>any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
The problem was that censorship on social media has not been done in good faith and has far exceeded these regulations. Yet nobody ever got around to punishing social media for their violation of these regulations.
Now that Elon has made the effort to get Twitter into compliance and stop violating regulations, now you call them unregulated and want to change the rules?
I hope that Biden and friends try to change the rules so close to midterms. Lets see how that democracy goes after that.
> Yet nobody ever got around to punishing social media for their violation of these regulations.
That's a negative regulation, thee only actor that can violate it is government. It is impossible for a social media platform to violate the cited regulation.
It's true that if there is another regulation applicable to platform conduct, there are platform actions that would take the platform out of the immunity provided by the cited regulation (but those hypothetical other regulations would also be constrained by the First Amendment, whether or not the Section 230 immunity applied.)
>That's a negative regulation, thee only actor that can violate it is government. It is impossible for a social media platform to violate the cited regulation.
No, they list out exactly what they may censor like porn. Twitter doesn't do that. It's their choice to do less and that's fine. The problem is that they can't do more. That's a positive regulation.
>It's true that if there is another regulation applicable to platform conduct, there are platform actions that would take the platform out of the immunity provided by the cited regulation (but those hypothetical other regulations would also be constrained by the First Amendment, whether or not the Section 230 immunity applied.)
It's a positive regulation because we regulate media more. We say as a publisher you cant do lots of things that say wikipedia or twitter can do. The caveat is that you can't later regulate more so that you basically are a publisher but without the liability. That would break the system.
Something the article missed is that Obama did explain that anything they do can't conflict with free speech. Therefore it's pointless to go more than section 230.
> No, they list out exactly what they may censor like porn. Twitter doesn't do that. It's their choice to do less and that's fine. The problem is that they can't do more. That's a positive regulation.
That is not the way that any court I'm aware of has ever interpreted Section 230, and it's not the way the original author of Section 230 has ever interpreted it either.
Section 230 is not a list that describes the only things you are allowed to censor. It's a regulation on the government that prevents them from treating proactive moderation as liability for other unmoderated content.
Section 230 does not require that a site avoid censoring certain kinds of information.
>That is not the way that any court I'm aware of has ever interpreted Section 230, and it's not the way the original author of Section 230 has ever interpreted it either.
I'm not a supreme court justice.
>Section 230 is not a list that describes the only things you are allowed to censor. It's a regulation on the government that prevents them from treating proactive moderation as liability for unmoderated content.
So why does section 230 exist?
In a situation like if you are CNN. You publish lies on your platform like Nick Sandman is a white supremacist. You are liable as the publisher.
If someone on twitter says nick sandman is a white supremacist like so many celebrities did. Twitter is not liable, they aren't the publisher.
If section 230 was a negative right. If you were CNN, you would legally become like twitter but censor every subject to the point that people can only say nick sandman is a white supremacist. You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right?
Okay, so you have even less authority to dictate what Section 230 actually means.
Are you arguing about what Section 230 actually does, or are you arguing about what you personally would like it to do, because those are two very different conversations to have.
> So why does section 230 exist?
For a lot of reasons, one giant one being that Congress wanted to make it easier for companies to censor in certain situations.
Section 230 was born out of two lawsuits about illegal content against two early Internet companies, one completely unmoderated and one where the company in question had been trying to do some moderation, but some illegal content still slipped past.
The one who was doing no moderation at all successfully got off with the defense that it was not a publisher, the company that had been doing some moderation didn't. From Wikipedia:
> Service providers made their Congresspersons aware of these cases, believing that if followed by other courts across the nation, the cases would stifle the growth of the Internet. United States Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) had read an article about the two cases and felt the decisions were backwards. "It struck me that if that rule was going to take hold then the internet would become the Wild West and nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil," Cox stated.
Section 230 has a number of benefits, including benefits that reduce censorship online by making it safer to operate smaller forums (including HN). But it also allows communities to more easily moderate without that moderation being treated as itself a liability risk.
But don't take my word for it, go read up on the actual people who wrote the bill that are still alive today and who have on multiple occasions commented on their intentions. The bill was never intended to restrict what content platforms could moderate.
> You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right?
Section 230 is a protection against speech that your users say. CNN is still liable for its own speech (and so is Twitter for that matter), but it is not liable for the speech that happens in its comments section.
Section 230 is a two-sided safe harbor included as part of the Communications Decency Act (and pretty much the only operative part of that law that wasn't struck down for violating the First Amendment) that exists because:
(1) Online services were starting to be targets of legal action targeting them as publishers of libel, slander, pornography, and otherwise unlawful material, relying on the traditional law wherein having an active role in even minimally controlling the content of a publication rather than acting as a purely hands-off distributor of content made one a publisher with liability for unlawful content whether or not they had actual knowledge of the facts making it unlawful.
(2) Services that were not actively moderated, avoiding that problem, were also quite prominent, being casually stumbled over (including because of aggressive spam, popups, etc.) by internet users, and causing lots of offense with both illegal and legal-but-offensive content.
Section 230’s two-sided safe harbor existed to allow users and providers to use available technology to tailor experiences by enabling and encouraging active private moderation of content, by:
(1) Not making users or providers that take any steps to control content automatically liable without notice for all unlawful content in the set of content impacted by their action,
(2) Immunizing users and providers from liability for actions taken to restrict access to content that the acting user or provider finds objectionable on any grounds.
> If section 230 was a negative right.
Section 230 is a negative law, but it is not a right.
> If you were CNN, you would legally become like twitter but censor every subject to the point that people can only say nick sandman is a white supremacist. You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right?
It’d be easier to do what the media has always done to prevent liability here, and find someone else (even if anonymous) to say the thing, and then just print that they said it (emphasizing the message, but mentioning the existence of the source), and be protected by the truth defense (because what you published, that whoever it was said the thing) is absolutely true.
But, no, Section 230’s good faith restriction means that while something like this would not create liability under Section 230, it would likely also not fall under its protection. So libel laws would be available as a remedy. Section 230’s negative nature means when you go outside it's protection, liability requires some other law. Libel law is another existing law providing liability.
> No, they list out exactly what they may censor like porn.
The issue is not whether there is a listing, the issue is what the list is for. The part you clipped out before the list is:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of”
This is a negative law providing immunity from liability arising under other (federal or state) law, not one imposing liability itself.
EDIT: That having been said, your characterization of the listing itself is also very wrong. It's not a narrow list of things “like porn”, it applies to anything the provider or user taking action “considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”.
Two important points to note there: first, it is not a set of objective content classes that can be censored, it is entirely based on the subjective consideration of the party acting; second, one of the subjective categories for which restriction by a provider or user is protected under the same harbor is “otherwise objectionable”.
So unless you can find a case of Twitter restricting content that Twitter provably did not in good faith find objectionable on some basis, your claim that their restrictions are outside of Section 230’s protection is equally wrong to your claim that being outside of that protection, with no other regulation, would be a basis for punishment under the law.
> The problem is that they can't do more
Yes, they can, unless there is some other source of liability. 230 is a safe harbor, not a restriction on providers
The biggest threat to democracy is the dissolution of faith in democracy caused by immensely popular politicians who fail to keep the promises that get them elected. I'm not just talking about one party.
Also by things like lying us into a war in Iraq or the 2008 bank bailouts where the people who caused the financial crash were all given a bonus and a raise while austerity was pushed on the rest of the economy.
Also letting our infrastructure crumble while spending unlimited amounts of money on Middle East wars, restricting housing supply to lock a generation or two out of housing, allowing two generations to be saddled with unprecedented amounts of student loan debt while tuition goes up unchecked, and so on. I could keep going.
Our political class has lost the peoples' trust because they don't deserve it. They've shown nothing but incompetence and corruption for decades. I'm speaking of both major political parties.
That loss of trust has opened the door to a ton of insane garbage, but the blame for that rests on the political class of the past 50 years for dropping the ball in so many ways.
I think the problem is "we the people" keep forgetting that the government is what we make of it and "hiring" a president every 4 years and then ignoring our responsibility until the next election isn't how this thing is supposed to work.
I agree that apathy is a huge part of the problem, but I also think our two party system is a major issue. We need something like ranked choice voting to open things up a bit and allow challengers to at least threaten the mainstream parties. Otherwise sometimes there's just no good choice.
The main reason that Biden isn't fulfilling most of his promises is because the Senate is refusing to pass them. Remove those checks and balances and you'd get a lot more promises fulfilled. But those checks and balances are a feature, not a bug.
Source? Republican strategy largely revolves around not changing things too much, but the last two democrat presidents have put plenty of legislation in front of congress only to have it stonewalled.
He's being disingenuous. Many of Biden's promises didn't make it to the house because a straw poll indicated that would just be a waste of everybody's time.
Most of the checks and balances are good. Senate allocation based on land-size and not population-size is pretty shit tho, imo. Electoral college pretty shit too. We just can't get anything done because a powerful minority that biases strongly white, male, and christian has disproportionate power in the US.
Why is unregulated social media suddenly a problem? They've been doing questionable actions for a decade.
How come that when yesterday's misinformation becomes today's possibility, no accounts get unbanned? How come tech platforms have routinely banned the same person's accounts all on the same day? Tell me again about Hunter's laptop; I think that would have been extremely relevant about 2 years ago.
Because it wasn't unregulated social media. It was regulated by people friendly to him. Now, it will be regulated by someone that he has no influence over. I would imagine that Musk doesn't care if he is invited to the cool kid parties.
On the surface Musk's preferences would appear to be that way, but appearances can be deceiving. Would you be surprised if Musk introduced mandatory digital ID to use Twitter? A sugar-coated limited handout of freedom, combined with the digital ID medicine the globalists have been demanding wouldn't be surprising.
If you read his comments carefully, this interpretation isn't far-fetched.
News is the traditional messenger they have control over. News is dying and social media is taking over. They're trying to gain control over social media so they can control the message again. Who is they? The two political parties who are just private organizations by the way.
When you can't control the message, people start asking uncomfortable questions like, "Why are you allowing companies to outsource jobs and factories to escape labor and environmental regulations while saving a ton of money?" "Why is healthcare so expensive?" "Why haven't you put any type of caps on pharmaceuticals?" "Why are we spending billions on homelessness and homelessness keeps increasing?" "Why did we spend $300 million a day in Afghanistan for 20 years?"
It's sad to realize how quick a substantial number of people are to discard what are ostensibly core principles when they conflict with their ability to exercise power.
What core principles have been lost? If you want to argue Twitter is a public space where public figures should be able to say whatever they want, I'm going to argue your front lawn is too.
With ISPs I think of the precedent of TV and Radio being censored from their inception, pirate broadcasting non-withstanding. Are we going to say free speech was lost in 1920 when you couldn't say ** on the radio?
ISPs are utilities. There is only one internet, just as there is only one power grid, only one road network, only one water distribution network. But there are many social media platforms, and it's easy to start new ones. That is the reason that private censorship on social media platforms is acceptable but censorship by ISPs is not.
> But there are many social media platforms, and it's easy to start new ones.
There is one Twitter. Losing access to Twitter, YouTube, etc. looks like losing access to a utility to me.
And it is not easy to start a new Twitter or YouTube in any meaningful sense. One could just as easily say "ISPs are not utilities or monopolies, you can start your own intranet easily with OSS!"
Although you are likely highly overrating how irreplaceable ISPs are (the situation is bad but I have switched between several in this one home over the years), that's fine. I'm saying that Twitter being a private business does not mean that it should be shielded from any criticism of its speech practices for the same way that ISPs are not similarly exempt.
Starting a blog is a lot easier than starting an ISP. I am ignoring the network effects because my metric is reachability and freedom of expression, not the power of the social network.
If your metric is reachability, it seems like a mistake to ignore network effects. Although you raise a good point: reachability can be mostly extinguished by access to both ISPs and the handful of large social networks.
I disagree. There are plenty of outlets, multiple TV channels, multiple social networks, newspapers, websites, etc, for Trump to get his message across.
> And it is not easy to start a new Twitter or YouTube in any meaningful sense.
Apparently it is - Trump started his very own, just like that. didn't even take that long.
There are many places where Comcast is the only option for high speed internet. There are no places where YouTube is the only option for watching or publishing videos.
But the real defining characteristic that makes an ISP a public utility is that the utility (in the sense of "usefulness") of the internet is strongly bound to its uniqueness, just like the phone system or the road network. Phones and roads and the internet become inherently less useful if there is more than one network. Videos do not become less useful if you have to get some of them from one provider and others from another.
> Phones and roads and the internet become inherently less useful if there is more than one network. Videos do not become less useful if you have to get some of them from one provider and others from another.
That is not true, though. Self-publishing video on my personal site has effectively no utility compared to publishing it on YouTube. For my job (and the job of, thousands? millions?), it is the only game in town.
An ISP comparison would be hosting my personal site on The Internet vs. a splinternet.
> That is not true, though. Self-publishing video on my personal site has effectively no utility compared to publishing it on YouTube. For my job (and the job of, thousands? millions?), it is the only game in town.
This statement is false. There are plenty of websites that self publish video and receive utility for it.
Just because your unpopular video on your unpopular website doesn't get utility, doesn't mean others don't. On top of that, plenty of videos posted on YouTube also get no utility.
> This statement is false. There are plenty of websites that self publish video and receive utility for it.
This is a "0.001 is technically greater than 0" argument that could be made for ISPs as well. Do you accept that there are thousands/millions of people who rely on access to YT to support themselves, and have an income dependent on that site that would vanish if they were expelled from it?
It's a strong argument for ISPs to be a utility because of the access ISPs provide. Not just for business, but for survival. YouTube doesn't come close to the scale or level of importance, plus it is easily replaceable. TikTok just overtook it. Multiple competitors with the same order of magnitude of users.
> Do you accept that there are thousands/millions of people who rely on access to YT to support themselves, and have an income dependent on that site that would vanish if they were expelled from it?
Do you accept that all of these content creators signed an agreement to use YouTube's platform, which is a private entity? If the agreement is illegal then it is a civil matter and they have remedy - the court system. This isn't a matter of free speech.
> Do you accept that all of these content creators signed an agreement to use YouTube's platform, which is a private entity?
Do you accept that users sign an agreement with their ISP, also a private entity? Why should the ISP, a private entity, not be able to censor traffic for which it provides the infrastructure? Because it (like social media) has few competitors?
> Self-publishing video on my personal site has effectively no utility compared to publishing it on YouTube. For my job (and the job of, thousands? millions?), it is the only game in town.
The usefulness of public utilities is measured relative to consumers, not producers. You have a right to publish. You do not have a right to monetize. You don't even have a right to an audience. All you have a right to is a potential audience. If someone wants to watch your self-published video, they can.
The problem is not the YT is a utility, the problem is that YT is owned by Google and Google has an effective monopoly on on-line advertising.
You tell me? YouTube is currently not a public utility. Argue why it should be?
There are plenty of places to publish videos. Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Vimeo, Daily Motion, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, etc. So it is obviously not scarce or difficult to do, with that many players. So it fails that definition of a utility, it's not scarce, nor difficult to implement.
Is it necessary? I don't think so. What basic necessities does Twitter provide?
> You tell me? YouTube is currently not a public utility. Argue why it should be?
Access to the internet is also not currently a public utility. And yet, some seem to be fine with government censoring speech via one of these non-public-utilities and not okay with it through another.
My point is that there is no reason good reason to treat them differently. There are bad reasons to treat them differently, though, which are covered extensively on this page and mostly due to our conditioning by gov and ISPs alike.
Obviously broadband is not a utility yet, although there is massive support to making it one, and it probably should be. But let's ignore the semantic tricks and change the argument slightly.
Why is YouTube equivalent to Electricity/Water? The utility argument just doesn't make sense. Perhaps you're thinking more of the "public square" argument.
> My point is that there is no reason good reason to treat them differently. There are bad reasons to treat them differently, though, which are covered extensively on this page and mostly due to our conditioning by gov and ISPs alike.
I see many reasons to treat utilities different than YouTube, and I also see no reason why YouTube should be treated like them.
There are too many private remedies available. On top of that, the government should not be forcing any private entity to moderate a certain way, this sets an extremely dangerous precedent, and will certainly be abused. I should be able to moderate my blog how I choose.
> Obviously broadband is not a utility yet, although there is massive support to making it one, and it probably should be. But let's ignore the semantic tricks and change the argument slightly.
> Why is YouTube equivalent to Electricity/Water?
This is not the comparison I am making. I am comparing YouTube to ISPs and claiming that arguments for or against censorship in the former could also apply to the latter.
So the requirement for free speech in your mind is simply that the setting be used by the public? Do sports arenas, shopping malls, and private squares not kick out people for acting inappropriate?
America is fully subservient to corporations. Out rights end at their doorways, including freedom of assembly and speech.
To say social media is an exception because it applies rules equally to previously exempt demographics is a joke.
You are confusing free speech with trespassing. You can say whatever you want on private property, but you have to be invited onto property in order to not be trespassing. The invite can be rescinded and you can be asked to leave. You can’t literally trespass on digital spaces as the law is written. If people violate the TOS I have no problem in removing them. But when things like saying that men cannot get pregnant is hate speech, you are simply going to get some pushback that is not hate speech and people shouldn’t be removed.
Let us entertain the hypothetical where Twitter is private property and can include or exclude individuals based upon their own criteria.
Similarly, let us imagine that your garden is your own private property and you can ask individuals to leave your BBQ for whatever whimsical reason you choose.
You can open Twitter to the public, just as you can open your BBQ to the public.
When new information becomes available I am able to change my mind. I'd also argue that any media could aid and abet anti democratic activities. Deliberate misinformation and its amplification, and polarization are are potentially easier to do on social media.
Go listen to the Revolutions podcast on the topic of the American Revolution, or a book on the topic. The founders should not be deified. Ultimately your argument is an appeal to authority, instead of acknowledging the possibility of consequences of free speech maximalism.
That's the old "sunlight is the best disinfectant" trope. To which I reply that "A lie can travel around the world while the truth is still putting on its pants."
The problem is that virality in public forums is not driven by "better information," it's driven by verisimilitude, which is the appearance of being true, which is not synonymous with being true. What makes things appear to be true? Consistency with what we already believe to be true for one thing. Another way to put it is that things have verisimilitude if they appeal to our biases.
Another thing that makes things appear to be true is if they're easily digestible. It's easier to convince a layperson that light reflects off a mirror in such a way that the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence. But it takes an entire book to explain that this is actually a useful simplification, but light's behaviour is much more complex.
The problem of simpler things being more believable is critical to understanding that "better information" doesn't beat misinformation, because misinformation is always simpler than the truth.
To quote another aphorism from H.L. Mencken, "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." The neat and plausible attributes of misinformation are very difficult to counter, especially if the problem being discussed has complexities.
Free speech is one of those problems that is complex. There are no simple solutions unless you are a hard-core extreme Libertarian, but you'd never know it listening to all the people who propose simple solutions that are popular because they are simple.
Better information does not dispel misinformation in public forums. I gave reasons why this is the case.
Mind you, better information can dispel misinformation in non-public forums. For example, in a highly moderated community. Or in a community where there is a certain web of trust that discourages cynical actors from deliberately trying to game popularity.
Now onto another problem with your statement: You claimed that better information beats misinformation, and you claimed that if it doesn't, the problem is that the information isn't better.
That's a claim that any idea which becomes popular must be better, because if there was better information, it would have dispelled the poorer ideas. Observing human history, I claim this is demonstrably false.
Billions of people believe things on faith that have no empirical backing, and do so despite access to an unprecedented amount of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Any theory that better information always wins should explain how non-trivial numbers of people can believe things for which there is no evidence or even wildly disseminated evidence to the contrary.
I think the onus is on you to give evidence for your claim, because I personally see evidence to the contrary.
I said no such thing, you did. So AFAIC, you are arguing with yourself, not with me or my words. That, plus the fact that you are making claims without any arguments, examples, or reasoning to back up your claims, suggests that for all your talk of “better information,” you are actually disinterested in better information prevailing.
Your own behaviour is doing a better job of illustrating my point than my words do! I will leave you here to carry on arguing with yourself.
> Billions of people believe things on faith that have no empirical backing, and do so despite access to an unprecedented amount of scientific evidence to the contrary.
We don't live in a technocracy.
The crux of the matter is you don't get to decide what other people think or believe.
Please do carry on spreading misinformation about what I think or advocate or believe. You’re doing a fine job of dancing with your own straw man.
It seems that I called you out on making a claim you didn’t back up, and you are weaving some kind of conspiracy web around my motives and beliefs. That’s an ad hominem appeal to motive, and it’s just as terrible an argument as making a claim you decline to substantiate.
For someone who claims that good information will drive out bad, you appear to have no interest in walking your talk.
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
This sounds like a poetic way of justifying the pretense of tolerance while not actually being that, and using it as a symbol to mask the same behavior it is on the surface condemning.
> This sounds like a poetic way of justifying the pretense of tolerance while not actually being that, and using it as a symbol to mask the same behavior it is on the surface condemning.
This sounds like a handwavey dismissal of a well understood paradox.
The problem even with the paradox is that you can define "intolerant" as anything you want, and it creates a new problem: of becoming a slippery slope not against "intolerance" in itself, but a bucket category that is gradually filled with anything and everything slightly distasteful to the morally superior or elite.
> The problem even with the paradox is that you can define "intolerant" as anything you want
I'm having a hard time understanding this given how fixed the definition of "intolerance of intolerance" is. Can you help me understand how you're receiving it?
I would say that there are people trying to live this very philosophy already, and we can see what actions it has resulted in practically in the real world.
For example, Twitter is absolutely staffed and run by people who I believe would wholeheartedly agree with the posted quote. What types of rules regarding intolerance does their platform employ?
Now you tell me, is that intolerance? Is it speech that should be censored? Is removing this type of satire something that you believe is philosophically aligned with the original quote?
Meanwhile, Twitter still allows members of the Taliban to post. Do you think they're more, or less tolerant than the Babylon Bee?
"Intolerance" is such a fuzzy concept. Intolerance of what? You can propose any crazy idea and when people disagree with it, say they're being intolerant.
If I don't want my young children to go to schools that are staffed by ex sex-offenders, on the basis that employing them in that role is a great example of how people can be re-introduced into society and embraced empathetically, am I "intolerant" of something? If I voice that opinion on social media, should it be removed? It's not a real example right now, but that's the direction we're headed in.
Great quote, but it's out of context unless you use the whole thing.
Specifically the qualifier where suppression should be used where people adamantly refuse rational argument and attempt to suppress the engagement of rational argument by violent force.
"But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
> for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive
Some busy power brokers and intellectuals assembled a few ideas just 250 years ago and wrote them down as the second draft of requirements for their Modern Nation app.
It makes sense that we might need to do a little debugging and refactoring now and then.
Just like the accessibility and exponentially amplified voice provided by the printing press prompted some of the “core principles” of Europe to get reshuffled, it’s pretty reasonable to me that social media could prompt some reshuffling of it’s own.
Dogmatic commitment like you hint at for yourself is an important part of the dialogue of how that reshuffling might look, but I don’t know that your characterization of others is very accurate.
We built that big cement dam decades and decades ago. We've learned so much about engineering and risk assessment since then. It makes sense that we might need to do a little debugging and refactoring now and then.
It's pretty reasonable to drill a few small holes in the dam, and to defer maintenance in favor of more urgent priorities.
Dogmatic commitment to the old no-hole-drilling and take-maintenance-seriously dialogues of the past is just a quaint antiquarian tradition.
I don't think it's a "convenient for the sake of gaining/maintaining power". I think we're in the middle of a political realignment, and the new primary divide comes down to how much you "trust" the individual to make good decisions. That was the divide with Covid, and it's kind of the divide for ideas and social media. The left is now represented by the highly educated professional class who view experts as the only ones capable of making good decisions for individuals and the group in aggregate. The right is sticking to the old ideals of individuals making decisions for themselves, even if those decisions might be considered "wrong" by a set of generally accepted criteria. They distrust the motivations of experts.
It's sad to see how many people have no capacity for nuance. It's sad to see the inability to separate the acknowledgement of a problem from debates over whether the possible cures would be worse than the disease.
It was something that was speculated about. I have seen zero evidence that Musk tried to lay the ground work (e.g. lining up the loans or selling enough stocks to finance such am attempt).
This "journalist" doesn't qualify anything and makes a statement of fact that Musk mounted hostile takeover bid.
Please provide a citation showing any attempt at a hostile takeover.
The poison pill was adopted to forestall any hostile attempt if the offer was rejected and try to secure a better bargaining position if they decided to accept the offer.
It wasn't a hostile takeover then either. Making an offer to a board is not a "hostile takeover attempt", trying to buy 51% of the outstanding shares (without approval of the board or shareholders) is a hostile takeover.
Zero responsible reporting called this a hostile takeover. The closest you can come is journalists who speculated that a hostile takeover might be attempted if the offer to the board were rejected. There is nothing beyond speculation to show that this was ever a possibility.
I remember when Obama got elected in 2008, all the pundits were gleefully explaining how he was a master of social media and had this expert team of young digital natives who had used big data to target their bring out the vote efforts, blah blah blah, and how the doddering old Republicans were going to be left in the dust and would never win an election again.
Their main opponent also tried to stage a coup. And for years, this person wasn't removed despite many other posts that would have otherwised violated ToS -- special treatment for being a head of state. So there's some context to this quip.
Please, calling it a coup is a joke. France has larger demonstrations almost monthly (at least during non-Covid times), I've seen larger riots in the aftermath of hockey games.
Read the article. It wasn't a "few rednecks rioting" -- there were two pipe bombs. Elected representatives were in actual danger; capitol police were struggling to hold back the participants. That the "rednecks rioting" were so poorly organized doesn't make it any less a coup. Our elected officials were being sheltered in windowless rooms.
Also, the stated purpose was to subvert the democratic process and install their figurehead as leader. I don't know that I'd call it an attempted coup, either, because that gives them too much credit. They weren't particularly well organized, and didn't seem to know what to do once they breached the capitol building.
That said, it doesn't really matter that the gilets jaunes were protesting for longer and in larger numbers; directly comparing them is a category error. The gilet jaunes were operating within the norms of how French civil society currently operates. The Capitol protesters/insurgents/whatever were expressly trying to overturn them. Maybe not a coup, maybe not treason, but sedition at the very least.
A few rednecks whipped into a frenzy by the actual President of the US and backed by his supporters in congress who were attempting to overturn the election.
We can't let the laughable ineptitude of these people distract us; they may not be so freakin' stupid the next time they attempt to overthrow our duly elected representatives.
No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government. None of which happened.
And when crowds do lead to governments being overthrown, usually it's crowds in the millions encouraging those institutions to overthrow the government. Again which didn't happen.
By any definition it wasn't a coup d'état or even an attempt at anything with a chance of success.
> No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government.
No, a coup doesn't have to be by military and government officials (though they are usually best situated, and in any case were involved in the autocoup attempt of which the attack on the Capitol was a part—but neither the whole, the beginning, or necessarily even the end once it failed.)
And a coup attempt can (this specific subtype is called a self-coup, autocoup, or autogolpe) seek to irregularly extend the powers or the term of the current leadership, not overthrow anyone already in power, and this is what the one involving the 1/6 attack was.
And a coup attempt doesn't always involve taking over anything, in the same way a murder attempt doesn't always produce a dead body.
By this logic I could gather 10 friends from the pub, go to a government building, break a few windows, say we want to overthrow the government, then go home and call it an attempted coup.
Really though, that's never been successful and calling it an attempt is being extremely generous. It's like saying writing a Tweet is an attempt at writing a novel.
> By this logic I could gather 10 friends from the pub, go to a government building, break a few windows, say we want to overthrow the government, then go home and call it an attempted coup.
Well, sure, and if that's really what you wanted to do, that would be a (very badly) attempted coup.
On the other hand, if you had a much larger group of “friends”, including high officials of the federal executive branch, federal legislators, state legislators, and others in and out of government, and instead of going from a pub and breaking a few government windows you coordinated on a scheme to substitute alternative electoral votes for the certified ones from several states relying on an abuse of office by the presiding officer of the joint session counting the electoral votes to effect that, when the regular presiding officer publicly rebuffed the effort gathered a few thousand people including multiple organized armed groups to violently assault the Capitol, erecting a gallows and calling for the hanging of recalcitrant presiding officer, having members and legislative staff escape only moments ahead of the mob (and those moments in part because one breakthrough of barricades was stopped by deadly force), delay deployment of National Guard forces to respond to the attack,...
Well, then you’ve got, while in the actual case still unsuccessful, a lot more credible coup attempt.
A coup? Seriously? Have you seen what a coup looks like? They usually involve armies and mass executions, it isn't some shirtless guy in a headdress.
Again though, this is exactly my point. I am not from the US. I couldn't really care less. But the problem is that someone's obviously ludicrous subjective interpretation of an event is being stated as an objective fact, and then applied by social media. Do you not see how this can backfire on you? In other words, you have no problem when it is being rigged against people you don't like but how are you going to respond when it is rigged against you?
This is the reason we have courts. This is the reason we have free speech. It is indivisible, applied to everyone equally.
None of his posts violated ToS (there are people on Twitter who are orchestrating genocide), you just don't like them.
Earlier this year the DoJ charged Stewart Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers members with seditious conspiracy for allegedly plotting to prevent by force the transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden. A number of these conspirators were involved in the siege of the Capitol on 01/06/21. Court papers say the group also had weapons stashed at a hotel nearby in Virginia and a quick reaction force ready to ferry them into Washington, D.C., if Rhodes gave the order. A magistrate judge in Texas ordered that Rhodes remain in jail pending trial.
Federal code defines seditious conspiracy as two or more people conspiring to overthrow or destroy by force the United States government, or to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any U.S. law.
It sounds like you're arguing a different issue than GP was replying to (unless your contention is that Trump was leading the Oath Keepers). They replied to:
> Their main opponent also tried to stage a coup.
But that said it still seems like a real stretch to me to say that the US federal government was so weak that there was ever a serious risk of 10 idiots overthrowing it and installing their guy. It seems like the word "coup" is somewhat meaningless if the same word is used to describe highly organized government takeovers by military leaders, as well as a small group of yokels that didn't even know what to do when they got into the capital building so started walking around taking pictures like tourists. I don't know what word I would use instead, probably "riot" or maybe even "rebellion" (actually, Shay's Rebellion seems way worse than what this was), but "coup" has never felt right to me.
Also worth pointing out I think is that they've been charged with seditious conspiracy (which I agree is a big deal) but none have been convicted (yet). Prosecutorial overreach is a huge problem in our country that needs to change. (to be clear I'm not saying this is a case of prosecutorial overreach, I honestly don't know. But it is certainly possible given how widespread it is in general in the US). Especially hard hit bit it are marginalized groups that can't adequately defend themselves. I've seen cases where the prosecutor didn't think they stood a chance of getting a conviction but they wanted a plea deal so they charged him with as much as possible to scare him into a guilty plea so they didn't have to go to trial.
It also shouldn't be overlooked that there is a massive political incentive for the current people in power to paint this as much as possible as "a coup." Selfishly I do hope they succeed, because I think Trump and many of his people are toxic to our democracy, but I strongly prefer to win "fair and square" rather than hyperbole.
> unless your contention is that Trump was leading the Oath Keepers
The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys (charged with conspiracy as well in the attack, and in direct coordination with each other) are part of a network that connected to the fairly well documented effort by the Trump inner circle to enact a plan to subvert the vote count and either avoid the counting of or replace the lawful votes from certain states through channels including Roger Stone.
The main mechanism sought to be used was discussed publicly in the media prior to the attack, which sought to forcibly implement it when Mike Pence indicated he wouldn't go along with it voluntarily, by disrupting/delaying the count, removing Pence from the presiding role (“Hang Mike Pence”), and using intimidation to ensure that whatever officer replaced Pence would play ball.
> But that said it still seems like a real stretch to me to say that the US federal government was so weak that there was ever a serious risk of 10 idiots overthrowing it and installing their guy
An autocoup attempt by the sitting President, other high executive branch officials, members of Congress, at least two different organized violent groups, and thousands of followers mobilized by social media for violent attack on the Capital isn't just “10 idiots”.
> as well as a small group of yokels that didn't even know what to do when they got into the capital building so started walking around taking pictures like tourists.
That largely occurred after the evacuation of members, which itself was not complete when people broke into the Capitol; there was a concerted effort to reach the chambers where the joint session was being held, the Speakers office, and other areas where members and other high-value targets were likely to be initially.
I’m not sure if your minimizing misrepresentation is deliberate or just a result of effective propagandization.
> A coup? Seriously? Have you seen what a coup looks like?
Yeah, lots.
> They usually involve armies and mass executions
Military coups are one kind, but even they often involve only a fairly small group of officers, and a few trusted henchmen to execute the coup. Often, key military leaders don't use the military, they just prevent security services from intervening to stop the coup attempt. (Which executive branch officials did for some time during the 1/6 attempt.)
But not all attempted coups are military coups, and the class known as “autocoups”—attempts to extend the domain or time of the current leaders power beyond it's lawful parameters—often look different anyway, since they aren't centered on displacing the existing leader but either disrupting and/or providing an excuse for cancelling a regular change in power or forcibly pressuring some other government body (often by incapacitating or removing key opponents) to acquiesce in a change of terms.
After trying to overthrow an election and continuing to tell millions of people things that were factually false, things which as president he knew were lies and knew people would believe because he was president.
He wasn't cut off easily or lightly. It is not as if he suddenly can't have a website to spread his treason. Oh wait, he could... if he could afford a few developers.
He didn't try to overthrow an election. He tried to use the same legal procedures to challenge the result that were used in 2001, and that are available to candidates in every election.
And you believe they were lies, you are saying that you are the ultimate arbiter of truth...I don't support Trump, but I am willing to accept that people have different interpretations of events. I am also willing to accept that courts should be the ultimate arbiter of truth, not social media companies. Welcome to democracy.
Btw, the irony of this is unbearable...Hilary Clinton has contested almost every election she lost. She said 2016 was rigged and challenged that result legally. She said that Obama rigged the Iowa primary. Politicians often think their opponents cheat, it is called motivated reasoning...again, that is why we have courts to decide, not you, not me.
>He tried to use the same legal procedures to challenge the result that were used in 2001
He didn't merely challenge a few items, he loudly proclaimed as fact before the fact that the election was intentionally rigged by a large combination of Democrats and RINO Secretaries of State, and was shot down at every challenge due to a complete lack of evidence. He and his liar sycophants continue to spread these lies not just as supposition, but as fact. It is disingenuous to compare Trump's challenges-cum-lies to any run-of-the-mill challenge of years past.
Back to the main point: He could stand up a blog very quickly and have the ears of all willing listeners on the planet.
Which is within his rights to do. There is no law saying that you are unable to say you believe an election is being rigged before it occurs, logically that is when the rigging would occur...it is hard to rig an election that has ended (and btw, Clinton claimed that Obama bussed people in from Illinois before the result...if you didn't know Clinton had a lot of "theories" about the integrity of elections in Iowa, which she repeated in 2016).
The challenges he made were identical. Read what you wrote again, you refer to no laws, you are referring only to the fact that he said something you don't agree with. There is no law against this. He challenged the result legally, he was not successful, he took no other action but to repeat his claim that he believed the election result was fraudulent...which he is within his rights to do.
Great, I suppose that everyone who wants to leave Twitter now will be able to do the same...right? (I don't think you understand that arguing against free speech is not a winnable argument, you are arguing against inalienable rights that founded the USA, I could also posit...if you don't like free speech, you could consider starting your own blog and moving to a country where there is no free speech?).
Posting to Twitter is not a right. Any argument about just how awful he was, or how obvious his treason is, is only a way to bolster the moral argument for removing him.
There is no legal right to post to Twitter. Your last line is so objectionable, I'll target it specifically: anyone can start a blog. Anyone can have the entire internet see their thoughts. Twitter isn't covered by the first amendment. No one in the US is being told they can't have a website.
If I told you you had a right to eat, you would sue me for not feeding you ribeye for every meal.
George Bush won the popular vote in 2004, just barely. Otherwise the point stands - especially for 2016, where the popular vote for the "winner" Donald Trump was only 46%, a margin of about 3 million people. It was the third most disenfranchising election in American history, and the others were in the 1800s.
I wouldn't say massive margins. And they didn't always win it.
Gore (D) got 52.1% in 2000, and lost.
GWB (R) got 50.7% in 2004, and won.
Obama (D) got 52.9% in 2008, and won.
Obama (D) got 51.1% in 2012, and won.
Clinton (D) got 53.5% in 2016, and lost.
Biden (D) got 51.3% in 2020, and won.
Their mistake is understandable, they were assuming that the discourse would be digital-native only.
What they did not anticipate was the odd combination of regular media like TV channels reporting breathlessly on (essentially) online trolling for which you'd be banned immediately from any 2008-era phpBB forum.
There is a crucial difference between the Obama campaigns and the events that led to the 45th and the shitshow that we are in: Obama used positive messaging, whereas Republican and especially Republican-associated and Russian-originated messaging was almost exclusively aimed at evoking negative emotions - in short, destructive messaging. Destructive messaging works extremely well in social media, as outrage is far more engagement-pushing and as a result algorithms pushed such content... a mechanism that was previously unknown and unpredictable.
Obama and the pundits played by the established rules of honesty and fairness and expected the Republicans to do the same... and the Republicans (as well as their associated media, starting with Fox News and ending with OAN/Newsmax) broke with all traditions of democracy and went onto a destruction spree instead. The result is that trust in democracy is fundamentally broken now.
The political game is optimized for the current system. If the rules changed to something like popular vote, the strategies would shift drastically. You can't just take the popular vote from the current system and assume it would carry over with a new set of rules.
There's also tradeoffs to a purely direct democracy that have to be weighed. It's not a clear-cut win for governance
It's true we can't "really" know. But I would bet a lot of money that republicans would be severely disadvantaged without an electoral college. Not much would change. The nation would still be 2 party. We'd simply have a president elected by popular vote like every other (senators, reps, etc.)
Strategies can change but that doesn't mean the current system does not significantly benefit one party over another.
The very existence of the senate is a blocker to true democratic rule and for good reason. But I don't think changing the election of the president to one person gets one vote would usurp the current system. It's simply more fair. But of course more fair is not what any party truly wants.
Its pretty simple. The political parties are for whatever interest can help them win. O was masterful at social media so it was a great boom. Similarly he raised a lot more money than his opponent so his desire for election financing reform also disappeared. Now the tides have turned and the other political party is using social media more effectively. Something as simple as asking simple questions, pointing out hypocrisy and highlighting some extreme members of the other side would do it. So naturally the party in threat is against a free exchange of ideas.
Exactly!!! Why do you think they’re wheeling this corrupt, lying old turd (Obama) out right after one of the Democrat party’s main vehicles for censorship and disinformation was bought by Elon Musk? Also, why do you think the MSM started whinging this week about how voices could be silenced by “big tech” and nobody would know until after the election?
Democrats love big tech as long as it is beholden to them. When it is not, they start accusing others of the very things they’ve been doing all along.
And I empathize and understand people who talk about free speech in its most unadulterated way.
But there are tradeoffs and costs, lots of them have been already detailed so I'll focus on something else: productivity and initiative.
Social media lifted the veil on really how easily manipulated the avg. individual is. There is no turning back from that, no turning back from not knowing that information, it's almost like when you first get the concept of mortality and that one day you are going to die.
And those using social media to manipulate the avg. individual could be left-wing, right-wing, independent, greens, libertarians etc. But as we are seeing these days also billionaires with an agenda , cults, religious movements, corporations, NGOs, Secret Services etc.
For a person trying to make a living in this world, that's really scary, it damages productivity because given all the above people become extremely defensive and think twice before taking any initiative....they could become the target of some cult or political movement with just a simple action such as firing an employee or speaking their mind about something.
And the attack could come from every side or even multiple sides
The phrase 'threat to democracy' in this context at this time ought to be a red flag that someone's trying to pull a fast one. Remember when people only wanted to add 'hate speech' to the exception list (things that 'free speech' supposedly 'never meant')? Now it's expanded to hate speech and 'false or misleading information'. And I'm seeing this messaging pretty frequently in a variety of public fora.
>Where are all the politicians raising the alarm about plutocracy as a threat to democracy?
Either they're taking fat stacks of cash and keeping quiet about it or they're being subjected to a relentless character assassination campaign that is largely working as intended.
> Where are all the politicians raising the alarm about plutocracy as a threat to democracy?
Too busy astroturfing social media in an effort to drum up popular support for their status as plutocrats to comment publicly on the subject, I'd wager.
It is a threat to democracy when your opponent has access to social media. But not when your opponent gets removed from social media.
The principles of politicians on full display.
Btw, I don't think moderation is hard. If you are saying Trump is guilty of "hate speech" or whatever, and the Taliban isn't...the problem isn't the rules, it is how you apply them (which is a natural consequence of people at these companies not being interested in moderation at all, Dorsey couldn't contain his glee after he removed Trump...it was a personal choice, not moderation). Social media companies make the same mistake that most people make when they consider politics: they believe things they don't agree with are immoral. It was never the task of social media companies to be the religious police, they just appointed themselves.
Outside social media, in the real world Trump is held to higher standards than Talibans because conventional wisdom is that he should be much more level headed given that he went to the best universities in the world and is at the POTUS whereas the Talibans can't even read and control a couple of goats.
People are taking social media rules at face value, whereas they should always ask themselves what would happen to them if they said the same things in a bar.
Would they be kicked out? If you behave online as if you would offline then there are very low odds that you'd be banned.
The report button is the equivalent of people going to the bouncer to have you removed, if he's summoned to remove you it means that you said something wrong or to the wrong demographic.
It probably depends on the user base of the platform, but I believe it could be one of the worst jobs in the world. If you like the community and content, great, but the usual employed moderators on large social media platforms probably need regular therapy to distance themselves from all the crap they have to read every day. There is a huge difference if you have to read it because it is your job and when you do it on your own because you are hungry for something tasteless and when you can just leave a spicy reply.
>> Remember when people only wanted to add 'hate speech' to the exception list (things that 'free speech' supposedly 'never meant')? Now it's expanded to hate speech and 'false or misleading information'.
It depends where you get your definitions from. The European Convention on Human Rights for example only has a couple of 'absolute' rights and free speech is not one. Rights generally need to be balanced against each other (e.g. right to free speech interfering with someone else's right to privacy). Seems sensible. It's a rarity that dealing in absolutes is sensible.
I don’t think you ever had the right to lie when money was involved. Fraud has always been criminalized, and speech has been restricted to various degrees in many industries: advertising, SEC regulations on public companies officers and shareholders, political campaign contributions, etc.
This is really nothing new.
If anything the first amendment is too idealistic sounding since the US has never lived up to what it implies.
> The phrase 'threat to democracy' in this context at this time ought to be a red flag that someone's trying to pull a fast one.
Why? I mean it's a common rhetorical move for all kinds of reasons and most of them aren't good, so just by pattern matching sure I guess. But also one of the two political parties in the US is openly contemptuous of the institutions of the state and is blatantly attempting to undermine trust in and power of our elections and legislature. You can't really both-sides that one and it's not hyperbolic to describe it as a threat to democracy.
Your last point I mean yes, certainly. But what do you expect from obama here? He's a millionaire monster war criminal like all american presidents always have been, he's not going to ask us to tear down his own house. That one is on us if we want it to be different, no one with any appreciable power under the circumstances has anything close to a reason to change it.
I know but I'm pointing out that it's not an inherently invalid assessment of the situation. One can hold it in good faith, so what terminology should they use instead?
We already stepped in it. A number of pundits and public figures have been tweeting (I know, ironic) sentences in substance similar to "Free speech advocates are the promoters of white supremacy and white colonialism", also said equivalent to Jan 6th supporters.
Some proeminent ones have even quit Twitter altogether with that as a message.
It's somewhat telling that this event is triggering such panic among the political class. Currently every meaningful social network has more or less the same policies and content moderation. If something is banned on one network (facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok) it'll almost certainly be banned on the rest. Why not right?
But now that ownership of one network changes hands, it's causing everyone to panic. At least we're dropping the facade about what the political class is really asking for. It's no longer a "private platform, they can do what they want". It's now everyone must follow the same rules mandated down from politicians. Before now the leaders of these networks just happened to enforce the policies the political class wanted. They just have to drag the leaders in front of Congress once in a while to get them back in line. But now that one network is at risk of breaking ranks, everyone panics.
You're starting to see lots of people on Twitter who claim to specialzie in disinformation and monitoring hate speech, it like how all of the Mckinsey types who turned into counter-terrorism consultants around 2004.
Trends in gov contractors, think tanks, and the ex-UN volunteering well connected rich kids are always a good signal of where the slush fund $$$ is going to start flowing. They have a big pull on policy since they have the most to gain.
> it like how all of the Mckinsey types who turned into counter-terrorism consultants around 2004.
If you look at a number of developping political scandals, it seems they turned to pandemic consultants two years ago in at least France, Australia, and a couple others.
Disinformation (spreading false information that you know is false) is illegal in the US [0]. The question isn’t whether people should be free to knowingly spread false information. The question is who should decide what is false information.
Giving a single billionaire the power to decide what speech is allowed (and what isn’t) is dangerous. No individual’s incentives align with everyone else’s. And the wealthiest person in the world has especially unique incentives.
If we want to align our social media platforms’ rules with what’s best for society, then we need society to decide the rules.
Leveraging social media to create a divide is a symptom of the problem.
The underlying problem is the sheer amount of money and power to be gained by winning in America's 2-party system. So much so, that winning at all costs is the norm.
Winning at all costs, includes (but is not limited to) leveraging bots, PR firms and activists on social media to make one side fear and hate the other.
Time was once a POTUS that had served two terms already was done, they would go into retirement and you would hear very little out of them. Maybe they’d be trotted out for an endorsement or party morale boosting speech but that was about the extent of it.
Thanks for letting us know what you liked. That wasn't true of Dubya, Clinton, Reagan...how far back is "time was once?" Wasn't true of Jackson either.
Do you really think Trump would ever stop having rallies under any condition?
There is actually a long history of public and political activity from former presidents. Washington was recalled to lead the army (and thereby support the Federalists) in 1797. Taft was a supreme court justice, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson and Tyler went to Congress. More recently Carter of course is a public figure for Habitat for Humanity and other causes, and negotiated with Hamas. Ford called for recognizing the PLO in 1981 and for removing Saddam Hussein in 1991, and support Carter on the Panama Canal treaty. I know both Clinton and Carter started public policy think tanks, not sure how they could be more overt at wanting to influence future politics. Prior to the current primary system, an endorsement at a party convention wasn't just pageantry, it did carry more political capital than it does today.
Leaders of the websites have no problem with this. Jack Dorsey was asked about it by the congress, and he just told them to make a law and Twitter will follow it. Mark said the same thing basically.
What's important is to get a bipartisan concensus about it.
Wake me up when there's a non-marginalized figure in American politics capable of putting a bill through congress to nationalize a major private corporation.
Or when universal healthcare has more than a snowball's chance in hell of becoming reality (and no, the abomination that is Obamacare is not that)
Then we can talk about the "left." The thing you're complaining about is presumably the liberal culture wars and identity politics, which is only co-traveling with core left wing issues, and is the only part of the "left" permitted in American discourse.
We have universal healthcare now, you just have to be 65 to qualify. The easiest way to get healthcare for everybody and not bankrupt the system is to lower the qualifying age 5 years every few years. So make it 60 to qualify, then allow the markets to adjust, then in 5-10 years, make it 55, etc. We're already paying for the most expensive demographic of our population: people 65 and older. The lower we go with the qualifying age, the cheaper each adjustment to the system will be to the taxpayer.
Nobody gets campaign contributions for that though.
I feel like social media as it currently operates cannot operate alongside absolute free speech. The reason is really simple - the social media websites don't simply allow you to follow people and see what they say. They show you 'recommended content', they push content on you via features like 'trending' which also have editing. By doing this they're choosing which speech the user should be made to view. If Twitter (for example) simply showed me a feed of what people I follow post in chronological order and did nothing else then the whole absolute free speech thing would be fine. But they choose to get involved and show the 'outrageous' content that will try to get me to 'engage'. You can't have it both ways. Either take responsibility for all the content on your platform, or relinquish the power to manipulate and editorialise.
First, enforcing strict freedom of speech is regulation too. It goes both ways. Don't like Twitter censoring tweets? Regulate it to force it to publish everything. Or everything but racist stuff. Or whatever you want. Unregulated Twitter can do whatever, it can change your tweets, put words into your mouth etc.
Second, any common good ends up abused if you allow it. Ever been to an unmaintained park where anything is allowed? It's all dog shit and broken glass. It stops being useful as a park, stops being useful to the majority of users, stops being useful to anyone but a small minority who abuse what should be a common resource.
Social media have become common assets (at least the service they provide) so it seems natural to me that they need same protection. I don't mind people writing what I consider crazy or even mildly offensive / racist etc. I mind organised groups abusing such spaces to create impression of popular opinion with malicious intent. We now know beyond reasonable doubt this does happen.
When information regulation is combined with all powerful intellegence agencies you get a very dangerous combination. Their whole game is deception and controlling what information gets out, then covering their asses when anything goes wrong. Zero transparency,
'due process', or independent review processes.
It's incredibly easy to manufacture 'consensus' among gov experts and feed 'anonymous sources' to news agencies and influencers.
This goes way beyond trying to tip the scales of partisan culture wars.
Seems like a lot of people have a problem when a specific billionaire (Musk) purchases Twitter. But why do the rest of billionaires get an exception when they own Twitter or other media companies? It seems like the free speech and the "billionaire" label is just a certain group of people use to protect their interest more than it is any genuinely held believes.
> One “of the biggest reasons for democracies weakening is the profound change that’s taking place in how we communicate and consume information,” Obama told an audience in a keynote speech at a symposium at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.
This is some pretty impressive Newspeak.
The reason Democracy is “weakening” is because people have been lied to by elected representatives in both parties as well as institutions and traditional media outlets for decades.
Social media has finally given the public a chance to learn about a lot of things that would have simply been covered up or ignored otherwise.
What it sounds like Obama is really pushing for here is government/totalitarian control over what speech should be permitted, the exact opposite of free speech.
A healthy representative Democracy requires information flows that are complete so the public actually knows what their elected representatives are doing. Without this, it creates a situation of mistrust and people do not have the relevant information they need when they go to the polls to vote for their representatives.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant as they say.
This is the real fear that most of these people have when it comes to Musk buying Twitter. They are afraid he will remove censorship controls already in place on the platform.
> What it sounds like Obama is really pushing for here is government/totalitarian control over what speech should be permitted, the exact opposite of free speech.
You make it sound like there is zero nuance to permitted speech as it is today in the US. You can't shout fire in a theater, you can't post spam on Facebook and expect it to stick, and right now, certain kinds of hate or expression are also banned by virtually every common space's TOS.
Social media is an invention of the past 20 years. It's entirely factual that how we communicate and consume information is changing, and it's also factual that our news sources are in danger from two ends: from bias by the platform owners, and from manipulation from outside forces (e.g. foreign propoganda / misinformation).
It's pretty naive to advocate for unfiltered social media. If you want that, there are certainly some venues for it (e.g. 4chan). Facebook and Twitter have huge problems relating to hate speech, misinformation, and misinformation. Doesn't it seem problematic to you that huge swaths of people are bandwagoning onto unscientific / insane conspiracy theories like QAnon? This sort of behavior could not have existed without modern social media, and I find it pretty sad that anyone would say this is desirable.
> The reason Democracy is “weakening” is because people have been lied to by elected representatives in both parties as well as institutions and traditional media outlets for decades.
Democracy is weakening because people like Trump enter office and act like they are above the law -- refusing to cooperate with the other elected bodies, refusing to provide financial transparency, trading on insider information, directly using their positions to enrich themselves and their families, trying to coerce civil servants to abandon their responsibilities in favor of whatever is politically expedient (e.g. declaring voter fraud where there is none, eschewing public health guidance advocated by scientists and public health experts, etc). Democracy is weakening because media outlets are being purchased by billionaires in an environment with increasing wealth disparity. Democracy is weakening because foreign adversaries are leveraging social media to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories are being perpetuated via new memetic and contrarian tendencies.
All of this could be improved with the help of responsible moderation to decrease sockpuppet accounts and misinformation, as well as regulated standards for acceptable behavior in the commons. If you want totally unfettered speech, nobody is stopping you from starting your own private discord server or website. But you can't just say whatever in public commons.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] thread>any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
The problem was that censorship on social media has not been done in good faith and has far exceeded these regulations. Yet nobody ever got around to punishing social media for their violation of these regulations.
Now that Elon has made the effort to get Twitter into compliance and stop violating regulations, now you call them unregulated and want to change the rules?
I hope that Biden and friends try to change the rules so close to midterms. Lets see how that democracy goes after that.
That's a negative regulation, thee only actor that can violate it is government. It is impossible for a social media platform to violate the cited regulation.
It's true that if there is another regulation applicable to platform conduct, there are platform actions that would take the platform out of the immunity provided by the cited regulation (but those hypothetical other regulations would also be constrained by the First Amendment, whether or not the Section 230 immunity applied.)
No, they list out exactly what they may censor like porn. Twitter doesn't do that. It's their choice to do less and that's fine. The problem is that they can't do more. That's a positive regulation.
>It's true that if there is another regulation applicable to platform conduct, there are platform actions that would take the platform out of the immunity provided by the cited regulation (but those hypothetical other regulations would also be constrained by the First Amendment, whether or not the Section 230 immunity applied.)
It's a positive regulation because we regulate media more. We say as a publisher you cant do lots of things that say wikipedia or twitter can do. The caveat is that you can't later regulate more so that you basically are a publisher but without the liability. That would break the system.
Something the article missed is that Obama did explain that anything they do can't conflict with free speech. Therefore it's pointless to go more than section 230.
That is not the way that any court I'm aware of has ever interpreted Section 230, and it's not the way the original author of Section 230 has ever interpreted it either.
Section 230 is not a list that describes the only things you are allowed to censor. It's a regulation on the government that prevents them from treating proactive moderation as liability for other unmoderated content.
Section 230 does not require that a site avoid censoring certain kinds of information.
I'm not a supreme court justice.
>Section 230 is not a list that describes the only things you are allowed to censor. It's a regulation on the government that prevents them from treating proactive moderation as liability for unmoderated content.
So why does section 230 exist?
In a situation like if you are CNN. You publish lies on your platform like Nick Sandman is a white supremacist. You are liable as the publisher.
If someone on twitter says nick sandman is a white supremacist like so many celebrities did. Twitter is not liable, they aren't the publisher.
If section 230 was a negative right. If you were CNN, you would legally become like twitter but censor every subject to the point that people can only say nick sandman is a white supremacist. You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right?
Okay, so you have even less authority to dictate what Section 230 actually means.
Are you arguing about what Section 230 actually does, or are you arguing about what you personally would like it to do, because those are two very different conversations to have.
> So why does section 230 exist?
For a lot of reasons, one giant one being that Congress wanted to make it easier for companies to censor in certain situations.
Section 230 was born out of two lawsuits about illegal content against two early Internet companies, one completely unmoderated and one where the company in question had been trying to do some moderation, but some illegal content still slipped past.
The one who was doing no moderation at all successfully got off with the defense that it was not a publisher, the company that had been doing some moderation didn't. From Wikipedia:
> Service providers made their Congresspersons aware of these cases, believing that if followed by other courts across the nation, the cases would stifle the growth of the Internet. United States Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) had read an article about the two cases and felt the decisions were backwards. "It struck me that if that rule was going to take hold then the internet would become the Wild West and nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil," Cox stated.
Section 230 has a number of benefits, including benefits that reduce censorship online by making it safer to operate smaller forums (including HN). But it also allows communities to more easily moderate without that moderation being treated as itself a liability risk.
But don't take my word for it, go read up on the actual people who wrote the bill that are still alive today and who have on multiple occasions commented on their intentions. The bill was never intended to restrict what content platforms could moderate.
> You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right?
Section 230 is a protection against speech that your users say. CNN is still liable for its own speech (and so is Twitter for that matter), but it is not liable for the speech that happens in its comments section.
Section 230 is a two-sided safe harbor included as part of the Communications Decency Act (and pretty much the only operative part of that law that wasn't struck down for violating the First Amendment) that exists because:
(1) Online services were starting to be targets of legal action targeting them as publishers of libel, slander, pornography, and otherwise unlawful material, relying on the traditional law wherein having an active role in even minimally controlling the content of a publication rather than acting as a purely hands-off distributor of content made one a publisher with liability for unlawful content whether or not they had actual knowledge of the facts making it unlawful.
(2) Services that were not actively moderated, avoiding that problem, were also quite prominent, being casually stumbled over (including because of aggressive spam, popups, etc.) by internet users, and causing lots of offense with both illegal and legal-but-offensive content.
Section 230’s two-sided safe harbor existed to allow users and providers to use available technology to tailor experiences by enabling and encouraging active private moderation of content, by:
(1) Not making users or providers that take any steps to control content automatically liable without notice for all unlawful content in the set of content impacted by their action,
(2) Immunizing users and providers from liability for actions taken to restrict access to content that the acting user or provider finds objectionable on any grounds.
> If section 230 was a negative right.
Section 230 is a negative law, but it is not a right.
> If you were CNN, you would legally become like twitter but censor every subject to the point that people can only say nick sandman is a white supremacist. You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right?
It’d be easier to do what the media has always done to prevent liability here, and find someone else (even if anonymous) to say the thing, and then just print that they said it (emphasizing the message, but mentioning the existence of the source), and be protected by the truth defense (because what you published, that whoever it was said the thing) is absolutely true.
But, no, Section 230’s good faith restriction means that while something like this would not create liability under Section 230, it would likely also not fall under its protection. So libel laws would be available as a remedy. Section 230’s negative nature means when you go outside it's protection, liability requires some other law. Libel law is another existing law providing liability.
The issue is not whether there is a listing, the issue is what the list is for. The part you clipped out before the list is:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of”
This is a negative law providing immunity from liability arising under other (federal or state) law, not one imposing liability itself.
EDIT: That having been said, your characterization of the listing itself is also very wrong. It's not a narrow list of things “like porn”, it applies to anything the provider or user taking action “considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”.
Two important points to note there: first, it is not a set of objective content classes that can be censored, it is entirely based on the subjective consideration of the party acting; second, one of the subjective categories for which restriction by a provider or user is protected under the same harbor is “otherwise objectionable”.
So unless you can find a case of Twitter restricting content that Twitter provably did not in good faith find objectionable on some basis, your claim that their restrictions are outside of Section 230’s protection is equally wrong to your claim that being outside of that protection, with no other regulation, would be a basis for punishment under the law.
> The problem is that they can't do more
Yes, they can, unless there is some other source of liability. 230 is a safe harbor, not a restriction on providers
Also letting our infrastructure crumble while spending unlimited amounts of money on Middle East wars, restricting housing supply to lock a generation or two out of housing, allowing two generations to be saddled with unprecedented amounts of student loan debt while tuition goes up unchecked, and so on. I could keep going.
Our political class has lost the peoples' trust because they don't deserve it. They've shown nothing but incompetence and corruption for decades. I'm speaking of both major political parties.
That loss of trust has opened the door to a ton of insane garbage, but the blame for that rests on the political class of the past 50 years for dropping the ball in so many ways.
The main reason that Biden isn't fulfilling most of his promises is because the Senate is refusing to pass them. Remove those checks and balances and you'd get a lot more promises fulfilled. But those checks and balances are a feature, not a bug.
How come that when yesterday's misinformation becomes today's possibility, no accounts get unbanned? How come tech platforms have routinely banned the same person's accounts all on the same day? Tell me again about Hunter's laptop; I think that would have been extremely relevant about 2 years ago.
If you read his comments carefully, this interpretation isn't far-fetched.
When you can't control the message, people start asking uncomfortable questions like, "Why are you allowing companies to outsource jobs and factories to escape labor and environmental regulations while saving a ton of money?" "Why is healthcare so expensive?" "Why haven't you put any type of caps on pharmaceuticals?" "Why are we spending billions on homelessness and homelessness keeps increasing?" "Why did we spend $300 million a day in Afghanistan for 20 years?"
There is one Twitter. Losing access to Twitter, YouTube, etc. looks like losing access to a utility to me.
And it is not easy to start a new Twitter or YouTube in any meaningful sense. One could just as easily say "ISPs are not utilities or monopolies, you can start your own intranet easily with OSS!"
> And it is not easy to start a new Twitter or YouTube in any meaningful sense.
Apparently it is - Trump started his very own, just like that. didn't even take that long.
Not everyone got a free newspaper in the 1800s. The political leaders of the day had various newspapers that were favorable.
The fact and point remains: it's easy to start a social network. Just because it is unpopular/fails doesn't mean it is equivalent to a utility.
But the real defining characteristic that makes an ISP a public utility is that the utility (in the sense of "usefulness") of the internet is strongly bound to its uniqueness, just like the phone system or the road network. Phones and roads and the internet become inherently less useful if there is more than one network. Videos do not become less useful if you have to get some of them from one provider and others from another.
That is not true, though. Self-publishing video on my personal site has effectively no utility compared to publishing it on YouTube. For my job (and the job of, thousands? millions?), it is the only game in town.
An ISP comparison would be hosting my personal site on The Internet vs. a splinternet.
This statement is false. There are plenty of websites that self publish video and receive utility for it.
Just because your unpopular video on your unpopular website doesn't get utility, doesn't mean others don't. On top of that, plenty of videos posted on YouTube also get no utility.
This is a "0.001 is technically greater than 0" argument that could be made for ISPs as well. Do you accept that there are thousands/millions of people who rely on access to YT to support themselves, and have an income dependent on that site that would vanish if they were expelled from it?
> Do you accept that there are thousands/millions of people who rely on access to YT to support themselves, and have an income dependent on that site that would vanish if they were expelled from it?
Do you accept that all of these content creators signed an agreement to use YouTube's platform, which is a private entity? If the agreement is illegal then it is a civil matter and they have remedy - the court system. This isn't a matter of free speech.
Do you accept that users sign an agreement with their ISP, also a private entity? Why should the ISP, a private entity, not be able to censor traffic for which it provides the infrastructure? Because it (like social media) has few competitors?
The usefulness of public utilities is measured relative to consumers, not producers. You have a right to publish. You do not have a right to monetize. You don't even have a right to an audience. All you have a right to is a potential audience. If someone wants to watch your self-published video, they can.
The problem is not the YT is a utility, the problem is that YT is owned by Google and Google has an effective monopoly on on-line advertising.
There are plenty of places to publish videos. Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Vimeo, Daily Motion, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, etc. So it is obviously not scarce or difficult to do, with that many players. So it fails that definition of a utility, it's not scarce, nor difficult to implement.
Is it necessary? I don't think so. What basic necessities does Twitter provide?
Access to the internet is also not currently a public utility. And yet, some seem to be fine with government censoring speech via one of these non-public-utilities and not okay with it through another.
My point is that there is no reason good reason to treat them differently. There are bad reasons to treat them differently, though, which are covered extensively on this page and mostly due to our conditioning by gov and ISPs alike.
Why is YouTube equivalent to Electricity/Water? The utility argument just doesn't make sense. Perhaps you're thinking more of the "public square" argument.
> My point is that there is no reason good reason to treat them differently. There are bad reasons to treat them differently, though, which are covered extensively on this page and mostly due to our conditioning by gov and ISPs alike.
I see many reasons to treat utilities different than YouTube, and I also see no reason why YouTube should be treated like them.
There are too many private remedies available. On top of that, the government should not be forcing any private entity to moderate a certain way, this sets an extremely dangerous precedent, and will certainly be abused. I should be able to moderate my blog how I choose.
> Why is YouTube equivalent to Electricity/Water?
This is not the comparison I am making. I am comparing YouTube to ISPs and claiming that arguments for or against censorship in the former could also apply to the latter.
America is fully subservient to corporations. Out rights end at their doorways, including freedom of assembly and speech.
To say social media is an exception because it applies rules equally to previously exempt demographics is a joke.
Nope. I just thought the analogy was quite bad.
Similarly, let us imagine that your garden is your own private property and you can ask individuals to leave your BBQ for whatever whimsical reason you choose.
You can open Twitter to the public, just as you can open your BBQ to the public.
Protesting on a front lawn is not a problem because of what is said, it’s a problem because they are trespassing.
Good luck protesting on lawns, try not to get bitten by a dog, arrested, or worse.
So…
—George Carlin (1937-2008)
The problem is that virality in public forums is not driven by "better information," it's driven by verisimilitude, which is the appearance of being true, which is not synonymous with being true. What makes things appear to be true? Consistency with what we already believe to be true for one thing. Another way to put it is that things have verisimilitude if they appeal to our biases.
Another thing that makes things appear to be true is if they're easily digestible. It's easier to convince a layperson that light reflects off a mirror in such a way that the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence. But it takes an entire book to explain that this is actually a useful simplification, but light's behaviour is much more complex.
The problem of simpler things being more believable is critical to understanding that "better information" doesn't beat misinformation, because misinformation is always simpler than the truth.
To quote another aphorism from H.L. Mencken, "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." The neat and plausible attributes of misinformation are very difficult to counter, especially if the problem being discussed has complexities.
Free speech is one of those problems that is complex. There are no simple solutions unless you are a hard-core extreme Libertarian, but you'd never know it listening to all the people who propose simple solutions that are popular because they are simple.
Better information does not dispel misinformation in public forums. I gave reasons why this is the case.
Mind you, better information can dispel misinformation in non-public forums. For example, in a highly moderated community. Or in a community where there is a certain web of trust that discourages cynical actors from deliberately trying to game popularity.
Now onto another problem with your statement: You claimed that better information beats misinformation, and you claimed that if it doesn't, the problem is that the information isn't better.
That's a claim that any idea which becomes popular must be better, because if there was better information, it would have dispelled the poorer ideas. Observing human history, I claim this is demonstrably false.
Billions of people believe things on faith that have no empirical backing, and do so despite access to an unprecedented amount of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Any theory that better information always wins should explain how non-trivial numbers of people can believe things for which there is no evidence or even wildly disseminated evidence to the contrary.
I think the onus is on you to give evidence for your claim, because I personally see evidence to the contrary.
I said no such thing, you did. So AFAIC, you are arguing with yourself, not with me or my words. That, plus the fact that you are making claims without any arguments, examples, or reasoning to back up your claims, suggests that for all your talk of “better information,” you are actually disinterested in better information prevailing.
Your own behaviour is doing a better job of illustrating my point than my words do! I will leave you here to carry on arguing with yourself.
We don't live in a technocracy.
The crux of the matter is you don't get to decide what other people think or believe.
It seems that I called you out on making a claim you didn’t back up, and you are weaving some kind of conspiracy web around my motives and beliefs. That’s an ad hominem appeal to motive, and it’s just as terrible an argument as making a claim you decline to substantiate.
For someone who claims that good information will drive out bad, you appear to have no interest in walking your talk.
This thread has gone from tragedy to farce.
This sounds like a handwavey dismissal of a well understood paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I'm having a hard time understanding this given how fixed the definition of "intolerance of intolerance" is. Can you help me understand how you're receiving it?
For example, Twitter is absolutely staffed and run by people who I believe would wholeheartedly agree with the posted quote. What types of rules regarding intolerance does their platform employ?
One example of something it has banned is The Babylon Bee, for this piece of satire calling Rachel Levine the Man of the Year: https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year...
Now you tell me, is that intolerance? Is it speech that should be censored? Is removing this type of satire something that you believe is philosophically aligned with the original quote?
Meanwhile, Twitter still allows members of the Taliban to post. Do you think they're more, or less tolerant than the Babylon Bee?
"Intolerance" is such a fuzzy concept. Intolerance of what? You can propose any crazy idea and when people disagree with it, say they're being intolerant.
If I don't want my young children to go to schools that are staffed by ex sex-offenders, on the basis that employing them in that role is a great example of how people can be re-introduced into society and embraced empathetically, am I "intolerant" of something? If I voice that opinion on social media, should it be removed? It's not a real example right now, but that's the direction we're headed in.
Specifically the qualifier where suppression should be used where people adamantly refuse rational argument and attempt to suppress the engagement of rational argument by violent force.
"But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
Sounds kind of familiar
"If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people - maybe there is, I don't know"
If people want to yell "Fake News" on social media, then, they're participating in the debate.
It makes sense that we might need to do a little debugging and refactoring now and then.
Just like the accessibility and exponentially amplified voice provided by the printing press prompted some of the “core principles” of Europe to get reshuffled, it’s pretty reasonable to me that social media could prompt some reshuffling of it’s own.
Dogmatic commitment like you hint at for yourself is an important part of the dialogue of how that reshuffling might look, but I don’t know that your characterization of others is very accurate.
It's pretty reasonable to drill a few small holes in the dam, and to defer maintenance in favor of more urgent priorities.
Dogmatic commitment to the old no-hole-drilling and take-maintenance-seriously dialogues of the past is just a quaint antiquarian tradition.
So is regulated social media.
Damned if you do...
Social media is not the same as a free press, freedom of speech, etc. Equating the two is quite dangerous, imo.
That's some pretty incompetent reporting.
Edit: Can we change the URL to the original source instead of driving traffic to bad journalism? https://barackobama.medium.com/my-remarks-on-disinformation-...
>> That's some pretty incompetent reporting.
What's incompetent about that? It seems to be exactly what he did...
This "journalist" doesn't qualify anything and makes a statement of fact that Musk mounted hostile takeover bid.
That is simply bad reporting.
The poison pill was adopted to forestall any hostile attempt if the offer was rejected and try to secure a better bargaining position if they decided to accept the offer.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042215/what-differe...
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/twitter-accepts-elon-musks-b...
Zero responsible reporting called this a hostile takeover. The closest you can come is journalists who speculated that a hostile takeover might be attempted if the offer to the board were rejected. There is nothing beyond speculation to show that this was ever a possibility.
Masterful work. Real politics. That is how you win.
Please, calling it a coup is a joke. France has larger demonstrations almost monthly (at least during non-Covid times), I've seen larger riots in the aftermath of hockey games.
It was a few rednecks rioting...
Read the article. It wasn't a "few rednecks rioting" -- there were two pipe bombs. Elected representatives were in actual danger; capitol police were struggling to hold back the participants. That the "rednecks rioting" were so poorly organized doesn't make it any less a coup. Our elected officials were being sheltered in windowless rooms.
Funny the guy who encouraged everyone to go to the capital (despite the almost universal disagreement) hasn't testified.
That said, it doesn't really matter that the gilets jaunes were protesting for longer and in larger numbers; directly comparing them is a category error. The gilet jaunes were operating within the norms of how French civil society currently operates. The Capitol protesters/insurgents/whatever were expressly trying to overturn them. Maybe not a coup, maybe not treason, but sedition at the very least.
We can't let the laughable ineptitude of these people distract us; they may not be so freakin' stupid the next time they attempt to overthrow our duly elected representatives.
We definitely can. The whole world laughs at the US when they call it a coup. We've seen plenty of real coups in our lifetime, this ain't it.
Coup attempts are not defined by crowd size.
And when crowds do lead to governments being overthrown, usually it's crowds in the millions encouraging those institutions to overthrow the government. Again which didn't happen.
By any definition it wasn't a coup d'état or even an attempt at anything with a chance of success.
No, a coup doesn't have to be by military and government officials (though they are usually best situated, and in any case were involved in the autocoup attempt of which the attack on the Capitol was a part—but neither the whole, the beginning, or necessarily even the end once it failed.)
And a coup attempt can (this specific subtype is called a self-coup, autocoup, or autogolpe) seek to irregularly extend the powers or the term of the current leadership, not overthrow anyone already in power, and this is what the one involving the 1/6 attack was.
And a coup attempt doesn't always involve taking over anything, in the same way a murder attempt doesn't always produce a dead body.
Really though, that's never been successful and calling it an attempt is being extremely generous. It's like saying writing a Tweet is an attempt at writing a novel.
Well, sure, and if that's really what you wanted to do, that would be a (very badly) attempted coup.
On the other hand, if you had a much larger group of “friends”, including high officials of the federal executive branch, federal legislators, state legislators, and others in and out of government, and instead of going from a pub and breaking a few government windows you coordinated on a scheme to substitute alternative electoral votes for the certified ones from several states relying on an abuse of office by the presiding officer of the joint session counting the electoral votes to effect that, when the regular presiding officer publicly rebuffed the effort gathered a few thousand people including multiple organized armed groups to violently assault the Capitol, erecting a gallows and calling for the hanging of recalcitrant presiding officer, having members and legislative staff escape only moments ahead of the mob (and those moments in part because one breakthrough of barricades was stopped by deadly force), delay deployment of National Guard forces to respond to the attack,...
Well, then you’ve got, while in the actual case still unsuccessful, a lot more credible coup attempt.
Again though, this is exactly my point. I am not from the US. I couldn't really care less. But the problem is that someone's obviously ludicrous subjective interpretation of an event is being stated as an objective fact, and then applied by social media. Do you not see how this can backfire on you? In other words, you have no problem when it is being rigged against people you don't like but how are you going to respond when it is rigged against you?
This is the reason we have courts. This is the reason we have free speech. It is indivisible, applied to everyone equally.
None of his posts violated ToS (there are people on Twitter who are orchestrating genocide), you just don't like them.
Federal code defines seditious conspiracy as two or more people conspiring to overthrow or destroy by force the United States government, or to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any U.S. law.
> Their main opponent also tried to stage a coup.
But that said it still seems like a real stretch to me to say that the US federal government was so weak that there was ever a serious risk of 10 idiots overthrowing it and installing their guy. It seems like the word "coup" is somewhat meaningless if the same word is used to describe highly organized government takeovers by military leaders, as well as a small group of yokels that didn't even know what to do when they got into the capital building so started walking around taking pictures like tourists. I don't know what word I would use instead, probably "riot" or maybe even "rebellion" (actually, Shay's Rebellion seems way worse than what this was), but "coup" has never felt right to me.
Also worth pointing out I think is that they've been charged with seditious conspiracy (which I agree is a big deal) but none have been convicted (yet). Prosecutorial overreach is a huge problem in our country that needs to change. (to be clear I'm not saying this is a case of prosecutorial overreach, I honestly don't know. But it is certainly possible given how widespread it is in general in the US). Especially hard hit bit it are marginalized groups that can't adequately defend themselves. I've seen cases where the prosecutor didn't think they stood a chance of getting a conviction but they wanted a plea deal so they charged him with as much as possible to scare him into a guilty plea so they didn't have to go to trial.
It also shouldn't be overlooked that there is a massive political incentive for the current people in power to paint this as much as possible as "a coup." Selfishly I do hope they succeed, because I think Trump and many of his people are toxic to our democracy, but I strongly prefer to win "fair and square" rather than hyperbole.
The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys (charged with conspiracy as well in the attack, and in direct coordination with each other) are part of a network that connected to the fairly well documented effort by the Trump inner circle to enact a plan to subvert the vote count and either avoid the counting of or replace the lawful votes from certain states through channels including Roger Stone.
The main mechanism sought to be used was discussed publicly in the media prior to the attack, which sought to forcibly implement it when Mike Pence indicated he wouldn't go along with it voluntarily, by disrupting/delaying the count, removing Pence from the presiding role (“Hang Mike Pence”), and using intimidation to ensure that whatever officer replaced Pence would play ball.
> But that said it still seems like a real stretch to me to say that the US federal government was so weak that there was ever a serious risk of 10 idiots overthrowing it and installing their guy
An autocoup attempt by the sitting President, other high executive branch officials, members of Congress, at least two different organized violent groups, and thousands of followers mobilized by social media for violent attack on the Capital isn't just “10 idiots”.
> as well as a small group of yokels that didn't even know what to do when they got into the capital building so started walking around taking pictures like tourists.
That largely occurred after the evacuation of members, which itself was not complete when people broke into the Capitol; there was a concerted effort to reach the chambers where the joint session was being held, the Speakers office, and other areas where members and other high-value targets were likely to be initially.
I’m not sure if your minimizing misrepresentation is deliberate or just a result of effective propagandization.
Yeah, lots.
> They usually involve armies and mass executions
Military coups are one kind, but even they often involve only a fairly small group of officers, and a few trusted henchmen to execute the coup. Often, key military leaders don't use the military, they just prevent security services from intervening to stop the coup attempt. (Which executive branch officials did for some time during the 1/6 attempt.)
But not all attempted coups are military coups, and the class known as “autocoups”—attempts to extend the domain or time of the current leaders power beyond it's lawful parameters—often look different anyway, since they aren't centered on displacing the existing leader but either disrupting and/or providing an excuse for cancelling a regular change in power or forcibly pressuring some other government body (often by incapacitating or removing key opponents) to acquiesce in a change of terms.
He wasn't cut off easily or lightly. It is not as if he suddenly can't have a website to spread his treason. Oh wait, he could... if he could afford a few developers.
And you believe they were lies, you are saying that you are the ultimate arbiter of truth...I don't support Trump, but I am willing to accept that people have different interpretations of events. I am also willing to accept that courts should be the ultimate arbiter of truth, not social media companies. Welcome to democracy.
Btw, the irony of this is unbearable...Hilary Clinton has contested almost every election she lost. She said 2016 was rigged and challenged that result legally. She said that Obama rigged the Iowa primary. Politicians often think their opponents cheat, it is called motivated reasoning...again, that is why we have courts to decide, not you, not me.
He didn't merely challenge a few items, he loudly proclaimed as fact before the fact that the election was intentionally rigged by a large combination of Democrats and RINO Secretaries of State, and was shot down at every challenge due to a complete lack of evidence. He and his liar sycophants continue to spread these lies not just as supposition, but as fact. It is disingenuous to compare Trump's challenges-cum-lies to any run-of-the-mill challenge of years past.
Back to the main point: He could stand up a blog very quickly and have the ears of all willing listeners on the planet.
The challenges he made were identical. Read what you wrote again, you refer to no laws, you are referring only to the fact that he said something you don't agree with. There is no law against this. He challenged the result legally, he was not successful, he took no other action but to repeat his claim that he believed the election result was fraudulent...which he is within his rights to do.
Great, I suppose that everyone who wants to leave Twitter now will be able to do the same...right? (I don't think you understand that arguing against free speech is not a winnable argument, you are arguing against inalienable rights that founded the USA, I could also posit...if you don't like free speech, you could consider starting your own blog and moving to a country where there is no free speech?).
There is no legal right to post to Twitter. Your last line is so objectionable, I'll target it specifically: anyone can start a blog. Anyone can have the entire internet see their thoughts. Twitter isn't covered by the first amendment. No one in the US is being told they can't have a website.
If I told you you had a right to eat, you would sue me for not feeding you ribeye for every meal.
A lot of information is coming out, and it looks very bad. It certainly is not as simple as "tried to sue".
This comment may age poorly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
What they did not anticipate was the odd combination of regular media like TV channels reporting breathlessly on (essentially) online trolling for which you'd be banned immediately from any 2008-era phpBB forum.
Obama and the pundits played by the established rules of honesty and fairness and expected the Republicans to do the same... and the Republicans (as well as their associated media, starting with Fox News and ending with OAN/Newsmax) broke with all traditions of democracy and went onto a destruction spree instead. The result is that trust in democracy is fundamentally broken now.
Defending free speech is meaningless if one person's vote is worth more than another's.
There's also tradeoffs to a purely direct democracy that have to be weighed. It's not a clear-cut win for governance
Strategies can change but that doesn't mean the current system does not significantly benefit one party over another.
The very existence of the senate is a blocker to true democratic rule and for good reason. But I don't think changing the election of the president to one person gets one vote would usurp the current system. It's simply more fair. But of course more fair is not what any party truly wants.
Democrats love big tech as long as it is beholden to them. When it is not, they start accusing others of the very things they’ve been doing all along.
And I empathize and understand people who talk about free speech in its most unadulterated way.
But there are tradeoffs and costs, lots of them have been already detailed so I'll focus on something else: productivity and initiative.
Social media lifted the veil on really how easily manipulated the avg. individual is. There is no turning back from that, no turning back from not knowing that information, it's almost like when you first get the concept of mortality and that one day you are going to die.
And those using social media to manipulate the avg. individual could be left-wing, right-wing, independent, greens, libertarians etc. But as we are seeing these days also billionaires with an agenda , cults, religious movements, corporations, NGOs, Secret Services etc.
For a person trying to make a living in this world, that's really scary, it damages productivity because given all the above people become extremely defensive and think twice before taking any initiative....they could become the target of some cult or political movement with just a simple action such as firing an employee or speaking their mind about something.
And the attack could come from every side or even multiple sides
Obama is just changing his tune with the wind.
https://youtu.be/mi5da2AhDCY
Where are all the politicians raising the alarm about plutocracy as a threat to democracy? (I know there are a few who do, at least nominally.)
Either they're taking fat stacks of cash and keeping quiet about it or they're being subjected to a relentless character assassination campaign that is largely working as intended.
Too busy astroturfing social media in an effort to drum up popular support for their status as plutocrats to comment publicly on the subject, I'd wager.
The principles of politicians on full display.
Btw, I don't think moderation is hard. If you are saying Trump is guilty of "hate speech" or whatever, and the Taliban isn't...the problem isn't the rules, it is how you apply them (which is a natural consequence of people at these companies not being interested in moderation at all, Dorsey couldn't contain his glee after he removed Trump...it was a personal choice, not moderation). Social media companies make the same mistake that most people make when they consider politics: they believe things they don't agree with are immoral. It was never the task of social media companies to be the religious police, they just appointed themselves.
People are taking social media rules at face value, whereas they should always ask themselves what would happen to them if they said the same things in a bar.
Would they be kicked out? If you behave online as if you would offline then there are very low odds that you'd be banned.
The report button is the equivalent of people going to the bouncer to have you removed, if he's summoned to remove you it means that you said something wrong or to the wrong demographic.
You're talking about the active government of Afghanistan for like...a million years now. Even during US occupation. I think they can control goats.
It probably depends on the user base of the platform, but I believe it could be one of the worst jobs in the world. If you like the community and content, great, but the usual employed moderators on large social media platforms probably need regular therapy to distance themselves from all the crap they have to read every day. There is a huge difference if you have to read it because it is your job and when you do it on your own because you are hungry for something tasteless and when you can just leave a spicy reply.
It depends where you get your definitions from. The European Convention on Human Rights for example only has a couple of 'absolute' rights and free speech is not one. Rights generally need to be balanced against each other (e.g. right to free speech interfering with someone else's right to privacy). Seems sensible. It's a rarity that dealing in absolutes is sensible.
This is really nothing new.
If anything the first amendment is too idealistic sounding since the US has never lived up to what it implies.
Why? I mean it's a common rhetorical move for all kinds of reasons and most of them aren't good, so just by pattern matching sure I guess. But also one of the two political parties in the US is openly contemptuous of the institutions of the state and is blatantly attempting to undermine trust in and power of our elections and legislature. You can't really both-sides that one and it's not hyperbolic to describe it as a threat to democracy.
Your last point I mean yes, certainly. But what do you expect from obama here? He's a millionaire monster war criminal like all american presidents always have been, he's not going to ask us to tear down his own house. That one is on us if we want it to be different, no one with any appreciable power under the circumstances has anything close to a reason to change it.
Some proeminent ones have even quit Twitter altogether with that as a message.
But now that ownership of one network changes hands, it's causing everyone to panic. At least we're dropping the facade about what the political class is really asking for. It's no longer a "private platform, they can do what they want". It's now everyone must follow the same rules mandated down from politicians. Before now the leaders of these networks just happened to enforce the policies the political class wanted. They just have to drag the leaders in front of Congress once in a while to get them back in line. But now that one network is at risk of breaking ranks, everyone panics.
You're starting to see lots of people on Twitter who claim to specialzie in disinformation and monitoring hate speech, it like how all of the Mckinsey types who turned into counter-terrorism consultants around 2004.
Trends in gov contractors, think tanks, and the ex-UN volunteering well connected rich kids are always a good signal of where the slush fund $$$ is going to start flowing. They have a big pull on policy since they have the most to gain.
If you look at a number of developping political scandals, it seems they turned to pandemic consultants two years ago in at least France, Australia, and a couple others.
Giving a single billionaire the power to decide what speech is allowed (and what isn’t) is dangerous. No individual’s incentives align with everyone else’s. And the wealthiest person in the world has especially unique incentives.
If we want to align our social media platforms’ rules with what’s best for society, then we need society to decide the rules.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/35
Do you think people should be free to knowingly spread false information on media platforms?
[0] https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/convey-false-inf...
The underlying problem is the sheer amount of money and power to be gained by winning in America's 2-party system. So much so, that winning at all costs is the norm.
Winning at all costs, includes (but is not limited to) leveraging bots, PR firms and activists on social media to make one side fear and hate the other.
I liked that.
Do you really think Trump would ever stop having rallies under any condition?
What's important is to get a bipartisan concensus about it.
In today's day and age that just means "not far left"
Wake me up when there's a non-marginalized figure in American politics capable of putting a bill through congress to nationalize a major private corporation.
Or when universal healthcare has more than a snowball's chance in hell of becoming reality (and no, the abomination that is Obamacare is not that)
Then we can talk about the "left." The thing you're complaining about is presumably the liberal culture wars and identity politics, which is only co-traveling with core left wing issues, and is the only part of the "left" permitted in American discourse.
Nobody gets campaign contributions for that though.
First, enforcing strict freedom of speech is regulation too. It goes both ways. Don't like Twitter censoring tweets? Regulate it to force it to publish everything. Or everything but racist stuff. Or whatever you want. Unregulated Twitter can do whatever, it can change your tweets, put words into your mouth etc.
Second, any common good ends up abused if you allow it. Ever been to an unmaintained park where anything is allowed? It's all dog shit and broken glass. It stops being useful as a park, stops being useful to the majority of users, stops being useful to anyone but a small minority who abuse what should be a common resource.
Social media have become common assets (at least the service they provide) so it seems natural to me that they need same protection. I don't mind people writing what I consider crazy or even mildly offensive / racist etc. I mind organised groups abusing such spaces to create impression of popular opinion with malicious intent. We now know beyond reasonable doubt this does happen.
It's incredibly easy to manufacture 'consensus' among gov experts and feed 'anonymous sources' to news agencies and influencers.
This goes way beyond trying to tip the scales of partisan culture wars.
This is some pretty impressive Newspeak.
The reason Democracy is “weakening” is because people have been lied to by elected representatives in both parties as well as institutions and traditional media outlets for decades.
Social media has finally given the public a chance to learn about a lot of things that would have simply been covered up or ignored otherwise.
What it sounds like Obama is really pushing for here is government/totalitarian control over what speech should be permitted, the exact opposite of free speech.
A healthy representative Democracy requires information flows that are complete so the public actually knows what their elected representatives are doing. Without this, it creates a situation of mistrust and people do not have the relevant information they need when they go to the polls to vote for their representatives.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant as they say.
This is the real fear that most of these people have when it comes to Musk buying Twitter. They are afraid he will remove censorship controls already in place on the platform.
You make it sound like there is zero nuance to permitted speech as it is today in the US. You can't shout fire in a theater, you can't post spam on Facebook and expect it to stick, and right now, certain kinds of hate or expression are also banned by virtually every common space's TOS.
Social media is an invention of the past 20 years. It's entirely factual that how we communicate and consume information is changing, and it's also factual that our news sources are in danger from two ends: from bias by the platform owners, and from manipulation from outside forces (e.g. foreign propoganda / misinformation).
It's pretty naive to advocate for unfiltered social media. If you want that, there are certainly some venues for it (e.g. 4chan). Facebook and Twitter have huge problems relating to hate speech, misinformation, and misinformation. Doesn't it seem problematic to you that huge swaths of people are bandwagoning onto unscientific / insane conspiracy theories like QAnon? This sort of behavior could not have existed without modern social media, and I find it pretty sad that anyone would say this is desirable.
> The reason Democracy is “weakening” is because people have been lied to by elected representatives in both parties as well as institutions and traditional media outlets for decades.
Democracy is weakening because people like Trump enter office and act like they are above the law -- refusing to cooperate with the other elected bodies, refusing to provide financial transparency, trading on insider information, directly using their positions to enrich themselves and their families, trying to coerce civil servants to abandon their responsibilities in favor of whatever is politically expedient (e.g. declaring voter fraud where there is none, eschewing public health guidance advocated by scientists and public health experts, etc). Democracy is weakening because media outlets are being purchased by billionaires in an environment with increasing wealth disparity. Democracy is weakening because foreign adversaries are leveraging social media to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories are being perpetuated via new memetic and contrarian tendencies.
All of this could be improved with the help of responsible moderation to decrease sockpuppet accounts and misinformation, as well as regulated standards for acceptable behavior in the commons. If you want totally unfettered speech, nobody is stopping you from starting your own private discord server or website. But you can't just say whatever in public commons.