> The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites.
EFF supporting corporate personhood and private censorship?
It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
It is a naive hope that technology alone can solve major social problems.
> It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication ...
My response is: yes, innovation can be good, exciting, powerful. But never forget to assess how human nature will respond.
> ... with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
Perhaps this will arrive, but I doubt it. Governments have many levers to influence behavior. Unless you are an anarchist, I suspect you support some role for goverment.
Even if a new communication form arises that cannot be policed -- be careful what you hope for. Free speech is not a panacea.
I see. Hold your ground for free speech till... Ok, we were kidding we were just bluffing. Go ahead. We don't care. We support corporate censorship now full throat. It's for the best. We're looking out for your own good.
I mean really, so you know it was in the government's purview to hold Snowden, Manning and Assange accountable to what's within their rights too. Nice to see you sway with the wind there EFF.
Guess Biden can pick up the phone and tell them to let them hang out to dry because you know, the government has the right. Why, why bother contesting them, right?
I was the one thing. The one thing you had as a mission.
They obviously must have been on the fence about it during the summer and it tortured their conscience so much that this was just too much for them to bear and they no longer could believe in freedom of speech.
We'll probably hear them retracting support for Snowden soon. they're probably typing it up as we speak.
I'm sorry but it's not consistent with protecting digital rights.
This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino.
Below a poster liked a response by the ACLU which is a much better response to Freedom of Speech than that by the EFF. The EFF caved. They abandoned their one and only mission to promote freedom of speech.
The fact is that a company has the right to moderate their own content because that in and of itself is free speech. There is a difference between the government not allowing you to have a say vs. a company moderating their own platform that they own
> This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino.
In both cases the EFF sided with the company's ability to practice their free speech instead of the government compelling them to speak or not speak. Seems perfectly consistent.
EFF seems to dislike corporations and governments working together against people, whether voluntary or compelled. I expect they would dislike Tim Cook handing over info, and would dislike Twitter being compelled to carry speech by government officials.
Conservatives are getting the teeniest taste of being the wrong color in the only grocery store in town that are mysteriously always out of everything, or trying to buy a wedding cake while gay.
Except they're not.
I would love the perfection of that, but all they're getting is the same treatment on-line as if they did the same screaming at the other customers and urinating in the isles in a grocery store.
They are stinking up the place, not merely by existing, but specifically through their deeds, and so it is not merely allowed, but an obligation, to deal with them.
The existence of #notallconservatives has no bearing, including no invalidating bearing, on this point.
Decent #notallconservatives, if they actually were so, could and should have policed their own indecent cousins. If they didn't, then they are complicit.
Any decent #notallconservatives didn't get kicked off of any other platforms in the first place. They lost nothing.
There is no cruel unfair intolerance to cry over here, any more than my comment getting a downvote, which favor you will note I didn't return, as long as we're trying to talk about intolerance. ;)
The EFF has held this position for quite some time. They think the existing laws are just fine and oppose the idea that additional regulation would be meaningful in compelling companies to do the right thing. Instead, they worked with other activist organizations to create The Santa Clara Principles. [0]
The chief problem is that enforcement will always be unequal, especially when the majority of people in positions of authority come from one political culture. The EFF thinks it's just fine to deal with this retroactively, but basically, that's saying it's okay to sacrifice a few to save the many. I'm okay with saying that if you're okay with making the consequences for sacrificing those few huge. eg: If Facebook disables someones account because they misunderstood some context because they don't have people working there that can properly frame it, then Facebook owes them substantial damages.
Free speech is not just the freedom to say what you want to say. It is also the freedom not to be compelled to say what you don't want to say. That includes the right not to be compelled to let others use you to broadcast messages you disagree with.
Furthermore, freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences.
Wait... so Zuckerberg is totally cool if he goes and censors anything and everything that speaks ill of him or Facebook? Cool if he censors anyone who sues FB or him? Is that your position on a medium that is built for people to post diverse opinions?
What if he suffers a stroke and suddenly becomes a religious nut, cool if he only allows promotion of his religion on his medium and bans all others?
Zuckerberg is free to do what he wants on the platform he owns. Just like you're free to do what you want on a platform you own. Or are you saying that if you publish a webpage on your own server promoting your religion I can force you to also post my religion on the same page?
So what is the line at which you're not longer able to run a platform you built the way you want? 10 users? 100? 1 million? 1 billion? Or is it just whatever you personally feel qualifies?
That is very nearly the opposite of what I said. Freedom of speech is not the freedom from consequences. It may be perfectly legal for Zuckerberg to do something like that, but it would most certainly not be cool. He'd rightfully be considered an asshole, and his advertising revenue would probably take a large hit as a result of everyone else exercising their own rights of free speech and free association. As well they should.
However, that hypothetical isn't a great analogy for the reality that we're talking about here. It's a decent enough parallel in a strictly legal sense. But let's keep it real: one isn't making nearly as much of an asshole of oneself by refusing to help someone undermine democracy. Nor is one making much of an asshole of oneself by refusing to support the activities of white supremacists.
By leaving "totally cool" undefined, your point is ambiguous. There are legal, moral, and social aspects here. The discussion will be more productive if you will clarify.
> Free speech is not just the freedom to say what you want to say. It is also the freedom not to be compelled to say what you don't want to say.
This is a powerful idea.
Have you found legal protections in the United States for this principle? I can think of some limited examples (Miranda rights, for example), but I do not, off the top of my head, see the the U.S. Constitution as generally protecting this right broadly.
What are you trying to say Biden can do now because of this? It wasn’t clear to me.
But more broadly what is your position here? Are you saying companies and people that run any kind of forum are not allowed to moderate it? They must allow all posts? Or do they have to have approval from the government for their moderation? Or do you want all forums and social media to be nationalized run by the government and we can have a state social media?
Surely I’d think state media and state censorship is worse for everyone than private media and private censorship (which is something we have always had in the US). And surely forcing every website with a commenting system to post everything anyone wants to share is not fair on anyone either. The problem therefore is something other than these bans.
They're saying to apply the same rules to everyone, and that the rules should be based on a human rights framework. Those seem like pretty good ideals to me.
Unfortunately this is categorically untrue. Twitter does not ban international terrorists from its ranks nor does it remove regular people who say awful things on Twitter. Go for it, do a search for violent threats on twitter. See if they have banned every account in Africa or the Middle East, or Asia, etc. Even north America.
They may ban Luis CK for misogyny let's say, but they sure as hell would not ban all the Bros who use misogynistic language. Do you think we can't find twitter handles of cartelists making terroristic threats in Mexico or other places? Is that all gone now?
Twitter has a system that misses a lot but they ban regular people all the time. You can pick up a suspension for saying you hope someone steps on a lego.
It has to be. EFF is pro free-speech and pro privacy (fights censorship tools and government back doors to encryption, etc). Huge powerful corporations coordinating to censor someone is antithetical to their mission.
However, they can’t take the pro free speech stance here because most of their donors are generally leftists who absolutely despise Trump. So the only move is to put the mission on the back burner and kowtow to the zeitgeist.
[..]A legislative counsel member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned Friday that the suspension of President Donald Trump's social media accounts wielded "unchecked power," by Twitter and Facebook.
Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU said in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.[..]
Meanwhile Twitter lets "Hang Mike Pence" go trending with 14,000 tweets (that oh so peaceful, non-violent Twitter, not deserving of being removed from the Internet, unlike Parler).
Everyone knows what's going on, the nature of the blatant double standards and bias that have gone on for years now (with eg left wing celebrities openly, routinely calling for violence with zero consequences). The Republicans were dumb enough to not do anything about these speech-controlling monopoly platforms while they had a chance. Now we've got big tech CCP censorship rolling through the virtual streets.
Yeah, this is quite remarkable. basically they are agreeing with the Government's case against Snowden. If most people would go to Jail for what Snowden did then so should Snowden!
Yay EFF! Thanks for the cooked spaghetti backbone buddy.
The problem is that this companies leaders are not independent. They go to summits/foruns/events with politicians, think tanks and foundations, and they subscribe to this other organizations rules. So at some point this actions move from freedom to monopoly?
This is absolutely as close as anyone should come to arguing against removing Trump. Once you're inciting violence free speech goes out the window -- and free speech here also gives companies the right to block you.
Free speech like the response to this week by the Cincinnati Mayor?
> "These are traitors," Cranley said, mentioning a pro-Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, a California resident who was shot and killed by Capitol police and a history of supporting unfounded conspiracy theories. "Traitors get shot. That's what happened." [0]
Is that the sort of inciting violence that should get you banned on Twitter?
1. "Trial by combat" means one person fights one other person, and the victor is considered "right."
2. And note the context! In this case it is clear that he is speaking of a one-on-one challenge where reputation is at stake, not life or limb, and where the combat is making the evidence public. Watch the video. Don't take my word for it: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1346847382768676864
I'm no Rudy fan, and I'm not going to try to justify what Trump and other Republicans have been doing, but give me a break. If Cranley isn't inciting, then neither was Rudy.
> A platform should not apply one set of rules to most of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful.
Ok... why not?
A government is an unavoidably violent institution, and what's more, one which assumes the right and responsibility to use violence. In a free nation, it derives that right through various rituals from the consent of the governed, but it remains a fact: if a governmental leader says, for example, "There's a curfew, stay home or be arrested", that's what's going to happen.
If I message someone else "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you", it's different, isn't it.
So I ask again: why should there be one set of rules for both?
Maybe the EFF has an anarchist political philosophy and doesn't think the state should have a monopoly on violence and that these types of positions of power shouldn't exist?
There's a difference between prescription and description, and just because you have the prescriptive belief that nobody should murder doesn't mean your worldview works that way. All governments since forever have used violence as a core technique for order, and I doubt the EFF thinks otherwise.
Freedom-respecting governments are bound by the rule of law. A government official tweeting "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you" in the absence of a lawful policy directing as such is not really acting pursuant to the government's "right and responsibility to use violence", so there's hardly any reason to treat them differently from a random person doing the same.
Any rule by any group ultimately comes down to enforcement through some variety of force. I have never seen it as a particularly useful talking point to highlight that governments are also subject to this foundational principal of the enFORCEment of a rule/law etc.
I think you're probably looking at this from the opposite side of the coin that the EFF is. The EFF is looking at people on social media who are government officials and have gotten away with condoning violence because of some high ideals that say having a cancer in the sunlight is better than hiding it away in the dark while normal citizens are held to a different set of arbitrary rules that are often not enforced equally.
In a nutshell, one of the bedrock ideas of liberal society is that government officials and governments are not the same thing. We permit the government to do some things that individuals are not permitted to do, out of necessity, because we have yet to construct a society that eliminates the need for certain ostensibly necessary evils. We find that delegating those responsibilities to a corporate body that is largely (if imperfectly) answerable to the population as a whole for its actions tends to result in better outcomes than any other alternative that's been tried. The actual execution of those responsibilities then gets sub-delegated out to individuals, but they are supposed to only be permitted to do so when lawfully acting on behalf of the government. Again, out of necessity. While it's not awesome, anything else anyone has tried so far has ended up working out even worse.
As individuals acting on their own behalf, though, nobody should be considered above the norms of civil society. By definition - if it didn't work that way, society would not be civil.
(I'd highly recommend reading both A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick for two different but equally thoughtful treatments of this sort of thing.)
Where does it leave the people who lack trust in that kind of delegation? What do we do about that?
I'm inclined to agree with what you describe, but it worries me how many of them (us?) have come to feel that it doesn't work.
We have a growing left convinced that 'the government' is just a bunch of elites caring about maintaining their wealth, and a growing right that believes the same.
I feel both perspectives are at least not unreasonable. So as someone trying to be reasonable and in favor of maintaining some kind of order, where does that leave me? How do we maintain order without accepting a very small elite to maintain it's (corrupt) power? How do we talk to our 'constituents' about this?
I'm truly in favor of solutions that don't end up causing societal chaos and killing people, but I'm lost as to the how.
That gets outside of political theory and into practicalities, which isn't somewhere I'm personally prepared to go in any serious way.
But, here's one thought: Texas state legislators are paid a salary of $7,200 per year. Not exactly a lot to live on. So they've clearly got to either be independently wealthy, or figure out some other source of income. "A well nourished Legislature, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to seek and receive graft shall not be infringed." Or something like that.
Two planes fly in to the world trade centres. Is Osama bin Laden allowed to tweet "Today we conducted a successful planes operation against the US imperialist international terrorists and sent them scurrying. Today is a good day, we good guys have struck a firm and lasting blow to the bad guys." ?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
If north korea fires artillery shells at south korea because of its maritime border dispute should it be allowed to make a similar tweet?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
Can the US president make a tweet like that when he launches a criminal attack on another country?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
Some people hold the view (which you can disagree with, but regardless is a perfectly reasonable view for someone to hold even if you disagree with it) that crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity even when they are carried out by lawfully appointed officials.
If this is two oblique of an answer. Consider this. The same principles can be applied in two near identical circumstances and come up with quite different conclusions.
For example, vigilante justice or mafia-led street enforcement activities can be considered criminal acts, even if it would come to the same results and verdicts as a law enforcement operation and/or judicial process.
I don't think anybody is proposing banning police officials because they lawfully "kidnapped and trafficked" someone by arresting them.
>So I ask again: why should there be one set of rules for both?
because in a well functioning Republic communication channels for the government are public, and private companies serve private customers.
The only reason we're having this discussion is because Donald Trump has intentionally conflated the private and public sphere by using his personal twitter account to conduct governmental affairs.
This is terrible because it is 1. insecure and intransparent, 2. there's no established procedures for anything, 3. it conflates his private interest with his public interest (i.e. his decisions in office can be influenced by his commercial interests on the platform).
There should be different rules for Trump when he acts as the president, and indeed he has established communication channels for that very purpose, but when he speaks as a private citizen on a private platform he ought to be treated like everyone else. That's the basis of any non-corrupt system. When Angela Merkel goes to the supermarket (which she in fact does herself) she stands in the queue like everyone else because the fact that she inhabits the office of the Chancellor does not give her superpowers when she enters an ALDI.
Echo of majority view on incident. Clarification of legal basis for censorship on private platforms. Support of section 230. Concern about bias in private censorship. Call for transparency and consistency.
Yep. Despite all the agony and defeat that comes with being a trusty practitioner, Marxism comprises the only reconcilable political comprehensions of our society today.
They sort of have to be. In the fight to preserve electronic freedoms, freedom from censorship and freedom to operate a service as one pleases come at odds with each other in cases like this.
If instead, the government had confiscated Parler's domains, or enjoined Apple, Google, and Amazon from booting them, I think EFF's response would (rightly/expectedly IMO) be very different.
As an EFF member I think they made the right call here.
I guess there are ways to transcend this conflict.
For example, perhaps social networks can sort themselves into two types, public-square type and non-public-square type.
The networks which self-identify as public-square shall (1) employ a stronger set of freedom of speech protection rules, (2) be supervised by the government, an independent council, the media and the public, and (3) receive financial incentive, which could be a limited tax exempt status or governmental subsidy, depending on your preference.
> As an EFF member I think they made the right call here.
They didn't. They chickened out. The ACLU was more vocal in its opposition to censorship. That should show how cowardly the EFF is being right now.
You falsely made it seem like EFF only deals with or is concerned with government "suppression". That isn't true. Most of EFF dealings is with corporate "suppression".
Under normal circumstances, EFF would have been far more vocal. But since they are extremely biased in this case, they chose to be anti-free speech.
"The EFF was active in the United States presidential election 2016 because of online phishing related to the controversy over fabrication of election results. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at the University of Michigan, wrote an article that was published in Medium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania."
Don't you think EFF's belief in 2016 election fraud had anything to do with their lukewarm defense of Trump's free speech here?
They have a long history of questioning voting results, but only when republicans win...
"The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the United States presidential election 2004."
I generally think EFF is a worthy enterprise, but it's obvious political bias is the reason for their pathetic "support" for free speech here.
The implication being that everything the EFF has done against corporate control of the internet is only good as long as their criticism doesn't extend to corporate censorship?
This "looking the other way if it's my guy" attitude towards violence as reached an unacceptable level. The Left and Right are both equally guilty in my view. You want to stop Systemic Racism, then end the fscking war on drugs. You want to stop White Supremacists, then perhaps we need to teach our children the simple universal spiritualist ideas such that people are to be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. People with money and power WANT Americans at each other's throats. It diverts the attention from how they have sold out our manufacturing base and jobs for short term profits.
https://twitter.com/balajis : there are some interesting viewpoints being espoused on balajis' twitter feed. one of them cut and paste below. (there is a 'thread unroll' feature on twitter.. too many retweets. but it makes for an interesting train of tweet thoughts)
quoting balajis
[..]How would countries build sovereign apps?
1) Clone the features of WeChat, FB, or Twitter, which is much easier than developing from scratch
2) Encourage or requirr citizens to sign up, which is much easier if you’re a state
The idea that this particular U.S. president is exceptional underpins the policies and actions of the platform companies. The EFF has to respond, as this is specifically what they were set up to respond to, sort of what the ACLU's original mandate was.
However, that major platform companies are working on behalf of a (still) opposition party to obstruct and suppress a (still) sitting president with some 10 days left in his term, could have unforeseen legal consequences. It will be a very interesting week.
The problem is that if well meaning people break the rules, there is no reason for less well meaning ones not to ignore them.
Not a lawyer, but most countries have a rule, if perhaps only a convention, where you don't collude with other businesses to obstruct the sitting head of state, and probably specifically during a state of national emergency. Maybe the U.S. is different, and even if it isn't, the incoming admin won't prosecute it, but it looks bad for tech platforms either way. We indeed live in interesting times.
Telling me to google a single word is not an argument or a citation. If you have an argument to make or a source to cite, go for it. Otherwise you are just making stuff up.
I’m more concerned about parler being banned or that “hang pence” was trending, but banning the president - who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing.
I’m against all rioting (all year it feels like) and what happened Jan 6 was horrifying.
You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers.
banning / arresting / killing all the leaders and then banning their other platforms will make people scared and ready to fight.
>You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers.
this. this is why the deplatforming of a single political leader is confusing.
if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. gagging him from ever reaching that base is counter productive.
one day..we will all be looking back at these events and scratch our heads. this course of action makes no sense. its all very strange and surreal. irrational.
> if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do.
On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? And if he did have the motivation, on what basis do you think he would be successful?
> "if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do."
Trump has never given any indication that he would do this if he could. He's had plenty of opportunities to call out bad behavior and has been at best equivocal when's he's gestured in that direction.
Yes, after four years of the Trump administration, this is what we'll scratch our heads about. This is what will seem strange and surreal and irrational. Absolutely.
> but banning the president - who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing.
This is not all he said, nor does this capture the key context.
The argument is simple: the risk of allowing Trump to continue to have access to Facebook and Twitter outweighs the benefit.
I would like to point out that the president has an unmatched ability to put out information, independent of social media, including: whitehouse.gov, press releases, press briefings, and the major television networks.
I don’t have a ball in this match other than the one that wants to continue to raise my daughter without civil unrest. How are you so certain of the benefit of this action?
Just commenting to clarify that "hang Pence" trending was associated with folks sharing and retweeting videos of people chanting hang pence at the capitol. It was NOT an incitement to violence and to hang Pence. If anything, it was actually a condemnation of those calling to hang Pence.
> You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers.
Please explain what about Trump's history suggests that he will be convinced?
I understand a respect, even some degree of zeal, for principles such as freedom of speech. But these do not exist in a vacuum. And, practically, the degree of the president's ability to speak to an audience is unparalleled.
In short, there are larger concerns here besides the general principle of free speech in the abstract. We should be discussing the consequences of incitement, falsehood, provocation, threats, disinformation, insults, and so on.
Up until Trump, societal norms, by and large, kept presidential speech within sensible bounds. [1] Trump has ignored those norms.
[1] Of course, there was plenty of deceipt, lying, cover-ups, rhetoric, and so on. But by any measure, Trump has blown the door off civility and credibility.
I'm not sure of this, but I have a hypothesis that you're misunderstanding the Trump phenomenon.
Here's the idea to consider: Trump was sincere! Trump is basically always sincere. Even when he contradicts himself in a matter of minutes. He is a master bullshitter who grew up going to Normal Vincent Peale's church. His entire life is built on the idea that it's all a stage, all a game. The RESULT of that is: he's extremely practiced at coming up with stories and convincing himself. In other words, self-deception. He knows he's bullshitting, but he doesn't think a reality beyond bullshitting exists. He believes what he says all the time. That's why he doesn't give the normal tells that indicate shifty lying and deception. Unlike the other politicians who are obviously being calculating and withholding their real thoughts, Trump is transparent. He's saying exactly what he actually thinks, and even when it is complete oxymoronic, he experiences no cognitive dissonance. He's not really lying in the normal sense, he's delusional.
Trump is the ultimate self-deceiver. That's why his followers find him so appealing. He's authentic in that you can tell he really does say what he thinks and doesn't hold back. It's just that his mind is so constantly focused on whatever will get people to like him and otherwise what serves his interest, the content of his beliefs is similar to what it would be if he were consciously being deceptive. But if he were concerned about his stories being consistent and believable in content, he'd get all nervous and seem more like a liar. He's able to talk with sincerity because he doesn't care if his stories make sense, even as bullshit he still believes them for himself, at least enough to say the things in earnest.
Of course, I don't really know, but this would explain part of how it's possible for so many people to have still seen him as honest despite the plainly factually wrong things that come out of him.
> who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing.
“we”?
He also called the insurrectionists “patriots”, and said that he “loved them”, while they were holding the capital building, looting, causing damage, and parading confederate flags through the halls. Just FYI. As like another thing to consider.
It’s sort of surprising how you didn’t mention that yourself. It was literally in the same tweet. I guess it must have slipped your mind.
Besides that, the people responsible for violent crimes will very likely be prosecuted and harshly punished. The message "go home peacefully" is irrelevant for those people and is probably intended for everyone else. Looting is bad, but it's "jail time" bad and not "undying hatred" bad. It's okay to show some compassion to looters while telling them to change their behavior.
2. Build Empathy & Rapport (recognize each others mindset)
3. Exert Influence & Change
It's also likely, he wasn't 100% aware of the circumstances.
Coming out and saying, "I abandon you, you traitors" wouldn't help. Imagine if there were hostages or more bombs! Saying it in a nice way could defuse the situation. Damning it while they are still at or in the building is not a good idea.
In a later video Trump said "they'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" and "we need Law and Order". So, I don't think it's a fair characterization given the context.
You're giving the president here way more leeway than is necessary.
The leave in peace video clearly had a subtext (he mentioned the election being stolen no less than 3 times in the video) and was not aimed at subduing the crowd at all. Furthermore, the later video where he said that the trespassers would be prosecuted is clearly scripted/edited (from the monotone and cuts in the filming), and likely happened because of some strong-arming (how else did he go from "we will never concede" to admitting defeat in a single day?)
My best guess as to what happened there was that Mitch McConnell (or someone else) figured that he could whip enough votes to impeach & convict if need be and Trump, facing potential consequences, reluctantly decided to play ball.
question: the whole thing is a blur. i think the last tweet by the POTUS was that he wont be attending the inauguration. was the decision at twitter made by jack & co before the last tweet or after it?
jack was vacationing on an island in the french polynesia while he and his executives made the decision. maybe it's a time zone thing? because the timeline doesnt make sense to me. after the temporary ban, what happened that it became a permanent ban? what did the potus say that violence was glorified?
This is from the blog [..]On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Shortly thereafter, the President Tweeted:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”[..]
I don’t see what you are reading from it. Do you want to translate?
In context, Twitter sees this as encouraging the violent minority of his supporters to do whatever they like at the inauguration, since he will not be there, only Pence, Biden and Harris.
There is a large difference between the EFF (a) promoting privacy protections on social media versus (b) advocating for free speech on social media platforms.[1] I want to emphasize that (b) (free speech on social media) is not protected by the First Amendment.
The First Amendment begins with:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The First Amendment is about what Congress cannot do. One has to look elsewhere to understand free speech protections (if any) in other contexts.
[1] I have not reviewed the EFF's complete history regarding free speech on social media. Of course, the EFF tends to opposes censorship, but I would also expect they have a history of taking more nuanced and calibrated stances on free speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.
I disagree. For example people who know what their officials are saying which is why twitter let trump on while he violated some rules. Making shit they say less visible is not a great idea
I think EFF should look for improvements to their communication on this topic. They need to be providing much more practical leadership guidance.
The ideological goals don't need compromise -- but the practical reality is that our society _needs_ an organization like EFF to be at the forefront on these topics -- advocating for better abstractions to help shape how we as a society should think and deal with these complex issues. EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. This article to me felt like the right wing response to gun violence events "we send our thoughts and prayers but let's not politicize this tragedy".
In particular -- there are simple ways to avoid worry over the "slippery slope" associated with defining policies that apply different rules to different users -- you can espouse policy frameworks that are explicitly parameterized by impact (impact is a bit fuzzy to capture in truth but conceptually clear -- and simple proxies suffice to communicate the concept -- in most cases the number of followers is a reasonably close conceptual proxy for a social network).
If you have 70 million followers and you say "let's punish immigrants" it's just simply a different thing than if you say the same thing and you have 10 followers -- pretending there "must not exist" a different framework for responding to events that occur on such vastly different scales is not practical and it's actually a failure to provide good advice here on an ideological level -- because we _know_ that these events are different and project meaningfully different risk profiles onto the world.
There is not a clear ideological reason to falsely pretend that "the same thing" is happening when two users with such vastly different impact publish the exact same sequence of words ... The threat model for "danger of communication" is based on impact and so should be the policy frameworks aimed at managing these risks.
The context as I see it -- one of the largest (if not the largest) social media megaphones controlled by a single human was recently silenced because of a recognition that this megaphone was being actively used to cause widespread harm.
The eff response to these actions is to emphasize that such blocking should be allowed so long as a consistent set of rules is used to perform blocking for
this reason across a whole network. And they suggest the communication scale of the actor being blocked should not be a factor in the management criteria applied to the speech flowing across a given channel.
That's a principled position but it's also ludicrous - and it's impossible to take advice from that position which can then be applied to the real world. It's as tho they've said "yes, we acknowledge that free speech faces limits -- such as no yelling fire in a crowded theater -- but we do not acknowledge the existence of crowded theaters". What kind of advice are we left to take from such philosophizing?
Text sent over the largest of megaphones is just not the same thing as text sent over the much smaller megaphones available to most social media users.
Taking the EFF position espoused here to an extreme for illustration -- suppose Alice decides to use the emergency broadcast system as her personal twitter account for a day. With her every message all the cell phones in the country buzz an emergency broadcast alert letting us know what Alice wants to say. She exercises her right to political speech to let us all know that she thinks birth control pills are evil -- and in so doing she consumes some seconds of attention from 300 million people. At the same time -- she cross-posts to her twitter where she is followed by 50 people.
The EFF are more or less suggesting that the same principles and rules should apply to her twitter posts and her emergency broadcast system posts.
But in reality -- do we consider these information publishing channels directly comparable? Are we forced to accept that because these are both information publishing channels -- the set of things Alice is allowed to say on both channels must be the same?
Obviously we are not forced to take this position. And obviously this is a bit of a silly example since we all already know that different rules apply to the emergency broadcasting network -- yet we don't use the word "censor" to describe the set of things we don't want Alice to send out over the emergency broadcast network -- and why is that?
Going back to
my claim that they are silencing themselves -- I think the EFF position in this article is basically abstract philosophy and that they are going out of their way to avoid addressing any of the specifics required to guide action in the real world. They had an opportunity to say something useful -- instead they said nothing in more words.
I am tentatively willing to accept that these are simply applications of free speech and section 230, provided that the EFF prompt governments to write legal frameworks for what these platforms can and cannot do.
It is not acceptable to have companies this large, and this influential, 100% unaccountable to democracy.
> It is not acceptable to have companies this large, and this influential, 100% unaccountable to democracy.
Perhaps I'm not understanding you, but as written, this is not true.
First, Congress can pass laws. Second, outside of legislation, there are democratic-capitalistic feedback mechanisms as well: people can 'vote with their feet'; decide what services to use, recommend, and criticize.
So I think you meant something else?
To be clear, I'm not defending these companies, and I do support intelligent (as opposed to reactionary), targeted (as opposed to blunt), principled (as opposed to arbitrary), and simple (as opposed to byzantine, inscrutable) regulations.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadEFF supporting corporate personhood and private censorship?
It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
> It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication ...
My response is: yes, innovation can be good, exciting, powerful. But never forget to assess how human nature will respond.
> ... with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
Perhaps this will arrive, but I doubt it. Governments have many levers to influence behavior. Unless you are an anarchist, I suspect you support some role for goverment.
Even if a new communication form arises that cannot be policed -- be careful what you hope for. Free speech is not a panacea.
I mean really, so you know it was in the government's purview to hold Snowden, Manning and Assange accountable to what's within their rights too. Nice to see you sway with the wind there EFF.
Guess Biden can pick up the phone and tell them to let them hang out to dry because you know, the government has the right. Why, why bother contesting them, right?
I was the one thing. The one thing you had as a mission.
i guess we all learnt something new. didnt we..boys and girls?
We'll probably hear them retracting support for Snowden soon. they're probably typing it up as we speak.
Hosting and publishing certain speech is a liability.
Why should the state dictate what a corporation must allow on their own servers facilitated by the services they created?
Should the state force YouTube to include videos no advertiser wants to be associated with?
EFF's statement is consistent with protecting digital rights.
This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino.
Below a poster liked a response by the ACLU which is a much better response to Freedom of Speech than that by the EFF. The EFF caved. They abandoned their one and only mission to promote freedom of speech.
In both cases the EFF sided with the company's ability to practice their free speech instead of the government compelling them to speak or not speak. Seems perfectly consistent.
EFF is HAPPY yes? That's what you're saying? I mean, in this hypothetical this would be what Tim/Apple wants...
It’s still the weekend. We’ll see.
That's freedom of association.
Except they're not.
I would love the perfection of that, but all they're getting is the same treatment on-line as if they did the same screaming at the other customers and urinating in the isles in a grocery store.
They are stinking up the place, not merely by existing, but specifically through their deeds, and so it is not merely allowed, but an obligation, to deal with them.
I am sorry that you have never met good people of a different political leaning in your life. Hope it gets better for you.
Decent #notallconservatives, if they actually were so, could and should have policed their own indecent cousins. If they didn't, then they are complicit.
Any decent #notallconservatives didn't get kicked off of any other platforms in the first place. They lost nothing.
There is no cruel unfair intolerance to cry over here, any more than my comment getting a downvote, which favor you will note I didn't return, as long as we're trying to talk about intolerance. ;)
You have made your point. Have a nice rest of the day.
The chief problem is that enforcement will always be unequal, especially when the majority of people in positions of authority come from one political culture. The EFF thinks it's just fine to deal with this retroactively, but basically, that's saying it's okay to sacrifice a few to save the many. I'm okay with saying that if you're okay with making the consequences for sacrificing those few huge. eg: If Facebook disables someones account because they misunderstood some context because they don't have people working there that can properly frame it, then Facebook owes them substantial damages.
[0] https://santaclaraprinciples.org/
Furthermore, freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences.
What if he suffers a stroke and suddenly becomes a religious nut, cool if he only allows promotion of his religion on his medium and bans all others?
Good god, we’re effed!
That is very nearly the opposite of what I said. Freedom of speech is not the freedom from consequences. It may be perfectly legal for Zuckerberg to do something like that, but it would most certainly not be cool. He'd rightfully be considered an asshole, and his advertising revenue would probably take a large hit as a result of everyone else exercising their own rights of free speech and free association. As well they should.
However, that hypothetical isn't a great analogy for the reality that we're talking about here. It's a decent enough parallel in a strictly legal sense. But let's keep it real: one isn't making nearly as much of an asshole of oneself by refusing to help someone undermine democracy. Nor is one making much of an asshole of oneself by refusing to support the activities of white supremacists.
This is a powerful idea.
Have you found legal protections in the United States for this principle? I can think of some limited examples (Miranda rights, for example), but I do not, off the top of my head, see the the U.S. Constitution as generally protecting this right broadly.
But it’s not Twitters speech. It’s Trumps.
Of course on the USSR you were free to rattle off “Lenin was a Traitor” in front of the Kremlin, but you had to face the consequences of that.
Clearly not comparable to being put in a jail, and losing a job as well as future access to some jobs.
But more broadly what is your position here? Are you saying companies and people that run any kind of forum are not allowed to moderate it? They must allow all posts? Or do they have to have approval from the government for their moderation? Or do you want all forums and social media to be nationalized run by the government and we can have a state social media?
Surely I’d think state media and state censorship is worse for everyone than private media and private censorship (which is something we have always had in the US). And surely forcing every website with a commenting system to post everything anyone wants to share is not fair on anyone either. The problem therefore is something other than these bans.
They may ban Luis CK for misogyny let's say, but they sure as hell would not ban all the Bros who use misogynistic language. Do you think we can't find twitter handles of cartelists making terroristic threats in Mexico or other places? Is that all gone now?
However, they can’t take the pro free speech stance here because most of their donors are generally leftists who absolutely despise Trump. So the only move is to put the mission on the back burner and kowtow to the zeitgeist.
https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-... :
[..]A legislative counsel member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned Friday that the suspension of President Donald Trump's social media accounts wielded "unchecked power," by Twitter and Facebook.
Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU said in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.[..]
Everyone knows what's going on, the nature of the blatant double standards and bias that have gone on for years now (with eg left wing celebrities openly, routinely calling for violence with zero consequences). The Republicans were dumb enough to not do anything about these speech-controlling monopoly platforms while they had a chance. Now we've got big tech CCP censorship rolling through the virtual streets.
Yay EFF! Thanks for the cooked spaghetti backbone buddy.
> "These are traitors," Cranley said, mentioning a pro-Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, a California resident who was shot and killed by Capitol police and a history of supporting unfounded conspiracy theories. "Traitors get shot. That's what happened." [0]
Is that the sort of inciting violence that should get you banned on Twitter?
[0]: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/08/as-co...
He’s not inciting violence, he’s stating why the violence occurred.
He could also be simply saying treason carries the potential for the death penalty.
Either way not inciting violence.
He isn’t saying go use force against all the insurrectionists, unlike some politicians who were actively saying use force to overthrow the election.
Which politicians said that?
2. And note the context! In this case it is clear that he is speaking of a one-on-one challenge where reputation is at stake, not life or limb, and where the combat is making the evidence public. Watch the video. Don't take my word for it: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1346847382768676864
I'm no Rudy fan, and I'm not going to try to justify what Trump and other Republicans have been doing, but give me a break. If Cranley isn't inciting, then neither was Rudy.
They'd still have to do their normal legal thing they do, while also having to manage a hosting service.
Yeah, you generally have to put in some efforts to realize your beliefs.
Ok... why not?
A government is an unavoidably violent institution, and what's more, one which assumes the right and responsibility to use violence. In a free nation, it derives that right through various rituals from the consent of the governed, but it remains a fact: if a governmental leader says, for example, "There's a curfew, stay home or be arrested", that's what's going to happen.
If I message someone else "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you", it's different, isn't it.
So I ask again: why should there be one set of rules for both?
As individuals acting on their own behalf, though, nobody should be considered above the norms of civil society. By definition - if it didn't work that way, society would not be civil.
(I'd highly recommend reading both A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick for two different but equally thoughtful treatments of this sort of thing.)
I'm inclined to agree with what you describe, but it worries me how many of them (us?) have come to feel that it doesn't work.
We have a growing left convinced that 'the government' is just a bunch of elites caring about maintaining their wealth, and a growing right that believes the same.
I feel both perspectives are at least not unreasonable. So as someone trying to be reasonable and in favor of maintaining some kind of order, where does that leave me? How do we maintain order without accepting a very small elite to maintain it's (corrupt) power? How do we talk to our 'constituents' about this?
I'm truly in favor of solutions that don't end up causing societal chaos and killing people, but I'm lost as to the how.
But, here's one thought: Texas state legislators are paid a salary of $7,200 per year. Not exactly a lot to live on. So they've clearly got to either be independently wealthy, or figure out some other source of income. "A well nourished Legislature, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to seek and receive graft shall not be infringed." Or something like that.
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
If north korea fires artillery shells at south korea because of its maritime border dispute should it be allowed to make a similar tweet?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
Can the US president make a tweet like that when he launches a criminal attack on another country?
Of course not (imo, but your values may differ).
Some people hold the view (which you can disagree with, but regardless is a perfectly reasonable view for someone to hold even if you disagree with it) that crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity even when they are carried out by lawfully appointed officials.
For example, vigilante justice or mafia-led street enforcement activities can be considered criminal acts, even if it would come to the same results and verdicts as a law enforcement operation and/or judicial process.
I don't think anybody is proposing banning police officials because they lawfully "kidnapped and trafficked" someone by arresting them.
because in a well functioning Republic communication channels for the government are public, and private companies serve private customers.
The only reason we're having this discussion is because Donald Trump has intentionally conflated the private and public sphere by using his personal twitter account to conduct governmental affairs.
This is terrible because it is 1. insecure and intransparent, 2. there's no established procedures for anything, 3. it conflates his private interest with his public interest (i.e. his decisions in office can be influenced by his commercial interests on the platform).
There should be different rules for Trump when he acts as the president, and indeed he has established communication channels for that very purpose, but when he speaks as a private citizen on a private platform he ought to be treated like everyone else. That's the basis of any non-corrupt system. When Angela Merkel goes to the supermarket (which she in fact does herself) she stands in the queue like everyone else because the fact that she inhabits the office of the Chancellor does not give her superpowers when she enters an ALDI.
It's as neutral as can be.
If instead, the government had confiscated Parler's domains, or enjoined Apple, Google, and Amazon from booting them, I think EFF's response would (rightly/expectedly IMO) be very different.
As an EFF member I think they made the right call here.
For example, perhaps social networks can sort themselves into two types, public-square type and non-public-square type.
The networks which self-identify as public-square shall (1) employ a stronger set of freedom of speech protection rules, (2) be supervised by the government, an independent council, the media and the public, and (3) receive financial incentive, which could be a limited tax exempt status or governmental subsidy, depending on your preference.
They didn't. They chickened out. The ACLU was more vocal in its opposition to censorship. That should show how cowardly the EFF is being right now.
You falsely made it seem like EFF only deals with or is concerned with government "suppression". That isn't true. Most of EFF dealings is with corporate "suppression".
Under normal circumstances, EFF would have been far more vocal. But since they are extremely biased in this case, they chose to be anti-free speech.
"The EFF was active in the United States presidential election 2016 because of online phishing related to the controversy over fabrication of election results. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at the University of Michigan, wrote an article that was published in Medium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation
Don't you think EFF's belief in 2016 election fraud had anything to do with their lukewarm defense of Trump's free speech here?
They have a long history of questioning voting results, but only when republicans win...
"The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the United States presidential election 2004."
I generally think EFF is a worthy enterprise, but it's obvious political bias is the reason for their pathetic "support" for free speech here.
My principles don't include "force tech companies to host content for terrorists trying to violently overthrow a democracy".
(ACLU, on the other hand, I expect to take the free-speech-absolutist stance...)
The implication being that everything the EFF has done against corporate control of the internet is only good as long as their criticism doesn't extend to corporate censorship?
I hope I'm misinterpreting this.
All I've seen are second-hand statements from senior counsel.
Very interesting times we live in now.
quoting balajis
[..]How would countries build sovereign apps?
1) Clone the features of WeChat, FB, or Twitter, which is much easier than developing from scratch
2) Encourage or requirr citizens to sign up, which is much easier if you’re a state
That’s product and distribution respectively.[..]
essentially..decentralised web.
However, that major platform companies are working on behalf of a (still) opposition party to obstruct and suppress a (still) sitting president with some 10 days left in his term, could have unforeseen legal consequences. It will be a very interesting week.
The problem is that if well meaning people break the rules, there is no reason for less well meaning ones not to ignore them.
Of course, communication companies banning their heads of state is probably normal, unless we'd like to sealion this thread?
Telling me to google a single word is not an argument or a citation. If you have an argument to make or a source to cite, go for it. Otherwise you are just making stuff up.
I’m more concerned about parler being banned or that “hang pence” was trending, but banning the president - who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing.
I’m against all rioting (all year it feels like) and what happened Jan 6 was horrifying.
You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers.
banning / arresting / killing all the leaders and then banning their other platforms will make people scared and ready to fight.
this. this is why the deplatforming of a single political leader is confusing.
if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. gagging him from ever reaching that base is counter productive.
one day..we will all be looking back at these events and scratch our heads. this course of action makes no sense. its all very strange and surreal. irrational.
On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? And if he did have the motivation, on what basis do you think he would be successful?
You are aware he said for everyone to go home and he condemned the violence? https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-condemns-vio...
Trump has never given any indication that he would do this if he could. He's had plenty of opportunities to call out bad behavior and has been at best equivocal when's he's gestured in that direction.
You're right, that it is strange and surreal.
This is not all he said, nor does this capture the key context.
The argument is simple: the risk of allowing Trump to continue to have access to Facebook and Twitter outweighs the benefit.
I would like to point out that the president has an unmatched ability to put out information, independent of social media, including: whitehouse.gov, press releases, press briefings, and the major television networks.
It doesn't sound like the platforms that profit off of our collective division want to do anything to defuse tension.
I'm baffled at how far these companies will go to keep people viewing ads.
Something needs to disempower the newsfeed-driven media companies before the violence snowballs.
Things will only get better when we start trying to find common ground. These media platforms are designed to ensure that doesn't happen.
Edit: To clarify, I do think Trump is the KING of promoting peace. You are correct, and also might I add, very cool. Please give me kiss.
Please explain what about Trump's history suggests that he will be convinced?
I understand a respect, even some degree of zeal, for principles such as freedom of speech. But these do not exist in a vacuum. And, practically, the degree of the president's ability to speak to an audience is unparalleled.
In short, there are larger concerns here besides the general principle of free speech in the abstract. We should be discussing the consequences of incitement, falsehood, provocation, threats, disinformation, insults, and so on.
Up until Trump, societal norms, by and large, kept presidential speech within sensible bounds. [1] Trump has ignored those norms.
[1] Of course, there was plenty of deceipt, lying, cover-ups, rhetoric, and so on. But by any measure, Trump has blown the door off civility and credibility.
He read that, in the usual monotone he reserves for words he doesn't believe for a second. Did you actually believe he was sincere?
Nevertheless, your naivete is like a newborn deer gamboling through a forest.
Here's the idea to consider: Trump was sincere! Trump is basically always sincere. Even when he contradicts himself in a matter of minutes. He is a master bullshitter who grew up going to Normal Vincent Peale's church. His entire life is built on the idea that it's all a stage, all a game. The RESULT of that is: he's extremely practiced at coming up with stories and convincing himself. In other words, self-deception. He knows he's bullshitting, but he doesn't think a reality beyond bullshitting exists. He believes what he says all the time. That's why he doesn't give the normal tells that indicate shifty lying and deception. Unlike the other politicians who are obviously being calculating and withholding their real thoughts, Trump is transparent. He's saying exactly what he actually thinks, and even when it is complete oxymoronic, he experiences no cognitive dissonance. He's not really lying in the normal sense, he's delusional.
Check out https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91612...
Trump is the ultimate self-deceiver. That's why his followers find him so appealing. He's authentic in that you can tell he really does say what he thinks and doesn't hold back. It's just that his mind is so constantly focused on whatever will get people to like him and otherwise what serves his interest, the content of his beliefs is similar to what it would be if he were consciously being deceptive. But if he were concerned about his stories being consistent and believable in content, he'd get all nervous and seem more like a liar. He's able to talk with sincerity because he doesn't care if his stories make sense, even as bullshit he still believes them for himself, at least enough to say the things in earnest.
Of course, I don't really know, but this would explain part of how it's possible for so many people to have still seen him as honest despite the plainly factually wrong things that come out of him.
“we”?
He also called the insurrectionists “patriots”, and said that he “loved them”, while they were holding the capital building, looting, causing damage, and parading confederate flags through the halls. Just FYI. As like another thing to consider.
It’s sort of surprising how you didn’t mention that yourself. It was literally in the same tweet. I guess it must have slipped your mind.
Besides that, the people responsible for violent crimes will very likely be prosecuted and harshly punished. The message "go home peacefully" is irrelevant for those people and is probably intended for everyone else. Looting is bad, but it's "jail time" bad and not "undying hatred" bad. It's okay to show some compassion to looters while telling them to change their behavior.
Standard practice[1]:
1. Actively Listen
2. Build Empathy & Rapport (recognize each others mindset)
3. Exert Influence & Change
It's also likely, he wasn't 100% aware of the circumstances.
Coming out and saying, "I abandon you, you traitors" wouldn't help. Imagine if there were hostages or more bombs! Saying it in a nice way could defuse the situation. Damning it while they are still at or in the building is not a good idea.
In a later video Trump said "they'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" and "we need Law and Order". So, I don't think it's a fair characterization given the context.
[1] https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/how-to-negotiate-usin...
The leave in peace video clearly had a subtext (he mentioned the election being stolen no less than 3 times in the video) and was not aimed at subduing the crowd at all. Furthermore, the later video where he said that the trespassers would be prosecuted is clearly scripted/edited (from the monotone and cuts in the filming), and likely happened because of some strong-arming (how else did he go from "we will never concede" to admitting defeat in a single day?)
My best guess as to what happened there was that Mitch McConnell (or someone else) figured that he could whip enough votes to impeach & convict if need be and Trump, facing potential consequences, reluctantly decided to play ball.
jack was vacationing on an island in the french polynesia while he and his executives made the decision. maybe it's a time zone thing? because the timeline doesnt make sense to me. after the temporary ban, what happened that it became a permanent ban? what did the potus say that violence was glorified?
> “that last tweet was the call to violently disrupt the inauguration in POTUS’ absence”
What you are saying is not the last tweet from Trump I saw.
I don’t see what you are reading from it. Do you want to translate?
The First Amendment begins with:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The First Amendment is about what Congress cannot do. One has to look elsewhere to understand free speech protections (if any) in other contexts.
[1] I have not reviewed the EFF's complete history regarding free speech on social media. Of course, the EFF tends to opposes censorship, but I would also expect they have a history of taking more nuanced and calibrated stances on free speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
The ideological goals don't need compromise -- but the practical reality is that our society _needs_ an organization like EFF to be at the forefront on these topics -- advocating for better abstractions to help shape how we as a society should think and deal with these complex issues. EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. This article to me felt like the right wing response to gun violence events "we send our thoughts and prayers but let's not politicize this tragedy".
In particular -- there are simple ways to avoid worry over the "slippery slope" associated with defining policies that apply different rules to different users -- you can espouse policy frameworks that are explicitly parameterized by impact (impact is a bit fuzzy to capture in truth but conceptually clear -- and simple proxies suffice to communicate the concept -- in most cases the number of followers is a reasonably close conceptual proxy for a social network).
If you have 70 million followers and you say "let's punish immigrants" it's just simply a different thing than if you say the same thing and you have 10 followers -- pretending there "must not exist" a different framework for responding to events that occur on such vastly different scales is not practical and it's actually a failure to provide good advice here on an ideological level -- because we _know_ that these events are different and project meaningfully different risk profiles onto the world.
There is not a clear ideological reason to falsely pretend that "the same thing" is happening when two users with such vastly different impact publish the exact same sequence of words ... The threat model for "danger of communication" is based on impact and so should be the policy frameworks aimed at managing these risks.
I don't follow how this is tantamount to silencing itself. Would you explain?
The eff response to these actions is to emphasize that such blocking should be allowed so long as a consistent set of rules is used to perform blocking for this reason across a whole network. And they suggest the communication scale of the actor being blocked should not be a factor in the management criteria applied to the speech flowing across a given channel.
That's a principled position but it's also ludicrous - and it's impossible to take advice from that position which can then be applied to the real world. It's as tho they've said "yes, we acknowledge that free speech faces limits -- such as no yelling fire in a crowded theater -- but we do not acknowledge the existence of crowded theaters". What kind of advice are we left to take from such philosophizing?
Text sent over the largest of megaphones is just not the same thing as text sent over the much smaller megaphones available to most social media users.
Taking the EFF position espoused here to an extreme for illustration -- suppose Alice decides to use the emergency broadcast system as her personal twitter account for a day. With her every message all the cell phones in the country buzz an emergency broadcast alert letting us know what Alice wants to say. She exercises her right to political speech to let us all know that she thinks birth control pills are evil -- and in so doing she consumes some seconds of attention from 300 million people. At the same time -- she cross-posts to her twitter where she is followed by 50 people.
The EFF are more or less suggesting that the same principles and rules should apply to her twitter posts and her emergency broadcast system posts.
But in reality -- do we consider these information publishing channels directly comparable? Are we forced to accept that because these are both information publishing channels -- the set of things Alice is allowed to say on both channels must be the same?
Obviously we are not forced to take this position. And obviously this is a bit of a silly example since we all already know that different rules apply to the emergency broadcasting network -- yet we don't use the word "censor" to describe the set of things we don't want Alice to send out over the emergency broadcast network -- and why is that?
Going back to my claim that they are silencing themselves -- I think the EFF position in this article is basically abstract philosophy and that they are going out of their way to avoid addressing any of the specifics required to guide action in the real world. They had an opportunity to say something useful -- instead they said nothing in more words.
I am tentatively willing to accept that these are simply applications of free speech and section 230, provided that the EFF prompt governments to write legal frameworks for what these platforms can and cannot do.
It is not acceptable to have companies this large, and this influential, 100% unaccountable to democracy.
Perhaps I'm not understanding you, but as written, this is not true.
First, Congress can pass laws. Second, outside of legislation, there are democratic-capitalistic feedback mechanisms as well: people can 'vote with their feet'; decide what services to use, recommend, and criticize.
So I think you meant something else?
To be clear, I'm not defending these companies, and I do support intelligent (as opposed to reactionary), targeted (as opposed to blunt), principled (as opposed to arbitrary), and simple (as opposed to byzantine, inscrutable) regulations.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine