truly wild that the fight over whether social media platforms should be held liable for speech happens the one time they actually do make a feeble attempt at moderation.
It's almost as if this is about optics and politics, and not a good faith discussion about the power that private companies have and whether or not they're doing a good job with it.
My sense is that moderation has been around since virtually the beginning but has been getting more heavy-handed as time goes on. Moderating political views on international-scale open fora, though, seems far newer, and far more troubling.
Most of us are appalled at the censorship in China, and yet we seem to be galloping in that direction. I'd like to feel that people will get sick of it and drop off of these platforms themselves, but I'm not sure that that will happen.
Without getting into the weeds of the discussion, is it really dangerous to suggest that there may be potential for election fraud through mail-in ballots?
Is it simply assumed that this is some kind of hack-proof process?
Strange to find that kind of sentiment in this community, assuming that's what being suggested.
This is an election with multiple candidates, if he is lying, his political opponent can reply and point out his point-of-view as well as the lies. Given that this is possible, how is it better for the platform itself to start participating in the debate on a topic requiring some other domain knowledge?
It's fine to suggest it if you have evidence, but fearmongering baseless claims is extremely dangerous. I believe they already have terms to avoid lots of dangerous language that incites hate/violence, do you disagree with those too?
I think when these platforms become mouthpieces for one way communications, like this case, they deserve criticism for what is said.
Is it not sufficient to discuss the potential for abuse in such a scenario? Does one necessarily need evidence of prior abuse to voice their concern about a potentially broken system?
For instance, in this case the ballots are being automatically mailed to everyone who is registered to vote. Today my roommate is registered to vote. Tomorrow he hypothetically dies of COVID-19. Day after tomorrow, his ballot arrives in the mail. I sign his signature and cast his vote. Fraud.
We are in a status quo where otherwise healthy people are dying by the hundreds and thousands on a weekly basis, plus the other hundreds and thousands dying of typical causes. Their ballots are all being mailed out. Can you explain how the system will be protected from the abuse I am describing? Do I need to provide you with evidence that this is happening before I am allowed to criticize the proposed system?
Anyway - now I have described some hypothetical ways in which the system can be abused. Now I reckon that someone who is better informed about this can reply to this comment and correct wherever I am mistaken and provide references as to how what I am saying is incorrect.
Should a technology company that is running a social media platform now network with expert committees of all topics to provide arguments against electoral candidates whenever they posit something similar to what I have outlined above?
Why is it not better to let their opposing candidates do it themselves? How about a feature where the opponents' replies are pinned below the tweet?
no one denies that voter fraud is possible. the more important question is whether voter fraud is a serious threat to the voting process, and there's no evidence of this.
collecting ballots from the mailboxes of dead people is not exactly a scalable enough way to rig an election for the democrats to warrant serious concern — especially considering how the hardest-struck communities vote democratic anyway. and besides, if you wanted to request a ballot for your sick roommate to perpetuate voter fraud, you could already pull that off in most states.
mail-in-ballot fraud concern-trolling is a long-established propaganda effort that doesn't have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis
That's a point. But it might be that large-scale fraud hasn't really happened yet because the opportunity hasn't really happened yet.
We're starting to hear a few accounts of "ballot harvesting", and I suspect we'll go through several generations of fixes before this becomes as reliable as in-person voting.
(Personally, I don't really care. I give my ballot to my wife to vote anyway.)
Big "tech's" positions about what they will and won't enable people to do have become so inconsistent with public focused principal that I struggle to be sympathetic.
If Section 230 is so important, then who the fuck got us in position that it's the current chesspiece between government and industry?
Consolidation of power invites attention from other power. Once that happens to you, don't expect to win on principal. You've already decided that you're not fighting on principal.
I think the idea is that Twitter should either moderate the content and be (partly) responsible for it, or it should not moderate the content and not be (partly) responsible for it.
This is impossible. People who want this want the actual, literal, impossible.
And I don't understand it. Well, I do, mostly it's bigots wanting free reign to be bigots in someone else's house with a little bit of the ideologically inflexible thrown into the mix.
So I should say I don't understand the people who want this.
Not only that but if conservatives do what they are threatening to do, that will lead to an almost instant, complete, and full censoring of much of their content.
Which online service provider would want to be civilly liable for someone posting a video that says "the only good democrat is a dead democrat" if a nut job throws back a shot of hand sanitizer and goes on a shooting spree because "the president said so"?
Why would that cause instant censoring? It could go the other way too. Content doesn't get censored. No more games by websites like Twitter where they "accidentally" censor one political side over and over. (Or vice versa elsewhere.) The idea is that if these websites get special protections that regular people don't, and are big enough to essentially be the town square, then the values the society itself accepts are what should guide it. In this case that would be free speech.
Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily arguing for this. I'm just trying to explain how else this might work.
Let’s say hacker news could be sued for me posting a comment threatening to kill you and refusing to remove it.
Because in many states (maybe all?) they can be.
Remember, websites are only given immunity if they fail to remove “sueable” content.
Will they (hacker news):
a. Prescreen all comments, like a publisher prescreens manuscripts, or
b. Just do away with user-submitted content, or
c. Let everyone say whatever they want in an orgy of freedom with no moderation whatsoever?
Privately owned media sites will never, ever be a public square just because people use them the same way my yard isn’t a public square because you can walk across it on the way to ring my doorbell so you can ask to put a campaign sign in my grass.
Is the President of the United States of America sharing a video calling for the death of his political opponents a “sue worthy” event? What if he gave a speech saying that? Or published a presidential decree calling for it?
Some people see bigots saying “whatever dude it was just a satire joke” for what it is: bullshit.
They would pick c. All the legislators have to do is set a minimum size and certain exceptions on what can be removed, eg above 100 million users and remove off-topic and spam. HN and 99% of websites would be unaffected, but Twitter, Facebook et al would have to be more hands off in moderation.
If you own a giant piece of land and the government wants to build a highway over a part of it, it's still possible for them to legally do it, even if you refused.
Then you’re saying that some speech is more free than others.
And they won’t pick c, at least not after the first round of lawsuits.
As far as highways go, I don’t follow the analogy. The government has to pay me for any land they take. Do you think that they’ll buy twitter just so conservative bigots can have somewhere to go and be bigoted?
The interesting thing in this case is that Trump's tweet is a violation of the "Election Integrity" policy: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
(see the "Authenticity" section) whereas his other tweets, while inflammatory, are not.
33 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 99.2 ms ] threadMost of us are appalled at the censorship in China, and yet we seem to be galloping in that direction. I'd like to feel that people will get sick of it and drop off of these platforms themselves, but I'm not sure that that will happen.
I think they have an obligation to annotate extremely popular and dangerous comments, but they do not have an obligation to fact check everyone.
For one, galloping in the sense that probably many Chinese citizens would agree with this sentiment.
Try to imagine what Lenny Bruce or George Carlin would think of all this.
So exactly what an I supposed to impute from that?
https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/31/archives/hitler-puts-asid...
Is it simply assumed that this is some kind of hack-proof process?
Strange to find that kind of sentiment in this community, assuming that's what being suggested.
This is an election with multiple candidates, if he is lying, his political opponent can reply and point out his point-of-view as well as the lies. Given that this is possible, how is it better for the platform itself to start participating in the debate on a topic requiring some other domain knowledge?
I think when these platforms become mouthpieces for one way communications, like this case, they deserve criticism for what is said.
For instance, in this case the ballots are being automatically mailed to everyone who is registered to vote. Today my roommate is registered to vote. Tomorrow he hypothetically dies of COVID-19. Day after tomorrow, his ballot arrives in the mail. I sign his signature and cast his vote. Fraud.
We are in a status quo where otherwise healthy people are dying by the hundreds and thousands on a weekly basis, plus the other hundreds and thousands dying of typical causes. Their ballots are all being mailed out. Can you explain how the system will be protected from the abuse I am describing? Do I need to provide you with evidence that this is happening before I am allowed to criticize the proposed system?
Anyway - now I have described some hypothetical ways in which the system can be abused. Now I reckon that someone who is better informed about this can reply to this comment and correct wherever I am mistaken and provide references as to how what I am saying is incorrect.
Should a technology company that is running a social media platform now network with expert committees of all topics to provide arguments against electoral candidates whenever they posit something similar to what I have outlined above?
Why is it not better to let their opposing candidates do it themselves? How about a feature where the opponents' replies are pinned below the tweet?
collecting ballots from the mailboxes of dead people is not exactly a scalable enough way to rig an election for the democrats to warrant serious concern — especially considering how the hardest-struck communities vote democratic anyway. and besides, if you wanted to request a ballot for your sick roommate to perpetuate voter fraud, you could already pull that off in most states.
mail-in-ballot fraud concern-trolling is a long-established propaganda effort that doesn't have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis
We're starting to hear a few accounts of "ballot harvesting", and I suspect we'll go through several generations of fixes before this becomes as reliable as in-person voting.
(Personally, I don't really care. I give my ballot to my wife to vote anyway.)
How would you know a priori if it is a serious threat without the final tally?
Gore v Bush 2000 had a very close total in Florida. Would it not be a serious threat in a similar situation?
If Section 230 is so important, then who the fuck got us in position that it's the current chesspiece between government and industry?
Consolidation of power invites attention from other power. Once that happens to you, don't expect to win on principal. You've already decided that you're not fighting on principal.
Wouldn't Twitter remove Trump asap then? The guy is a trainwreck online.
And I don't understand it. Well, I do, mostly it's bigots wanting free reign to be bigots in someone else's house with a little bit of the ideologically inflexible thrown into the mix.
So I should say I don't understand the people who want this.
Not only that but if conservatives do what they are threatening to do, that will lead to an almost instant, complete, and full censoring of much of their content.
Which online service provider would want to be civilly liable for someone posting a video that says "the only good democrat is a dead democrat" if a nut job throws back a shot of hand sanitizer and goes on a shooting spree because "the president said so"?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-ret...
Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily arguing for this. I'm just trying to explain how else this might work.
Because in many states (maybe all?) they can be.
Remember, websites are only given immunity if they fail to remove “sueable” content.
Will they (hacker news):
a. Prescreen all comments, like a publisher prescreens manuscripts, or
b. Just do away with user-submitted content, or
c. Let everyone say whatever they want in an orgy of freedom with no moderation whatsoever?
Privately owned media sites will never, ever be a public square just because people use them the same way my yard isn’t a public square because you can walk across it on the way to ring my doorbell so you can ask to put a campaign sign in my grass.
Is the President of the United States of America sharing a video calling for the death of his political opponents a “sue worthy” event? What if he gave a speech saying that? Or published a presidential decree calling for it?
Some people see bigots saying “whatever dude it was just a satire joke” for what it is: bullshit.
If you own a giant piece of land and the government wants to build a highway over a part of it, it's still possible for them to legally do it, even if you refused.
And they won’t pick c, at least not after the first round of lawsuits.
As far as highways go, I don’t follow the analogy. The government has to pay me for any land they take. Do you think that they’ll buy twitter just so conservative bigots can have somewhere to go and be bigoted?
At this point we should probably wait until something actually happens, and then hopefully the discussion will have details to be grounded in.