media are running around as the clowns at his request.

However, It's fair to state that there IS sort of a social movement brewing that is pushing to force 1st amendment like rules onto popular social platforms, even those which are privately owned and operated. Personally, I'm a bit conflicted about this kind of regulation, because that's what this will need to be, a law. On one hand I clearly see the political bias imposed by these platforms as a bad thing, but on the other I clearly understand that the 1st amendment doesn't apply.

I guess that my preference would be for a "hands off" policy and leave things as they are. Let folks like Trump complain about how unfair the sites moderate based on political bias, just take the complaints with a grain of salt. As much as these platforms are PR shamed into trying to justify their bias, the net effect is the same as a regulation and a whole lot less complex and expensive to boot.

SO... Let Trump complain. I think he's correct, Twitter is biased. However, I'm not supportive of laws or regulations that try to enforce any political parity on social platforms. IF Trump's PR war on Twitter causes them to be less biased, great! I think it's a waste of his time, but I'm more concerned about his accomplishments and policies than his Twitter rants.

Re:So?

[DRJlaw]

Doesn't actually matter if they're not a government entity. Twitter has testified that they consider themselves the "new public square" for political discussion. They promoted that as well. There's been a whole assload of cases on this whereby a company presents itself as a public square, 1st amendment rules apply.

Pretty sure they've revoked that policy at this point. Just because they promoted that at one time does not mean that they're locked into it for all eternity.

ls down to this: Either the 1st amendment rules apply, in which case they're far more broadly protected and so are people. Or it doesn't, in which case they're not only curating content, but the people allowed to post there. In which case CDA S.230 no longer apply and they become liable for anything posted there.

No. The CDA expressly says otherwise. 48 USC 230(c)(2):

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of --
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

The "reasonable" defense section only applies if they allow access but don't actively curate, something they stopped doing a few years ago, when they made the change of how people become verified and in turn stated that they support the views of the people who are verified.

Pure fiction.

Re:So?

[El Cubano]

Really, Slashdot readers? +5 Interesting!?!?!

The left is very much in favor of large companies (and states) having power over regular people. The key is that it's a highly-regulated power, managed by someone with the regular people's best interests in mind, because history has shown that the regular people very rarely understand how to actually accomplish their goals. Those that do aggressively pursue their goals will usually end up doing so by preventing others from pursuing theirs.

You have paternalism, elitism, classism, and corporatism (maybe some other -isms that I missed) all wrapped up into one. Let me rephrase your statement:

The left is very much in favor of un-freedom.

If anything, history has shown that while people do at times make the wrong decision, both individually and at the levels of various local/national political entities, they often are able to accomplish their goals. What happens, though, is that sometimes once they accomplish their goals they realize that maybe they should not have accomplished their goals.

Discounting for the moment revolutions that have been fomented by other countries (notably the US poking around in Latin America and the Caribbean), in the last few hundred years you have had significant revolutions in the US, Russia, France, Cuba, Venezuela, China, and others. Each of those seems to be a very clear example of the people accomplishing their goals, with some turning out better than others. Cuba and Venezuela, however, seem to also be shining examples of "buyers remorse".

What you describe is what we have seen Cuba and Venezuela turn into, with the government controlling not just big business, but also small businesses and individuals. Surprise surprise, people there found out that they were not so fond of losing their self-determination (i.e., liberty) to the government even though they gave it away to start with!

Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I was elected king or whatever, biggest election in any country ever, and now people are questioning me. Nobody ever questioned Obama. Obama was so bad I was always questioning him, as were many of the best people. Everyone is saying how well I am doing, really, and nobody is questioning me, so why are all these people questioning me?

It didn't, though...

[Sarten-X]

Nothing significant happened.

According to the results of a quick Google search, Trump lost a maximum of 11,230 followers from his high of 55,287,639, a grand total of 0.02%.

Re:It didn't, though...

[Sarten-X]

It wasn't 2%. It was 0.02%. 1/5000th of his follower count.

Sure, they could have been active participants...... but it's far more likely to have been bots, killed off in a normal purge.

This is about establishing a narrative

[rsilvergun]

when you're objectively wrong it's important to keep pushing an opposing narrative. The American right wing figured this out in the 80s.

At the end of the day strip away the nonsense about "Culture War" this and "PC that" and you're left with what really matters: economics. And when it comes to economics the media is united on the side of the right. Low taxes (for capital, labor can still pay taxes, I mean, somebody's gotta pay 'em, amiright?), minimal or no regulation, free trade when it's good for profits (but not for pharmaceuticals, that would be a job killing regulation). The right own Sinclair who own just about every TV station in the country. They own Fox news. Hell, they own CNN and MSNBC if you pay attention to economics instead of social issues.

I guess it bothers me to see the right wing playing the victim card when they've got all 3 branches of gov't, billionaire elites and virtually all the media that matters on their side. What bother's me is that they can peddle this nonsensical persecution complex and get away with it. It's Orwellian Double think, exactly the kind of thing they're supposed to be against...

Re:Wow

[El Cubano]

"Total bias?" So basically what happened is "Trump asked whether Twitter has bias." And of course all right-wing news sites will run with the story.

You say that like the bias is imagined. Here is one recent example.

Here, I'll save you the trouble of reading it: Candace Owens, a black woman who is a conservative, took anti-white racist tweets by the newly hired member of the NYT editorial board, Sarah Jeong, and replaced "white" with "black". Result? Twitter did nothing to Sarah Jeong for her original tweets, but locked out Candace Owens' account for violating Twitter's rules. Twitter claims it was a "mistake."

This sort of thing has happened enough times that it sure seems like there is a bias problem.

Twitter admitted it a while ago

[mi]

I don't mind if there is some evidence to back it up

There is. Twitter CEO admitted prevalence of Left among the employees, to the point, where the Right-minded do not feel safe expressing their views.

He then proclaimed, that "need to remove our bias from how we act and our policies and our enforcement" — which is like a Boston referee promising to not favor Red Sox...

So, yes, Twitter are biased, that's a fact. It is also a fact, that it is legal for them to have such a bias.

Finally, I think it is self-evident, that they should not be biased — both for reasons we have the First Amendment in the first place (the Amendment does not apply to them, but the reasons do), and because it hurts their business. And here Jack Dorsey agrees with me, thankfully...

This site could use a cleanup as well

[cHiphead]

What the hell has happened to the /. comments section over the past 10 years? This place has gone fucking crazy with right wing crybabies. Used to come back here to see reasoned and thoughtful discussion even while the trolls were prevalent, but now it's just some bot-esque echo chamber of crazy people. It's like the bots and crazies that infested local newspaper comments section added this site to their target lists for propaganda.

Re:Bias is Pretty Blatant Anyway

[Plus1Entropy]

No, they admitted under oath that their automated system deleted 48% of the tweets. Breitbart didn't omit those details, why did you?

Also, why continue to vote for the Republicans in charge of that committee who failed to do anything after Twitter admitted that? They don't advocate for you, so why do you still support them? They took the side of big business, as usual, yet I doubt you're gonna vote to remove any of them from office in 2 weeks, are yah?

Twitter is the problem

[PopeRatzo]

I'm glad that President Trump is focusing on his number of Twitter followers as one of his supporters in Florida is arrested for a terrorist attack on his prominent critics.

He's definitely showing leadership and has his priorities straight.

https://www.abcactionnews.com/...

Re:FALSE

[lgw]

Nope. They lost any such protection the moment they went public.

A partnership or closely held corporation has most of the rights of the owners. If the owners share some religious belief, they get some degree of protection from being compelled to act against that belief, as it should be. But a publicly held corporation is nothing like that. The act of opening up ownership to anyone with money renounces any protections for being a group of people united in faith.

Which, by the way, is the right answer to balance free speech with preventing campaign donations. Public corporations (i.e., almost every big one) should just be banned completely from donating to politicians or PACs. Including donations in kind, like only allowing ads from one political side (just as e.g. radio stations are barred from doing).

Re:Who said Twitter has no bias?

[Oswald McWeany]

The far left is now everybody slightly to the right of center. By today's standards Reagan and Ike were both communists when you actually look at their platforms relative to the Ayn Rand worshiping Republicans of today. (And Reagan was a McCarthyist. )

Indeed, I'm a centrist and the far right on here frequently have called me a liberal or lefty just for not liking Trump. It reminds me of the Bush era and the "if you oppose the Iraq war you're a traitor" verbiage. It's political propaganda "if you're not for the President you're part of a dangerous radical left".

So how about we break up Sinclair Media

[rsilvergun]

and while we're at it hold Fox News to the editorial standards that used to exist where you can't mix news and editorializing? How about all those billionaires and their unlimited money? Money is speech after all and they've got unlimited speech and power. Ready to start taking away their central power?

Sorry, but you're not fooling anyone. You're in favor of centralized media control when it suits you. You're opposed to it when the slightest resistance is detected.

Here's the thing, you won. You won everything. You control every branch of government. Even the Democrats are mostly right wing now thanks to the Overton window shift. The right own everything. Now you've just got to live with the consequences. Your guy Trump just called himself a Nationalist. He praises dictators for seizing power. He put a pro-torture woman in charge of the CIA. That's all gonna come home to roost soon. Enjoy your Pyrrhic victory. In the meantime can you stop acting like you're some oppressed minority? You're not. You won.