I think everyone reading this honestly knows there was a serious chance that a liberal employee at Twitter would do that as a political statement. (I would have disagreed with that action.)
There is, obviously, no chance that Obama's Twitter would be banned.
This is clearly "out of balance".
I don't think Republicans having a stake in Twitter would improve this situation, though.
Also in this specific example, the ban did not happen.
>Doesn't whether or not Trump gets banned depend only on what Trump says and not whether or not Obama was banned?
I don't believe so, no. I think "who said it" (Trump or Obama) also determines who would get banned. (Currently I think Trump would get banned for something Obama wouldn't get banned for.)
As you conclude , neither was banned. As such no conclusions can be drawn about the biases or lack of it at Twitter based on that evidence. Not sure why you then go on to do so.
You are 100% correct that my comment did not show any bias at Twitter, as I referred to something that did not occur.
Instead I appealed to the reader's intuition about a counterfactual, showing that the reader already knows and has internalized this balance at the moment, by appealing to the reader's intuition at how surprised the reader would be: not at all surprised to read "Twitter has banned Donald Trump" - though this is a counterfactual - and on reading that headline would know that a liberal employee would have done it.
Do you consider the hypothetical headline I just quoted highly improbable? (I don't.)
Not saying this status quo is good or bad - I was just answering the question.
EDIT:
So I'm walking with someone, and he said that he couldn't see it happening. The reasons that he gave were that it would be very bad for business because a lot of Republicans also use Twitter and that since it is the president of the United States, he could argue that this is a public function. So would be limiting his freedom of speech in a sense.
So I guess I'm wrong and it would surprise many people.
He tweeted the home address of a person who happened to share the same last name as an unpopular person in the news, inviting people to attack this person, causing this person to have to move for his own protection. He was never banned from Twitter for this. Disgusting.
Yet they're aware of that and set their rules and follow them accordingly; people only get ban from Twitter after 3 strikes as far as I know, and that's bad behaviour related, which if bad behaviour happens more by "one side" than the other - how can you blame the platform/moderators for that?
So disagree with Twitter politics three times and you’re gone. That’s a fair system? I would agree with you if there weren’t so many examples of people getting banned for “wrong think” and not rule breaking.
All of the examples I have seen, when have a response by Twitter associated with them, is that Twitter follows a 3 strikes and you're out rule - and they apply these rules to everyone. If there are a few examples where this isn't followed then okay, there were mistakes, problems - but that is then at a government level that needs some judiciary process for.
Re: 'so many examples of people getting banned for "wrong think"'- have your sources been confirmed/provided confirmation by Twitter that's that what it was - and
Moderation (parenting) is a very important and effort full work that is required to prevent a wild west of society. A wild west of society is more costly and leads to far more suffering than a managed home; if you want to raise children that are racist within your own home, or who where you find it acceptable for them threaten to kill others, you're allowed to - however forcing ALL platforms to allow all behaviour is insanity, and so Twitter needs to be allowed to have the rules they want to allow - and people can "vote" by using that service or not, and then other platforms can have their own rules - and that government as a whole will have to decide what those bounds are; perhaps should government provide a free speech platform like exist public parks as an option that everyone has available to them.
Many big companies being headquartered in SF are left-leaning. I don't think they should let their political opinions trickle to business, but they do. It's a shame.
It should be neutral and non-political, supportive of all view points.
"But the real question behind the question is, are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints? And we are not. Period," he added.
Dorsey went on to insist that his company only polices behavior on the platform, not content.
Is having a personal political opinion only illegal if it is left-leaning?
Read the top replies to 100 Trump tweets then read the top replies to 100 Obama tweets. 95/100 of Trump's replies will be insulting him. 95/100 of Obama's replies will be praising him.
Not really sure you will find the balance you may seek. I suspect strongly Jack Dorsey has little to do with moderation on the platform, if that’s the bone to pick here, which I don’t think is at all. If anything twitter has largely been silent on moderating anything at all beyond a few notable exceptions
Which Twitter do you read? I've got so used to following links to conservative Twitter accounts and discovering they're banned it's not even worthy of note anymore. Twitter routinely even removes blue verification badges because of an expressed opinion. You have Twitter employees saying themselves they classify trump supporters as bots and ban them. I didn't even realise this was a matter for disagreement.
Balance is a false paradigm, not all ideas are valid, ie. just because some people believe the earth are flat doesn't mean that in school we have to teach the earth is both flat and round. (a more 50/50 idea would be evolution or carbon dating)
I would also say Jack Dorsey has been pretty fair about the platform. I don't think the left feel like Twitter is exceptionally more open to them.
Not all ideas are valid, but that therefore means that balance is a false paradigm? I don't see how that follows. There was a time(supposedly) when the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun was considered invalid.
> Apples to oranges. In the modern age we back up claims with science, not dogma.
There's lots of "scientific" claims that are dictated by dogma or other motivations. Various aspects of nutrition science, psychology, economics, and sociology are either made up or based on low quality evidence, yet people continue to believe them. Humans, including scientists and academics, are imperfect, despite how this is the "modern age".
> And I'm guessing they mean the idea of balance being "all ideas are equal regardless of merit" is the flawed paradigm.
Which I would consider a straw man. I don't believe anyone is saying that all ideas are equal regardless of merit. What people are asking for is a wider Overton window. If people were suggesting that all ideas are equal, then they'd have to accede that the ideas of racists, child molestors, and serial killers are perfectly valid and should be treated the same as other ideas, which I don't think is a very common point of view, at least when a person is tested on it.
When you get banned for simply posting facts that one group dislikes, while "KILL ALL WHITE MEN" is totally fine and acceptable, there's definitely a balance problem. The idea that one socio-political viewpoint is objectively correct, and another is the same as believing the earth is flat is not a reasonable analogy.
First of all, no you can not. Go try to kick a black person out of your business for being black and let me know how that goes. Second, what does your statement have to do with the discussion? I said balance isn't a false paradigm, how is "it is legal to be biased" a response to that?
Wow. You went off the cliff. Paring racial discrimination with a difference of views is asinine. And yes, you can choose to serve anyone individual, you cannot globally discriminate. Get the difference?
You dont seem to understand the difference between discrimination and a difference of views. Unless you feel that being a "insert political party here" is a protected class...
You can toss anyone for any reason. However, like many things, there are legal consequences. And if you do it based on discrimination you will certainly face charges, but you still have the right to remove people from your property at any moment.
for ex: If you show up in my bar. Talk crap act like a jerk,etc. You're out. Social media is no different. You are not owed access to anything.
Multiple people have made every attempt at having a discussion with you, and yet you continue to ignore this and keep repeating the same red herring. Nothing in your post has any relevance to the discussion, and your statement was false, as I showed you.
What if all companies were to do this? What if all landlords within a ten mile radius were to tell you to piss off if you asked to rent, and all banks denied you a mortgage?
> "Unless you feel that being a "insert political party here" is a protected class..."
Actually, political affiliation and participants in political activity are protected classes in a couple of states, including California, where many HN readers reside.
"There are only three jurisdictions in the United States that explicitly bans political affiliation and activity discrimination, California, D.C., and New York. New York does not cover political affiliation discrimination, only political activity discrimination. Federal law discrimination law does not cover political affiliation or political activity. However, many states prohibit employers from influencing the votes of their employees."
How would they know? What are you saying or doing that would cause others to shun you? If behavior is your problem, its not your views that matter, its your behavior. Being an asshole is not a protected class...
If you are featured in the media for being a member of a political party or union, for example, people could recognize you. The cashier could be given directions by the management not to serve Mr. So-and-so from the TV.
They could just look at the credit card number, and observe that 7305 matches a blacklist.
They could use facial recognition in the checkout to check against a database and deny you service that way.
And so on, and so forth. There is no need to be hated by ordinary folks, just that the upper management/media doesn't like you.
What is the solution to this? Never adopting any objectionable views?
>Do you complain about balance issues for places like say, Voat as well?
As well? I don't complain about them at all. Pointing out that it exists when people deny it is not complaining.
>I seem to only hear concerns about balance when it has to do with a perceived bias against the right.
Well I see two obvious differences that could cause that. The first simply being size. Facebook, google, twitter, reddit, etc are all, as organizations, far-left. And they all use their platforms to silence things they disapprove of, and push their politics. Whatever sites do the same from a far-right perspective are tiny. So, obviously there would be far more complaining from the far larger group of people who use the biggest sites on the web.
Second, all the supposed "far right" websites I see mentioned don't appear to be far right at all, and don't appear to do much or any moderating. They are "far right" because people with left wing views choose not to participate, not because they get banned. There's a big difference between being removed from a platform for having an unapproved view, vs being allowed to post your unapproved view and then people tell you it is wrong.
Also, I remember when Twitter was getting really big one of their prominent founders (May have been jack but I can’t remember) did an interview in which they positioned themselves that social media platforms should use “constitutional logic” (for those not in the states, that’s the USA constitution) when regulating speech in their platform l, which, for better or worse, depending on context and things, “kill all white men” would pass the fee speech test.
Interestingly enough I actually can’t find anything that supports the example you’re referring to here. On the other hand I’ve seen tons and tons of sexist, misogynistic, white supremacist tweets that are super prominent on the platform.
>they positioned themselves that social media platforms should use “constitutional logic” when regulating speech in their platform l,
I don't know if that was said, but it certainly is not the case with current twitter.
>which, for better or worse, depending on context and things, “kill all white men” would pass the fee speech test.
In which case "KILL ALL BLACK MEN" would pass too. One is allowed, the other is not.
>On the other hand I’ve seen tons and tons of sexist, misogynistic, white supremacist tweets that are super prominent on the platform.
I hear that often, but I never see any support for it. When pressed on it, what I get as "proof" is completely mundane posts that only extreme leftists would classify as any of those things.
In large measure, as a former Republican I think it's a valid comparison. Being a respected Republican these days is far less about an actual opinion on how to run the government, and far more about fealty to Trump, which doesn't have anything to do with the truth.
The Republicans that were strongly grounded in either policy positions and/or truth have all been vilified (Comey, Mueller, Amash, Flake, McCain, G Conway, Bush, Romney, etc). Even guys like Bolton, who holds extreme conservative opinions on how to run government, cannot succeed in the party because he doesn't toe the line on fealty to Trump / 'flat-earth'.
Yeah nothing is actually what it claims to be anymore. Still, I'd hardly say that makes the people you mention stop being Republicans, much less conservatives. If the party leadership traitorously turns against them, then it's the party that stops being Republican. Just like (ever since Bill Clinton) the Democratic leadership has deserted what the party used to be about, allowing millions of voters to be seduced to the other side (and back again, for that matter!) without even so much as a platform. All you need is a good disinformation campaign. Good times. Don't even get me started -- disillusioned Democrat here. I'm kind of "neither" at this point, but I'm old enough to remember a time when as a Democrat I could at least respect actual Republicans, i.e. actual conservatives, who "had ideas about stuff and shit," and had reached a certain conclusion. Trump is a fake Republican, and a temporary aberration that will soon go away or perhaps wreck the country permanently, making it all irrelevant!
EDIT: Actually no, I think I would dial back the "temporary aberration" bit as being too glibly optimistic. Because things seem to trend toward entropy, and bringing back a structure is a lot harder than letting a structure go to shit. i.e. what I said at the outset still remains true even after Trump, namely, "nothing is actually what it claims to be anymore."
Balance? How do you balance what is essentially a cesspool. The Internet, and specifically 'social media', always ends up at the lowest common denominator.
A well mixed cesspool is balanced. People at least seeing each other opinions. Understanding that there is like half of the population that doesn't agree with them. A well mixed cesspool is healthier than what we have.
A well mixed cesspool? No one with any sense wants to hang out in a cesspool. That's the problem. You are expecting human behavior to change. And worse, on the internet none the less.
A 'well mixed' cesspool doesn't exist, because inevitably in the absence of moderation one side of the cesspool will chase out the other. It's usually the more racist, virulent side.
Come on, this article is the poster child of unnecessary politicization. The Guardian isn't claiming that the buy is about politics, and there doesn't appear to be any evidence it is, so why call Singer "Republican mega-donor" or talk about what Trump has to say about him?
I think the politics of billionaires attempting to take control of the engines of discourse is quite relevant, especially given the current political landscape where no less than two of them are dumping an enormous amount of their own money to attempt a brokered DNC convention and push out a progressive candidate.
It is completely plausible given his political track record that he is attempting to take control of Twitter to inhibit a progressive movement addressing wealth inequality issues. I don't think you can cover this story honestly without addressing the possible motives of a very active actor. This is a major public social network, not an oil refinery. It feels really inappropriate to treat this as an apolitical business move and I think the speculation on motives is more than warranted, that the story would be incomplete without it.
> "I think the politics of billionaires attempting to take control of the engines of discourse is quite relevant, especially given the current political landscape where no less than two of them are dumping an enormous amount of their own money to attempt a brokered DNC convention and push out a progressive candidate."
Progressives have repeatedly assured us across countless HN posts that traditional and social media businesses have the right to publish or deny publication of whatever they desire so they should have no cause to complain if businesses start shifting political discourse in whatever direction their owners prefer.
Because the guardian uses diogwhistles when under threat of defamation. Instead of outright lying/name-calling Paul a right wing extremist - which opens up the guardian to fact checks and defamation lawsuits, they just imply it, with what to a bystander seems like irrelevant phrasing, but the very-online left knows exactly what the guardian means. If you want a dogwhistle --> reality translation, you should follow the top comments on this, on Twitter
There seems to be a strong desire around the world to implement the Turkish media business model: Operate the media as a loss leader and make your profits from your other businesses by being favourable to the politicians in power and get just as favourable treatment.
This also scales nicely because you can start getting way overpriced ad buys when other companies also want to get favourable deals with the politicians, so you become a direct broker for access to the government.
Of course, the quality suffers and other media begins to emerge but you can keep buying the challengers or the govt can take care of them.
In Turkey, the pro-govt media is called "pool media" because a bunch of businessmen close to the ruling party created a pool to buy out newspapers and TV channels and an audio recording of them discussing the details was leaked(which is also very complicated, way out of the scope of this comment).
Not just Turkish, works in a lot of corrupt countries. Up to a point though: if the price is too high, you're going to jail and your media empire sold to the govt friendly ones. Tax evasion, corruption, murder or whatever. The ones on the good side get business and building permits, state advertising (they'll invent a campaign for you,) win contract bids, get out of jail free card etc etc.
You don't even have to be operating at a loss to benefit from being favorable to politicians in power. It lets you get away with things.
For example: Apple paid Jobs in backdated stock options[1] while having Al Gore on the board. With a salary of $1/year, he was able to take all his income as long term capital gains and save on SS tax and income tax.
But that is the way it is in my country, the USA, also. Now just a few corporations control most of the media people see, and positions who don’t go along with the establishment (like Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul) get at best sidelined by the media, at worst actively undermined.
Sorry to be a little off topic, but I recommend the book Surveillance Capitalism to better understand how people are manipulated.
Actual negotiations are against adversaries in private; why force someone (Sanders or anyone else) to negotiate against themselves in public?
If you ask any presidential candidate about the chances of their platform passing as-is, they will all have the same three things to tell you: 1) Vote for members of congress who will support my agenda and this won't be a problem; 2) Give me a mandate to implement my agenda so I have more political capital for negotiations; 3) You need to plant a flag in the ground so that you have something to anchor negotiations later, which might involve compromises.
If your point is that voters, the media, and politicians spend way too much time on platforms when they are mostly just signalling devices, I agree.
He has put some detailed calculations forward. Not sure how that's not concrete. Would you be able to make a single Biden Policy, or even better one that has actually been scrutinised?
> ... and make your profits from your other businesses by being favourable to the politicians in power and get just as favourable treatment.
David Frum writing in 2017:
> The transition [in Hungary] has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. […] The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy. As one shrewd observer told me on a recent visit, “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”
Do not let how autocracies worked in the 20th Century distract you from how they now work in the 21st. (Though no doubt there are still places where people are disappeared.)
> The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.
I hadn't really thought of it this way, but that's a common thread through so many political problems of the last 20 years. If you can convince enough voters that immigrants are the problem and you are the solution then you can do anything you like.
This is also why nativism was such a big part of fascist movements in the 20th century, too. Tell the majority that they are special, and could live happily ever after if it weren't for all those (insert boogeyman here).
Well, immigrants at some point become a problem (I'm one too) especially if they compete for the same low paying positions with no safety net. If you add competition for limited resources you have a bunch of people that are worse off and it's unfair to call them racist, they are just scared and pissed off their way of life that was promised "safe" is not so safe anymore.
The question is, what are we going to do about it? If we keep ignoring the condition of the working class for too long like in this country, you get Trump and the likes.
It's an enormous failure of our political class to have ignored real issues for so long, getting it to the point where pretty much the same thing is happening all around the world, and the plutocrats and billionaires are exploiting it because they can since they have all the power.
Not even a new thing, Rage Against The Machine wrote songs about all of this 20 years ago, it's just that most people weren't paying attention.
Why is it some sort of nefarious scheme to "convince" white people that other people invading their countries is bad, but also white people invading non-white's countries was also bad? People have a right to their countries. Immigration is being forced on people against their will. This is wrong.
Yes. Can you explain the difference for me? The only difference I can find is that colonialism was done with the support of the people in the country, while immigration in white countries today is being done against the wishes of the people in the country.
> The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.
Is there a fundamental difference between these if there are private groups guilty of persecuting the innocent, and the party in power chooses to not persecute (or prosecute) those groups?
Media outlets being propaganda services for politicians or evil activities (like slavery) is not anything new. It's actually how it has mostly always been, everywhere.
I find it ironic that now that a right leaning investor might influence [which we don't know if it would have an effect but may] Twitter people are having a fit, but not many have a problem with Twitter when it favors the leanings of its left-leaning management.
When Twitter suspends people it's always been "but they are private company!" We'll see how they pull that same line if this goes through.
I don’t remember anyone saying that twitter favoured the left. If yo hear it from the left it’s that Twitter favours the right. Facebook on the other hand very much favoured the right through intentional algorithms.
The false equivalence between left and right here is the issue IMO. I truly believe the left-lead media largely acts in good faith, and the right-lead media largely does not.
I understand that people on the right feel the opposite, that's fine. But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.
> I truly believe the left-lead media largely acts in good faith
I would like to raise to your awareness that when Bernie was accused of saying a woman couldn't be president, his talking point we're very close to what people on the right have been saying for years.
> But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.
You're saying that you want the media to be a political instrument, but you want to make sure it's a political instrument used only by the party you prefer?
Because the alternative wouldn't be "it should be used by both sides", the alternative would be "it shouldn't be a political instrument".
yawn. Again, the argument was "it's okay if it helps my side". It's essentially "I'm fine with throwing the code of law out the window, but only if my side does it".
First, a political motive could not have created Twitter. If twitter was created as a tool to influence politics, it would drastically changed who signed up for the platform, and it's influence and reach. There are plenty of platforms that have tried that route, and not a single one has been successful. Reddit is in a similar position as Twitter on this same issue, and take a look at Voat to see what that looks like. Therefore, Singer seeks to obtain influence he would not have had by co-opting a platform created for other purposes.
Second, Twitters political leanings are incidental. Twitter's employees are human beings, and when they make a decision, they are biased by their own thoughts and opinions, which happen to generally be on the left. While leftist, this still allows people like Trump and other conservatives to use the platform... and it limits what political actions they can take (they cant get too extreme or their diverse user base may revolt). In other words, this is a passive bias.
Whereas Singer (may--we don't really know his motives) seek to turn Twitter into a political weapon that he can use to battle liberalism. That's an active bias. And depending on how active he wants to get with politics using Twitter, it may destroy the platform.
A passive bias is very different than an active bias. And I don't know how you can claim they are indistinguishable.
> If twitter was created as a tool to influence politics, it would drastically changed who signed up for the platform, and it's influence and reach.
That's assuming you have to start with what you want to eventually achieve. Startups don't work like that in business, why should they in politics? You invest money to buy growth and market share before you monetize.
I'm not suggesting that Twitter was created to be a political tool, but "political apps don't work, Twitter worked, therefore Twitter wasn't meant to be a political app" falls a bit short I think.
> While leftist, this still allows people like Trump and other conservatives to use the platform...
Isn't that mostly because they really don't want to open that can of worms by banning the US president? Do you believe that, if Trump had lost to Clinton in 2016 but just kept on playing the politics game instead of tweeting about how great his new show will be, they would've tolerated that? I seriously doubt that.
> Whereas Singer (may--we don't really know his motives) seek to turn Twitter into a political weapon that he can use to battle liberalism.
Burning it to the ground, wasting his money, because of his personal politics? Doesn't that sound a bit strange for a hedge fund?
Hillary doesn’t run twitter. Trump used twitter for 8 years to attack and spread conspiracy theories about Obama. I would say the character of his tweets are unchanged since he became president. So I see no reason to believe he would have been banned on year 9 of his behavior.
Besides there are plenty of other conservatives on twitter. Then and now.
That's not the point. It wouldn't be Hillary making Twitter ban Trump, it would be Twitter not having to ban the president. Trump's tweets may not have changed (I'd say they did; his reach and the importance certainly has), but Twitters policies have evolved and what was okay 5 years ago isn't okay today.
In many European countries, the media gets directly paid by the government so they don't go tits-up. This ostensibly secures a free press. At the same time, wer zahlt, schafft an. In fact, if Turkey were doing this, they would probably be criticized for blatant corruption.
Well, there's a notion of intent.
It is problematic of course, but right now I trust some Western European leaders comment to democracy and free press. Less so for ardogan. I don't trust him because of direct actions targeting political opposition.
See, that's what I was getting at. I know Turkey is an authoritarian state, and you know Turkey is an authoritarian state, but it's still a bit of circular reasoning:
1. It's authoritarian because it hurts the free press.
2. It hurts the free press because it's Turkey doing it.
3. Turkey is doing it because they are authoritarian.
And looking from the outside, I can't see a difference. The Western media, who are funded by the Western governments, praise the Western governments for their support of freedom and democracy.
The third world media, who are funded by the third world governments, praise the third world governments for their support of tradition and family values, or whatever it is they do down there.
My point is that it's absurd to call media free when they are getting paid by those who they are supposed to investigate. A better model, I think, would be this:
1. Each year, the government gives the media money.
2. If they wish to partake in this scheme, they have to put the money they get in a fund, which must be kept separate from the rest of their assets.
3. By law, they are prohibited from withdrawing more than say 5% of the assets each year, just as they must maintain a minimum share capital.
4. At registration, the government should give the various media corporations 20x the annual contribution for their such funds.
5. Upon liquidation, they must return the excess assets in the fund to the government.
This would insulate them from short-term political decisions. Even after ten years of no funding, they would still have 60% of their assets plus whatever the return on the way they invested them in was.
If you want to solve this by designing systems: I found the Dutch [0] one quite interesting. The way I understand, citizens kind of vote for their preferred content providers with air time / resources distributed accordingly.
But for me a critical aspect is their mission statement and whether they adhere to it. I expect the media in my country to be a check against politicians / the powerful. I understand having a system keeping this stable would be nice and being dependent on gov money has drawbacks, but just having such a culture is what I'd consider most important for the label free press.
- official funding with oversight, including democratic participation of all parties, as well as transparent rules (eg equal screen time).
- private media without oversight, heavily favouring one party and in return getting kickbacks through eg state grants or contracts to related businesses.
You're thinking of public service - I mean the grants given to otherwise unprofitable newspapers. So there's a third option:
- private media without oversight, no requirements on democratic participation of all parties nor equal screen time, in return getting kickbacks by relatively transparent processes
This sounds so true of India as well. We have few media outlets that are unabashedly pro government and racist, and prominent among them(Republic TV) was in fact founded couple of years ago. Majority of mass regional language channels, including Hindi channels are controlled by pro government propagandists. While we do have a popular government at the center and by definition lot of folks in fact love these pro government propaganda, those in disagreement have no clue how to stand upto and win against these powerful power formation. They got the government, media, well funded social media teams that is few hundred thousand strong and sadly judiciary as well in their favor. They can twist and turn every facts to their convenience and feed the silent majority .
Though there has been a student and minority led protests against these of late, they are just not effective in combating these, with so much odds stacked against them. Honesty many are loosing hope. What in HN's collective wisdom is the way out for us, the nations like India, Turkey and others like us?
This ship sailed a long time ago everywhere across the world. It's just that one side of the spectrum (left in some places, right in some) had a large control of the media.
To be fair, there's really no objective merit to this comment in the context of this acquisition really. I don't doubt your assertions on Turkey, but this is not Turkey. Not even FoxNews owners gain any indirect advantage from supporting the current government, rather, their owner's strategy is to simply stake out a claim on 'one side' of the political fence, wherein there happened to be a 'market opportunity'. It's cynical in the view that political views = markets, but it's not cynical to the point wherein we see clear corruption.
Oh wow, getting Argentina to make good on their defaulted bonds is about as Mission-Impossible as activist investing gets. Not much productive to say about the political aspect of this move on Twitter, but I can say I would not want to be fighting Mr. Signer.
He even deposed a democratic government. He was a big Macri supporter, and several 'ongs' supported by him where presided by members of his government (for example, Laura Alonso). If this guy gets Twitter control it will make Twitter complete trash.
I'd be curious to know Scott Galloway's response to this.
Is this action that of a mainstream media channel being bought and control shifted way from Jack and current board's leadership, where they seem to be trying to at least do good - even if they are faltering some?
I'd speculate that they will push for political ads to be allowed, and false information to be perpetuated. To me this situation is highlighting that we can't depend on platforms that depend on advertising revenue as its operations budget.
Out right rejecting a huge profit stream like that is reason enough to drop Dorsey. What a terrible business decision to leave that sort of money on the table over a relatively small cohort of their users who complain.
> over a relatively small cohort of their users who complain.
I can’t wait until vocal minority has been seen for what it is and now cow toed to. The best art and comedy and film of the past wouldn’t exist if created today because surely it would offend someone and “need” to be canceled.
Yes I agree about it being a terrible business decision. But not everything should be about money. Micro-targeting political ads is terrible for democracy
I think Twitter and other social networks should be neutral. I don't see why they should make decisions that benefit democracy or any other political system.
If looking long-term and outside of short-term profits it may not be a terrible business decision, how people govern their company, their platform,
What's happening with Twitter now is simply capitalistic regulatory capture, falling in line with Mark Zuckerberg's lack of ethics all in the name of revenues - which fits Mark's character since the "founding" - fucking over of the twins who hired him to start ConnectU, who he lead on to believe he was working on their platform, when in fact he was working on TheFacebook - knowing and saying there wasn't a need or room for two such platforms; the key to Facebook's initial success was ConnectU twins' idea of limiting people signing up to requiring a university email, so automatically you can connect those people easily and make it like having more or less exclusive clubs.
All of this happening is just war evolved, and honestly the decentralized bad actors are winning at the moment - and why true decentralization (not Bitcoin driven) systems need to coming together faster in case bad actors continue to capture government agencies and systems - and at some point start trying for full control over media like China and Russia have.
Galloway bought $10 mil worth of Twitter shares with the goal of doing the same thing Elliot is doing.
Don’t let the political clickbait headline fool you, this is all about profiting off twitter by removing Dorsey and bringing in a CEO who actually works full time at the company he runs.
This has absolutely nothing to do with politics.
Activists get a bad rap but they make our economy more efficient. The reason we’re having so many governance problems with big companies like Uber, WeWork, etc is because they stayed private for so long with zero accountability. If they went public earlier, activists could have made them a target much sooner.
*edit: I see mods changed the headline to something more accurate
Those big public companies are really being reined in by their shareholders: Comcast, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Valeant, Equifax, Wells Fargo. Oh wait...
The public equities market has failed and will continue to fail to punish unethical behavior. Elliot, Scott Galloway, all the biggest equity funds all only care about returns. Scandals and misbehavior can affect returns but it’s often more efficient to cover them up or lobby to make them legal than actually fix the issue.
I almost feel like CEO owners have more of an incentive to prohibit bad behavior to protect their individual legacy. Adam Neumann made out great from WeWork but it’s rumored he left America and I don’t blame him. Jack probably doesn’t want to be the guy who led to the downfall of the American democracy, and I’d trust him to do more about it than any combination of nameless funds.
Do you understand the economy being more efficient isn't equal to making society via the health of society including societal systems like democracy more efficient?
Regardless of the headline, the article states that Elliot was anti-Trump and then became pro-Trump:t that is why there is more concern, above and beyond the problems of non-human-centred capitalism of only caring about a "strong economy" excluding the health of society.
You're making a lot of assumptions otherwise - which of there is only uncertainty and speculation at the moment.
Also, economic drivers are inherently tied to politics.
Well, maybe it'd be wiser to start with keeping media platforms as platforms for the media rather than outlets for opinions, political or otherwise.
I remember the days when Twitter was weird and diverse and interesting. There was a group of people making *-ebooks bots for strange content, there were people walking in traphouses in major cities and basically doing photo essays. There was so much interesting, unique content on Twitter back then.
Granted, Twitter is certainly imbalanced from the political perspective and it'll be good to see a better balance, but I think that the platform will almost inevitably sway further from the coolest things that they were doing before.
I LOVE politics, but damn if it ain't ruining all kinds of cool tech.
I'd agree with you once 100% of your data, and network connections data, is owned and movable by you - so if others move their data too, everything can be previously interlinked and displayed in a UI similarly - then we'd have true mobility and ability to "vote for governance" with our attention (so we can decide to pay for a service with ads or pay with funds).
If all of the good people from these platforms would shift away, taking away advertising revenues with them, then platforms that do bad, unacceptable things, would quickly get punished.
This is a bad argument. Google tried to make a Facebook competitor... google... and failed spectacularly.
If Google resources can’t overcome the momentum of a big service; then no one can except over a long time.
So while I’m very free hand of market sometimes, I realize the reality that these are currently monopolies in their spaces and have to resources to prevent competition via lawsuits and acquisitions.
Google's attempt didn't simply fail because of network effects, though, it failed because people didn't like it. It wasn't very similar to Facebook at all.
Until the hosting provider de-platforms the competitor for differing political views. Or the competitor's payment processor de-platforms them for their political views. Unless the competitor is it's own cloud provider and it's own payment platform they're at risk.
I really hope we can get some more serious decentralized infrastructure mainstreamed so this sort of partisan platform stuff becomes a non issue.
Centralized, corruptible bottlenecks like political payment processors and political big cloud providers are eroding the open nature of the internet.
Although I think it’s possible to replace and/or reform some of the current sore spots, the pessimist in me is worried we have deeper social and philosophical problems that will prevent things from moving in that direction. Many people now seem to reject the very idea of apolitical utilities. They consider it immoral to allow the existence of services for people they consider to be severely harming others through their use of that infrastructure, despite the often political and highly debatable nature of that harm.
A free and open internet is built on the same philosophical principles as the first amendment. The spirit of the first amendment is something the people as a whole need to respect in order for it to work.
People forget how much religious sects hated each other when the Bill of Rights was drafted. Europe had been fighting a seemingly endless series of religious conflicts since the protestant reformation, and adherents believed allowing opposing adherents to spread their corrupting influence would literally damn the world to hell.
The first amendment was about allowing others to practice beliefs despite sincere fears that such beliefs would damn the world to hell. If we can’t allow people we consider corrupting to operate, and need to bar all of those corrupting influences from access to core utilities, we are failing to live up to the principles underlying the first amendment and risk plunging back into the kind of sectarian and philosophically based conflict the enlightenment helped us to escape from. If those we dislike and may consider evil are respecting our property rights and are not committing physical violence against us, we should be tolerant and allow them to exist and operate in society and seek to change them only through open dialog, not forceful coercion.
Their tech activism is not run directly by Singer (who, btw, is pretty liberal). He is the face of Elliot but he isn't personally responsible for every decision they make (that would require super-human levels of work).
I read the article, and as much as I see a lot of Elliott Management's tactics as personally odious, this action seems very much par for the course for them. That is, I don't see the political angle having much weight.
Elliott has always been very clear the absolute only thing they care about is making more money, and finding companies that they believe have a management team that is not 100% laser focused on increasing shareholder value have always been a target for them. Given Dorsey's dual CEO roles and his persona as the tech-male version of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, not out of character at all that they'd be eyeing a change in management.
As an aside, would someone who is more versed in the world of finance explain how these PE companies are able to have so much leverage when the stakes they take are still relatively small (e.g. single digits). Management in firms across the world shudder with fear when Elliott takes a sizable stake, but I don't understand how Elliott can wield so much power without having a greater percentage of shares.
You're right. The problem is people in their thinking silo and try to differentiate to claim that not everything is political - when in fact, someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting politics.
That was my impression too, Dorsey is spreading himself too thin, getting distracted, and not focusing sufficiently on Twitter, hence he’s made himself vulnerable to an activist shareholder.
As for Elliott’s power, part of that is probably his soft power - ability to persuade enough other shareholders to vote Dorsey out. That means he needs to supply a compelling alternative plan to the current status quo and get enough other shareholders to vote for it. I assume he already had that to some degree before buying the shares, so Dorsey could be in for a battle here.
Their power comes from a combination of (1) the shares they own, (2) their balance sheet which allows them to outspend (litigation, buying more shares, buying bonds) anyone if they choose to do so, (3) their reputation as money-makers and being absolutely relentless in activist situations, and (4) the fact that generally they have a high batting average in these situations - in other words, they are often right about the need for change whether you think they're jerks or not. These guys pick their spots pretty carefully and they're good at what they do...the level of diligence they do would shock you.
I've been saying for a while that Twitter is one of the most no-brainer activist targets out there to the point where it's almost a layup. Executive compensation is outrageous, the CEO treats it as a hobby, lots of executive turnover, results have been mostly disappointing, R&D is inexplicable ($700 million to turn the star into a heart), a stock that's done essentially nothing since coming public years ago, and they really have no defenses (eg dual share class). And that's all before we even get to whether the company could benefit by dropping its brazenly liberal bias in how it polices content. I've been joking that Rupert Murdoch should buy it :)
What are some examples of their blazenly liberal bias? From what I've seen they only tend to kick people off the platform who have been saying exceedingly unsavoury things ... Katie Hopkins opining about needing a "Final Solution" is just one example.
I never call women "dude" period, because "dude" is literally a moniker applied to men, that's its etymology.
Deliberately misgendering someone goes beyond just tacky and into offensive. That's not a liberal thing, that's just a human decency thing. He was unbanned anyway.
The problem is, a lot of the people who seem to take issue with someone choosing to be transgender seem to extract perverse glee from tormenting them deliberately.
Gender identity and how someone refers to themselves is a core part of their identity. Deliberately (as in, going out of your way, not as a mistake, but as a conscious act) is indeed offensive. And moreover there's zero need for it, unless your purpose is to cause offense.
"Exceedingly unsavory" as determined by whom? People have been kicked off for far vaguer reasons than openly talking about a "final solution". Many conservative e-personalities have been kicked off for ambiguous and yet unexplained violations, whether it is a specific thing they say or a general perception about their personalities or affiliations.
Official policies are strongly influenced by prevailing Leftist dogma as well. Questioning whether gender dysphoria (transgenderism) can be considered mental illness would be considered ban worthy on Twitter, in spite of evidence that many cases of transgenderism are either an example of herd following or some sort of dysphoric personally disorder.
I can definitely accept twitter as a company not using its potential. Even if they just fire lots of employees, make their pages load faster, stop making their pages break on two thirds of every external links and sprinkle some lightweight ads here and there they could be substantially more profitable.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with twitter where mobile, desktop, VPN or not, chrome or firefox, they still have 'something went wrong' messages or throttling messages (from a mobile IP!) on the majority of pages loaded from external links.
Twitter is gross to use and has thousands of employees, I could see someone buying in and trying to smooth it out.
What changed between Elliot being anti-Trump to becoming pro-Trump? That is so blatantly obviously something.
You can't fairly disassociate making money and politics, as arguably someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting politics.
The drive alone for only caring about money is one issue, however added to that of the anti- to pro-Trump stance makes this feel a whole lot more sinister.
"Republican mega-donor"? Elliott is one of the most famous activist investors in the world. Nobody talked about the "Republicanism" when Elliott started pushing Softbank around. And it's absolutely no surprise that an activist would push on Twitter; its CEO isn't even full-time.
With the elections coming up, the President being more present on Twitter than in Real Life and Twitters new aversion towards political ads, it's quite natural to mention his investment into one of the sides just like his position on what Twitter has been doing on the political spiel.
"The media" would be even less relevant today if they'd have ignored twitter trends. It's not like they got together and picked some irrelevant network to make it popular.
> And it's absolutely no surprise that an activist would push on Twitter; its CEO isn't even full-time.
For those to young enough to remember (you do) there are so many things that happen in this day and age in public companies that would never fly years ago. Part time CEO and for that matter Dorsey's planned move to Africa means he can't be fully focused on what is right for twitter. Which has been the case for some time.
I remember when Obama took office and in the first few weeks he found it necessary to go to a meeting at his kid's school. I can think of many ways political spin wise why he might have done that (people mumbled something about setting a good example for other fathers iirc) but honestly the angle seemed to be 'important that I know what is going on with my kids'. As if his wife Michelle wasn't good to drive that event. Or that somehow the kids of a President need to be hovered over at all lest at that age.
I attend a lot of my kid's school events, and he's about the same age as Obama's were at that point. There's no "angle" why I do this, other than because I take pleasure in being there and want to be a good Dad.
Your comment is really disheartening for me, because it just seems so cynical.
Not sure I understand what Obama given his job as President and you have in common re: my comment.
If you can go to your kids school events and it doesn't impact your work (or happiness or makes you happy for that matter) in some way (and your ability to provide for your child's future (key point)) then that is your choice. But this idea (that goes around in today's popular culture) that it's vital in some way that both parents (man or woman) need and should be fully engaged in a child's school activities is simply not right both from my experience and observation over the years (with my own children (grown up, educated and well employed)) and history as well. It's a concept that is bandied about as being good not only w/o proof but absolute.
So my question for you is did you think about this and come to the conclusion that you should attend your kid's school events on your own or is it something you have read in many places and never questioned because 'it's what you do as a parent and it is important'.
Let's take it one step further. Men and women go off to war 'for their country'. They are not able to even be with their children (let alone attend events). It's service for your country that's what you sign up for. Do you think that the job of the President is less involved and important than a single soldier or more? Don't you think his thought process should be on the country and what's good for them and not his (for this particular case) his children?
One last thing. If Obama really cared about his kids he wouldn't have become President. There is nothing normal about being the child of a President. Given both his education and level of achievement and his wife's his children would have had a very nice life going forward w/o needing the drawbacks (both attention and security wise) of being the child of a President. (Not questioning the coolness or upside just saying there is plenty of risk and downside I mean talk about a not normal life even people you meet are most likely angling and want to be around you because of who your parents were and are).
He had kids before he was president, you don’t think it was routine for him to go to his kids’ parent teacher conferences before being president? I think both of his kids were around late elementary or middle school age at the time of being president which is also an important developmental time for kids. Being a CEO or any job shouldn’t mean that it clones at the sacrifice of being a good parent. To me it sounds like it’s someone keeping up the routine they had before they got a new job. Being president is just another job, albeit far more high profile.
I don’t think it makes sense to criticize Obama for going to one meeting at his kids’ school. Having an important job doesn’t mean you should spend 100% of your waking hours in that job. It’s good to sometimes do something else, to stay mentally fresh.
Also, as a CEO it’s useful to talk sometimes to a broad range of your customers. Doesn’t it make sense for a politician to talk to a broad range of his constituents?
If your philosophy is that people who care about their kids can’t be president, you will get a president who doesn’t care about kids.
Not having or wanting kids does not mean not caring about them. Few of my teachers in elementary school were childless, and still incredibly supportive and important figures in my life growing up. I actually find parents selfish. Putting their own kids 1st, being offensively over protective and unsupportive of other, sometimes more deserving kids, which are not their own, ie when it comes to opportunities and investment etc. I guess that’s natural, but it also means a childless person will find it easier to “love” other people’s children and care about issues other than the ones of interest to themselves first most.
> It’s good to sometimes do something else, to stay mentally fresh.
That's a judgement based on the idea that going to a kids meeting is a 'good' thing and nobody should question it.
Let's say Obama in his first few weeks decided to walk to a house on the street (with secret service) and do some gardening for someone (without any benefit otherwise as an isolated event) most would probably think that was not only a waste of time but that he had some ulterior motive for doing that. I mean Presidents are well known for blowing off steam by golfing but they aren't going to golf in the first week etc. Sends the wrong message.
Ditto if someone hired a CEO for the company and they spent time on some trivial relaxation time event (and the company was bleeding money) it would be seen as a bad use of time they should be focused.
Go further with this. A company has been hacked and 'all hands on deck'. But the key person well he's off at a school meeting which could either be postponed or perhaps the spouse could handle.
I don't even agree with the idea that they have an issue staying fresh mentally in the sense that that activity would even be the thing to do to do that. (Better to get more sleep and cut out needless meetings etc).
Money is a measure of labor you own from an average human. A billionaire owns labor from about a million humans perpetually to practically any of his/her whims. With so much labor available at hand, a person can control entire governments, major companies, social pipes, news channels, elections, policies, laws, land use, resource distribution, economic priorities, arts, science and culture. The billionaires are the new monarchs in pretty much all sense. I shudder to think of powers vested in a trillionaire.
You wouldn't hear a peep about this if it was a "Democratic mega-donor".
That would just be business as usual.
Let's stop beating around the bush and just admit that many are desperate to silence any and all right-leaning voices. Just look at what is happening to Reddit...
Singer is primarily a vulture capitalist, operating on a nation state scale (he resurrected Argentinian national debt he bought and forced payment for example and his wealth exploded after 2008 buying up distressed assets and business).
The 'Republican mega-donor' aspect is a tiny droplet of his corporate wealth, I suspect the main reason for the Twitter pressure is for Singer the globalist and his elite colleagues to control a global medium and manipulate it to a much greater extent than it already is, cracking down on free speech and with much stronger surveillance and data tracking.
Or maybe we should redefine 'vulture capitalism' to be borrowing money from naive Americans, Europeans, and Japanese by blatantly lying to them, then corruptly stealing and squandering the money, then refusing to pay it back all the while claiming that you are a victim and that the people whose money you stole are 'imperialist colonialist aggressors'.
'Vulture Capitalism' is not a 'formal' term, and yes, I'm well aware of how it's generally applied. I obviously don't agree with it. Particularly, in this case, the vulture is the corrupt government of Argentina.
The bit where he said he wanted to 'move to Africa for a few years' was such a big red flag, I can't imagine any CEO without a retirement horizon ever saying that.
It's like he was signalling to the market he wanted to get taken over.
Of course, it's not an unreasonable sentiment, but from a corporate / investor relations communications perspective it's fatalistic.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadI know personally a large number of people banned for expressing pretty mainstream right-leaning beliefs on the platform.
I also know people who have declared that we should kill Trump's children who my report on that went nowhere.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/opinion/trump-civil-war.h...
I think everyone reading this honestly knows there was a serious chance that a liberal employee at Twitter would do that as a political statement. (I would have disagreed with that action.)
There is, obviously, no chance that Obama's Twitter would be banned.
This is clearly "out of balance".
I don't think Republicans having a stake in Twitter would improve this situation, though.
Also in this specific example, the ban did not happen.
(Just answering the question.)
Also: Trump isn't banned on Twitter.
I don't believe so, no. I think "who said it" (Trump or Obama) also determines who would get banned. (Currently I think Trump would get banned for something Obama wouldn't get banned for.)
This is the balance that I referred to.
You are 100% correct that my comment did not show any bias at Twitter, as I referred to something that did not occur.
Instead I appealed to the reader's intuition about a counterfactual, showing that the reader already knows and has internalized this balance at the moment, by appealing to the reader's intuition at how surprised the reader would be: not at all surprised to read "Twitter has banned Donald Trump" - though this is a counterfactual - and on reading that headline would know that a liberal employee would have done it.
Do you consider the hypothetical headline I just quoted highly improbable? (I don't.)
Not saying this status quo is good or bad - I was just answering the question.
EDIT:
So I'm walking with someone, and he said that he couldn't see it happening. The reasons that he gave were that it would be very bad for business because a lot of Republicans also use Twitter and that since it is the president of the United States, he could argue that this is a public function. So would be limiting his freedom of speech in a sense.
So I guess I'm wrong and it would surprise many people.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/spike-lees-defense...
He tweeted the home address of a person who happened to share the same last name as an unpopular person in the news, inviting people to attack this person, causing this person to have to move for his own protection. He was never banned from Twitter for this. Disgusting.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/402495-twitter-ceo-jac...
> Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I 'fully admit' our bias is 'more left-leaning'
Re: 'so many examples of people getting banned for "wrong think"'- have your sources been confirmed/provided confirmation by Twitter that's that what it was - and
Moderation (parenting) is a very important and effort full work that is required to prevent a wild west of society. A wild west of society is more costly and leads to far more suffering than a managed home; if you want to raise children that are racist within your own home, or who where you find it acceptable for them threaten to kill others, you're allowed to - however forcing ALL platforms to allow all behaviour is insanity, and so Twitter needs to be allowed to have the rules they want to allow - and people can "vote" by using that service or not, and then other platforms can have their own rules - and that government as a whole will have to decide what those bounds are; perhaps should government provide a free speech platform like exist public parks as an option that everyone has available to them.
It should be neutral and non-political, supportive of all view points.
"But the real question behind the question is, are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints? And we are not. Period," he added.
Dorsey went on to insist that his company only polices behavior on the platform, not content.
Is having a personal political opinion only illegal if it is left-leaning?
That's an enormous imbalance.
Does a “ministry of truth” really sound like a good idea?
Edit: well apparently very few people ACTUALLY READ the much hyped Mueller report.
I would also say Jack Dorsey has been pretty fair about the platform. I don't think the left feel like Twitter is exceptionally more open to them.
And I'm guessing they mean the idea of balance being "all ideas are equal regardless of merit" is the flawed paradigm.
There's lots of "scientific" claims that are dictated by dogma or other motivations. Various aspects of nutrition science, psychology, economics, and sociology are either made up or based on low quality evidence, yet people continue to believe them. Humans, including scientists and academics, are imperfect, despite how this is the "modern age".
> And I'm guessing they mean the idea of balance being "all ideas are equal regardless of merit" is the flawed paradigm.
Which I would consider a straw man. I don't believe anyone is saying that all ideas are equal regardless of merit. What people are asking for is a wider Overton window. If people were suggesting that all ideas are equal, then they'd have to accede that the ideas of racists, child molestors, and serial killers are perfectly valid and should be treated the same as other ideas, which I don't think is a very common point of view, at least when a person is tested on it.
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. You made an objective claim, I provided an example that demonstrates it is false.
for ex: If you show up in my bar. Talk crap act like a jerk,etc. You're out. Social media is no different. You are not owed access to anything.
Do you think this would be a good outcome?
Actually, political affiliation and participants in political activity are protected classes in a couple of states, including California, where many HN readers reside.
"There are only three jurisdictions in the United States that explicitly bans political affiliation and activity discrimination, California, D.C., and New York. New York does not cover political affiliation discrimination, only political activity discrimination. Federal law discrimination law does not cover political affiliation or political activity. However, many states prohibit employers from influencing the votes of their employees."
Source https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff...
I tip my hat to California for still remembering what old-school liberalism means.
Should all grocery stores in the country be allowed to do this?
If so, how do I eat?
They could just look at the credit card number, and observe that 7305 matches a blacklist.
They could use facial recognition in the checkout to check against a database and deny you service that way.
And so on, and so forth. There is no need to be hated by ordinary folks, just that the upper management/media doesn't like you.
What is the solution to this? Never adopting any objectionable views?
I seem to only hear concerns about balance when it has to do with a perceived bias against the right.
As well? I don't complain about them at all. Pointing out that it exists when people deny it is not complaining.
>I seem to only hear concerns about balance when it has to do with a perceived bias against the right.
Well I see two obvious differences that could cause that. The first simply being size. Facebook, google, twitter, reddit, etc are all, as organizations, far-left. And they all use their platforms to silence things they disapprove of, and push their politics. Whatever sites do the same from a far-right perspective are tiny. So, obviously there would be far more complaining from the far larger group of people who use the biggest sites on the web.
Second, all the supposed "far right" websites I see mentioned don't appear to be far right at all, and don't appear to do much or any moderating. They are "far right" because people with left wing views choose not to participate, not because they get banned. There's a big difference between being removed from a platform for having an unapproved view, vs being allowed to post your unapproved view and then people tell you it is wrong.
Also, I remember when Twitter was getting really big one of their prominent founders (May have been jack but I can’t remember) did an interview in which they positioned themselves that social media platforms should use “constitutional logic” (for those not in the states, that’s the USA constitution) when regulating speech in their platform l, which, for better or worse, depending on context and things, “kill all white men” would pass the fee speech test.
Interestingly enough I actually can’t find anything that supports the example you’re referring to here. On the other hand I’ve seen tons and tons of sexist, misogynistic, white supremacist tweets that are super prominent on the platform.
Of what?
>they positioned themselves that social media platforms should use “constitutional logic” when regulating speech in their platform l,
I don't know if that was said, but it certainly is not the case with current twitter.
>which, for better or worse, depending on context and things, “kill all white men” would pass the fee speech test.
In which case "KILL ALL BLACK MEN" would pass too. One is allowed, the other is not.
>On the other hand I’ve seen tons and tons of sexist, misogynistic, white supremacist tweets that are super prominent on the platform.
I hear that often, but I never see any support for it. When pressed on it, what I get as "proof" is completely mundane posts that only extreme leftists would classify as any of those things.
> Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.
> Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.
> oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.
> #CancelWhitePeople
> white men are bullshit
etc...
https://twitter.com/LarryOConnor/status/1025081955400994816
"When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression"
The Republicans that were strongly grounded in either policy positions and/or truth have all been vilified (Comey, Mueller, Amash, Flake, McCain, G Conway, Bush, Romney, etc). Even guys like Bolton, who holds extreme conservative opinions on how to run government, cannot succeed in the party because he doesn't toe the line on fealty to Trump / 'flat-earth'.
EDIT: Actually no, I think I would dial back the "temporary aberration" bit as being too glibly optimistic. Because things seem to trend toward entropy, and bringing back a structure is a lot harder than letting a structure go to shit. i.e. what I said at the outset still remains true even after Trump, namely, "nothing is actually what it claims to be anymore."
See: Voat, Gab and so forth.
Progressives have repeatedly assured us across countless HN posts that traditional and social media businesses have the right to publish or deny publication of whatever they desire so they should have no cause to complain if businesses start shifting political discourse in whatever direction their owners prefer.
This also scales nicely because you can start getting way overpriced ad buys when other companies also want to get favourable deals with the politicians, so you become a direct broker for access to the government.
Of course, the quality suffers and other media begins to emerge but you can keep buying the challengers or the govt can take care of them.
In Turkey, the pro-govt media is called "pool media" because a bunch of businessmen close to the ruling party created a pool to buy out newspapers and TV channels and an audio recording of them discussing the details was leaked(which is also very complicated, way out of the scope of this comment).
For example: Apple paid Jobs in backdated stock options[1] while having Al Gore on the board. With a salary of $1/year, he was able to take all his income as long term capital gains and save on SS tax and income tax.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/steve-jobs-haunted-by-back...
Sorry to be a little off topic, but I recommend the book Surveillance Capitalism to better understand how people are manipulated.
Bernie's platform, like Trump's in 2016, has faced an incredible lack of scrutiny.
I have yet to see him pressed on the very high possibility that most of his platform will never get through congress.
If you ask any presidential candidate about the chances of their platform passing as-is, they will all have the same three things to tell you: 1) Vote for members of congress who will support my agenda and this won't be a problem; 2) Give me a mandate to implement my agenda so I have more political capital for negotiations; 3) You need to plant a flag in the ground so that you have something to anchor negotiations later, which might involve compromises.
If your point is that voters, the media, and politicians spend way too much time on platforms when they are mostly just signalling devices, I agree.
Promising voters things and then not being able to come close to accomplishing them undermines people's faith in the system & process.
David Frum writing in 2017:
> The transition [in Hungary] has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. […] The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy. As one shrewd observer told me on a recent visit, “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”
* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-...
Do not let how autocracies worked in the 20th Century distract you from how they now work in the 21st. (Though no doubt there are still places where people are disappeared.)
I hadn't really thought of it this way, but that's a common thread through so many political problems of the last 20 years. If you can convince enough voters that immigrants are the problem and you are the solution then you can do anything you like.
You can do better than such a low effort swipe.
The question is, what are we going to do about it? If we keep ignoring the condition of the working class for too long like in this country, you get Trump and the likes.
It's an enormous failure of our political class to have ignored real issues for so long, getting it to the point where pretty much the same thing is happening all around the world, and the plutocrats and billionaires are exploiting it because they can since they have all the power.
Not even a new thing, Rage Against The Machine wrote songs about all of this 20 years ago, it's just that most people weren't paying attention.
Is there a fundamental difference between these if there are private groups guilty of persecuting the innocent, and the party in power chooses to not persecute (or prosecute) those groups?
When Twitter suspends people it's always been "but they are private company!" We'll see how they pull that same line if this goes through.
I understand that people on the right feel the opposite, that's fine. But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.
I would like to raise to your awareness that when Bernie was accused of saying a woman couldn't be president, his talking point we're very close to what people on the right have been saying for years.
You're saying that you want the media to be a political instrument, but you want to make sure it's a political instrument used only by the party you prefer?
Because the alternative wouldn't be "it should be used by both sides", the alternative would be "it shouldn't be a political instrument".
Can you give 3 examples?
I'll give you one for free, the rest you're going to have to bother googling by yourself:
https://www.gq.com/story/coronavirus-trump-conspiracy
Whereas this is an outright political attack that has no concern for the technical work of Twitter.
The difference in motives is clear
First, a political motive could not have created Twitter. If twitter was created as a tool to influence politics, it would drastically changed who signed up for the platform, and it's influence and reach. There are plenty of platforms that have tried that route, and not a single one has been successful. Reddit is in a similar position as Twitter on this same issue, and take a look at Voat to see what that looks like. Therefore, Singer seeks to obtain influence he would not have had by co-opting a platform created for other purposes.
Second, Twitters political leanings are incidental. Twitter's employees are human beings, and when they make a decision, they are biased by their own thoughts and opinions, which happen to generally be on the left. While leftist, this still allows people like Trump and other conservatives to use the platform... and it limits what political actions they can take (they cant get too extreme or their diverse user base may revolt). In other words, this is a passive bias.
Whereas Singer (may--we don't really know his motives) seek to turn Twitter into a political weapon that he can use to battle liberalism. That's an active bias. And depending on how active he wants to get with politics using Twitter, it may destroy the platform.
A passive bias is very different than an active bias. And I don't know how you can claim they are indistinguishable.
That's assuming you have to start with what you want to eventually achieve. Startups don't work like that in business, why should they in politics? You invest money to buy growth and market share before you monetize.
I'm not suggesting that Twitter was created to be a political tool, but "political apps don't work, Twitter worked, therefore Twitter wasn't meant to be a political app" falls a bit short I think.
> While leftist, this still allows people like Trump and other conservatives to use the platform...
Isn't that mostly because they really don't want to open that can of worms by banning the US president? Do you believe that, if Trump had lost to Clinton in 2016 but just kept on playing the politics game instead of tweeting about how great his new show will be, they would've tolerated that? I seriously doubt that.
> Whereas Singer (may--we don't really know his motives) seek to turn Twitter into a political weapon that he can use to battle liberalism.
Burning it to the ground, wasting his money, because of his personal politics? Doesn't that sound a bit strange for a hedge fund?
Besides there are plenty of other conservatives on twitter. Then and now.
That's not the point. It wouldn't be Hillary making Twitter ban Trump, it would be Twitter not having to ban the president. Trump's tweets may not have changed (I'd say they did; his reach and the importance certainly has), but Twitters policies have evolved and what was okay 5 years ago isn't okay today.
In many European countries, the media gets directly paid by the government so they don't go tits-up. This ostensibly secures a free press. At the same time, wer zahlt, schafft an. In fact, if Turkey were doing this, they would probably be criticized for blatant corruption.
1. It's authoritarian because it hurts the free press.
2. It hurts the free press because it's Turkey doing it.
3. Turkey is doing it because they are authoritarian.
And looking from the outside, I can't see a difference. The Western media, who are funded by the Western governments, praise the Western governments for their support of freedom and democracy.
The third world media, who are funded by the third world governments, praise the third world governments for their support of tradition and family values, or whatever it is they do down there.
My point is that it's absurd to call media free when they are getting paid by those who they are supposed to investigate. A better model, I think, would be this:
1. Each year, the government gives the media money.
2. If they wish to partake in this scheme, they have to put the money they get in a fund, which must be kept separate from the rest of their assets.
3. By law, they are prohibited from withdrawing more than say 5% of the assets each year, just as they must maintain a minimum share capital.
4. At registration, the government should give the various media corporations 20x the annual contribution for their such funds.
5. Upon liquidation, they must return the excess assets in the fund to the government.
This would insulate them from short-term political decisions. Even after ten years of no funding, they would still have 60% of their assets plus whatever the return on the way they invested them in was.
But for me a critical aspect is their mission statement and whether they adhere to it. I expect the media in my country to be a check against politicians / the powerful. I understand having a system keeping this stable would be nice and being dependent on gov money has drawbacks, but just having such a culture is what I'd consider most important for the label free press.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_public_broadcasting_syst...
- official funding with oversight, including democratic participation of all parties, as well as transparent rules (eg equal screen time).
- private media without oversight, heavily favouring one party and in return getting kickbacks through eg state grants or contracts to related businesses.
- private media without oversight, no requirements on democratic participation of all parties nor equal screen time, in return getting kickbacks by relatively transparent processes
Though there has been a student and minority led protests against these of late, they are just not effective in combating these, with so much odds stacked against them. Honesty many are loosing hope. What in HN's collective wisdom is the way out for us, the nations like India, Turkey and others like us?
Is this action that of a mainstream media channel being bought and control shifted way from Jack and current board's leadership, where they seem to be trying to at least do good - even if they are faltering some?
I'd speculate that they will push for political ads to be allowed, and false information to be perpetuated. To me this situation is highlighting that we can't depend on platforms that depend on advertising revenue as its operations budget.
I can’t wait until vocal minority has been seen for what it is and now cow toed to. The best art and comedy and film of the past wouldn’t exist if created today because surely it would offend someone and “need” to be canceled.
Is it? This was done to a much greater extent than Twitter is capable of with direct mail even in the 1990’s.
What's happening with Twitter now is simply capitalistic regulatory capture, falling in line with Mark Zuckerberg's lack of ethics all in the name of revenues - which fits Mark's character since the "founding" - fucking over of the twins who hired him to start ConnectU, who he lead on to believe he was working on their platform, when in fact he was working on TheFacebook - knowing and saying there wasn't a need or room for two such platforms; the key to Facebook's initial success was ConnectU twins' idea of limiting people signing up to requiring a university email, so automatically you can connect those people easily and make it like having more or less exclusive clubs.
All of this happening is just war evolved, and honestly the decentralized bad actors are winning at the moment - and why true decentralization (not Bitcoin driven) systems need to coming together faster in case bad actors continue to capture government agencies and systems - and at some point start trying for full control over media like China and Russia have.
Don’t let the political clickbait headline fool you, this is all about profiting off twitter by removing Dorsey and bringing in a CEO who actually works full time at the company he runs.
This has absolutely nothing to do with politics.
Activists get a bad rap but they make our economy more efficient. The reason we’re having so many governance problems with big companies like Uber, WeWork, etc is because they stayed private for so long with zero accountability. If they went public earlier, activists could have made them a target much sooner.
*edit: I see mods changed the headline to something more accurate
The public equities market has failed and will continue to fail to punish unethical behavior. Elliot, Scott Galloway, all the biggest equity funds all only care about returns. Scandals and misbehavior can affect returns but it’s often more efficient to cover them up or lobby to make them legal than actually fix the issue.
I almost feel like CEO owners have more of an incentive to prohibit bad behavior to protect their individual legacy. Adam Neumann made out great from WeWork but it’s rumored he left America and I don’t blame him. Jack probably doesn’t want to be the guy who led to the downfall of the American democracy, and I’d trust him to do more about it than any combination of nameless funds.
Regardless of the headline, the article states that Elliot was anti-Trump and then became pro-Trump:t that is why there is more concern, above and beyond the problems of non-human-centred capitalism of only caring about a "strong economy" excluding the health of society.
You're making a lot of assumptions otherwise - which of there is only uncertainty and speculation at the moment.
Also, economic drivers are inherently tied to politics.
OTOH, as a capitalist, if the oligarchs aren't breaking laws, then it falls to the dissenters to offer peaceful, appropriate resistance.
#StickItToTheMan
I remember the days when Twitter was weird and diverse and interesting. There was a group of people making *-ebooks bots for strange content, there were people walking in traphouses in major cities and basically doing photo essays. There was so much interesting, unique content on Twitter back then.
Granted, Twitter is certainly imbalanced from the political perspective and it'll be good to see a better balance, but I think that the platform will almost inevitably sway further from the coolest things that they were doing before.
I LOVE politics, but damn if it ain't ruining all kinds of cool tech.
If all of the good people from these platforms would shift away, taking away advertising revenues with them, then platforms that do bad, unacceptable things, would quickly get punished.
If Google resources can’t overcome the momentum of a big service; then no one can except over a long time.
So while I’m very free hand of market sometimes, I realize the reality that these are currently monopolies in their spaces and have to resources to prevent competition via lawsuits and acquisitions.
EDIT: Since you're downvoting me, here's one example - not strictly a cloud provider, but a DoS protection provider, but I'd still argue it counts: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1158406276570734592
Centralized, corruptible bottlenecks like political payment processors and political big cloud providers are eroding the open nature of the internet.
Although I think it’s possible to replace and/or reform some of the current sore spots, the pessimist in me is worried we have deeper social and philosophical problems that will prevent things from moving in that direction. Many people now seem to reject the very idea of apolitical utilities. They consider it immoral to allow the existence of services for people they consider to be severely harming others through their use of that infrastructure, despite the often political and highly debatable nature of that harm.
A free and open internet is built on the same philosophical principles as the first amendment. The spirit of the first amendment is something the people as a whole need to respect in order for it to work.
People forget how much religious sects hated each other when the Bill of Rights was drafted. Europe had been fighting a seemingly endless series of religious conflicts since the protestant reformation, and adherents believed allowing opposing adherents to spread their corrupting influence would literally damn the world to hell.
The first amendment was about allowing others to practice beliefs despite sincere fears that such beliefs would damn the world to hell. If we can’t allow people we consider corrupting to operate, and need to bar all of those corrupting influences from access to core utilities, we are failing to live up to the principles underlying the first amendment and risk plunging back into the kind of sectarian and philosophically based conflict the enlightenment helped us to escape from. If those we dislike and may consider evil are respecting our property rights and are not committing physical violence against us, we should be tolerant and allow them to exist and operate in society and seek to change them only through open dialog, not forceful coercion.
Elliott has always been very clear the absolute only thing they care about is making more money, and finding companies that they believe have a management team that is not 100% laser focused on increasing shareholder value have always been a target for them. Given Dorsey's dual CEO roles and his persona as the tech-male version of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, not out of character at all that they'd be eyeing a change in management.
As an aside, would someone who is more versed in the world of finance explain how these PE companies are able to have so much leverage when the stakes they take are still relatively small (e.g. single digits). Management in firms across the world shudder with fear when Elliott takes a sizable stake, but I don't understand how Elliott can wield so much power without having a greater percentage of shares.
That is a political angle.
As for Elliott’s power, part of that is probably his soft power - ability to persuade enough other shareholders to vote Dorsey out. That means he needs to supply a compelling alternative plan to the current status quo and get enough other shareholders to vote for it. I assume he already had that to some degree before buying the shares, so Dorsey could be in for a battle here.
I've been saying for a while that Twitter is one of the most no-brainer activist targets out there to the point where it's almost a layup. Executive compensation is outrageous, the CEO treats it as a hobby, lots of executive turnover, results have been mostly disappointing, R&D is inexplicable ($700 million to turn the star into a heart), a stock that's done essentially nothing since coming public years ago, and they really have no defenses (eg dual share class). And that's all before we even get to whether the company could benefit by dropping its brazenly liberal bias in how it polices content. I've been joking that Rupert Murdoch should buy it :)
I think looking up why #OkDude was trending in the last few days would give you one example.
Deliberately misgendering someone goes beyond just tacky and into offensive. That's not a liberal thing, that's just a human decency thing. He was unbanned anyway.
The problem is, a lot of the people who seem to take issue with someone choosing to be transgender seem to extract perverse glee from tormenting them deliberately.
Strong disagree. You need to consider what is actually offensive, and when labeling it so is simply hyperbole. Boy who cried wolf.
Gender identity and how someone refers to themselves is a core part of their identity. Deliberately (as in, going out of your way, not as a mistake, but as a conscious act) is indeed offensive. And moreover there's zero need for it, unless your purpose is to cause offense.
Official policies are strongly influenced by prevailing Leftist dogma as well. Questioning whether gender dysphoria (transgenderism) can be considered mental illness would be considered ban worthy on Twitter, in spite of evidence that many cases of transgenderism are either an example of herd following or some sort of dysphoric personally disorder.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with twitter where mobile, desktop, VPN or not, chrome or firefox, they still have 'something went wrong' messages or throttling messages (from a mobile IP!) on the majority of pages loaded from external links.
Twitter is gross to use and has thousands of employees, I could see someone buying in and trying to smooth it out.
You can't fairly disassociate making money and politics, as arguably someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting politics.
The drive alone for only caring about money is one issue, however added to that of the anti- to pro-Trump stance makes this feel a whole lot more sinister.
For those to young enough to remember (you do) there are so many things that happen in this day and age in public companies that would never fly years ago. Part time CEO and for that matter Dorsey's planned move to Africa means he can't be fully focused on what is right for twitter. Which has been the case for some time.
I remember when Obama took office and in the first few weeks he found it necessary to go to a meeting at his kid's school. I can think of many ways political spin wise why he might have done that (people mumbled something about setting a good example for other fathers iirc) but honestly the angle seemed to be 'important that I know what is going on with my kids'. As if his wife Michelle wasn't good to drive that event. Or that somehow the kids of a President need to be hovered over at all lest at that age.
Your comment is really disheartening for me, because it just seems so cynical.
If you can go to your kids school events and it doesn't impact your work (or happiness or makes you happy for that matter) in some way (and your ability to provide for your child's future (key point)) then that is your choice. But this idea (that goes around in today's popular culture) that it's vital in some way that both parents (man or woman) need and should be fully engaged in a child's school activities is simply not right both from my experience and observation over the years (with my own children (grown up, educated and well employed)) and history as well. It's a concept that is bandied about as being good not only w/o proof but absolute.
So my question for you is did you think about this and come to the conclusion that you should attend your kid's school events on your own or is it something you have read in many places and never questioned because 'it's what you do as a parent and it is important'.
Let's take it one step further. Men and women go off to war 'for their country'. They are not able to even be with their children (let alone attend events). It's service for your country that's what you sign up for. Do you think that the job of the President is less involved and important than a single soldier or more? Don't you think his thought process should be on the country and what's good for them and not his (for this particular case) his children?
One last thing. If Obama really cared about his kids he wouldn't have become President. There is nothing normal about being the child of a President. Given both his education and level of achievement and his wife's his children would have had a very nice life going forward w/o needing the drawbacks (both attention and security wise) of being the child of a President. (Not questioning the coolness or upside just saying there is plenty of risk and downside I mean talk about a not normal life even people you meet are most likely angling and want to be around you because of who your parents were and are).
Come on, the excessive use of brackets doesn’t actually render what he said unreadable. He has more than one grown up child.
> Being president is just another job, albeit far more high profile.
Just another job? More high profile? You are joking right?
Also, as a CEO it’s useful to talk sometimes to a broad range of your customers. Doesn’t it make sense for a politician to talk to a broad range of his constituents?
If your philosophy is that people who care about their kids can’t be president, you will get a president who doesn’t care about kids.
That's a judgement based on the idea that going to a kids meeting is a 'good' thing and nobody should question it.
Let's say Obama in his first few weeks decided to walk to a house on the street (with secret service) and do some gardening for someone (without any benefit otherwise as an isolated event) most would probably think that was not only a waste of time but that he had some ulterior motive for doing that. I mean Presidents are well known for blowing off steam by golfing but they aren't going to golf in the first week etc. Sends the wrong message.
Ditto if someone hired a CEO for the company and they spent time on some trivial relaxation time event (and the company was bleeding money) it would be seen as a bad use of time they should be focused.
Go further with this. A company has been hacked and 'all hands on deck'. But the key person well he's off at a school meeting which could either be postponed or perhaps the spouse could handle.
I don't even agree with the idea that they have an issue staying fresh mentally in the sense that that activity would even be the thing to do to do that. (Better to get more sleep and cut out needless meetings etc).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/singer-s-...
That would just be business as usual.
Let's stop beating around the bush and just admit that many are desperate to silence any and all right-leaning voices. Just look at what is happening to Reddit...
And it'd be refreshing to get some free speech going over there after years of fake news and user harassment
FYI this is not 'vulture capitalism', it's not even really capitalism. It's just basic financing.
Now that's quite a playbook.
It's like he was signalling to the market he wanted to get taken over.
Of course, it's not an unreasonable sentiment, but from a corporate / investor relations communications perspective it's fatalistic.