US Elections 2020 - very self such moderated

[Gyfts]

This probably deserves it's own thread but I'm posting this here because I think some of the things I talk about pertains to key issues that people voted on in the 2020 election. Feel free to delete if it's not on topic and I'll post it somewhere else.

Anyways - Orange man was suspended from twitter!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1347684877634838528

After close review of recent Tweets from the
@realDonaldTrump
 account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

So aside from this being dangerous I think it's important to talk about the implications of banning the current sitting President, soon to be ex-President.

I'm a firm believer that tech regulations, tech censorship, ect. were on the ballot in the 2020 election and that if Republicans were to win, they would work to take away "publisher" status away from big tech companies -- probably messing around with section 230. I think this would have been disastrous and don't believe that Republicans would have been successful in their effort because many conservatives realize you can't go around dictating how private companies handle their user policy and content regulation. So basically you would have had the status quo if Republicans were to win -- nothing changes, life goes on.

Now that democrats won and contain full control, I think we see the consequence playing out in real time. Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter obviously followed through and banned Trump too. I'm thinking that big tech companies are jumping ahead of the gun and are removing Trump because it will successfully limit Republican reach on social media platforms which means democrats control the political discussion online. Meaning, I think Facebook and Twitter banned Trump so they can avoid scrutiny by democrats who would undoubtedly push cumbersome regulations on big tech companies to if they don't adhere to de-platforming individuals they don't like. It's no secret that democrats have floated the idea of banning Trump from social media due to "inciting violence" before. Twitter also pulled the trigger and banned Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, and a few other Q-tards.

So where does this leave us? Probably down a dark road. If someone disagrees with me, I won't fight for them to be banned. I might call them retarded, but that's another discussion.

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[suchmoon]

So where does this leave us? Probably down a dark road. If someone disagrees with me, I won't fight for them to be banned. I might call them retarded, but that's another discussion.

He can go to Parler if he doesn't want to be on Twitter. He broke Twitter rules, repeatedly, and Twitter was giving him a lot of slack until they didn't. Would you argue that he shouldn't be banned if he came here and started spamming off topic nonsense all over the forum?

[BitcoinBunny]

So where does this leave us? Probably down a dark road. If someone disagrees with me, I won't fight for them to be banned. I might call them retarded, but that's another discussion.

He can go to Parler if he doesn't want to be on Twitter. He broke Twitter rules, repeatedly, and Twitter was giving him a lot of slack until they didn't. Would you argue that he shouldn't be banned if he came here and started spamming off topic nonsense all over the forum?

No he can't because Google have already taken it down from their playstore and Apple will most likely follow suit. Next step will be ISPs banning the host most likely if left wing voices still consider it a threat to their views.

Hardly a good comparison if he would join BitcoinTalk and spam threads. No one on this forum is (presumably) an elected president.

If words were ever that dangerous why is social media allowed to exist?

The guy that started Facebook started his social media career with a site stealing women's photos from a university index and allowing people to rate them.

To pretend such people somehow have the moral high ground is utter moronic.

[suchmoon]

Hardly a good comparison if he would join BitcoinTalk and spam threads. No one on this forum is (presumably) an elected president.

How does being an elected something or other make you immune to the rules of a website?

If words were ever that dangerous why is social media allowed to exist?

The guy that started Facebook started his social media career with a site stealing women's photos from a university index and allowing people to rate them.

To pretend such people somehow have the moral high ground is utter moronic.

Exactly. Facebook sucks. Why people insist on using it is beyond me.

[Gyfts]

So where does this leave us? Probably down a dark road. If someone disagrees with me, I won't fight for them to be banned. I might call them retarded, but that's another discussion.

He can go to Parler if he doesn't want to be on Twitter. He broke Twitter rules, repeatedly, and Twitter was giving him a lot of slack until they didn't. Would you argue that he shouldn't be banned if he came here and started spamming off topic nonsense all over the forum?

The reason twitter gave for the ban was along the lines of "Trump said he wouldn't go to the inauguration, therefore he's inciting violence because of the broader context." I kid you not.

If he was actually breaking the rules, I'd call for his ban too. They've let people on the left who call for death against the right stay up. Pretty sure the Iranian and Chinese accounts are still up too lol

[BitcoinBunny]

So where does this leave us? Probably down a dark road. If someone disagrees with me, I won't fight for them to be banned. I might call them retarded, but that's another discussion.

He can go to Parler if he doesn't want to be on Twitter. He broke Twitter rules, repeatedly, and Twitter was giving him a lot of slack until they didn't. Would you argue that he shouldn't be banned if he came here and started spamming off topic nonsense all over the forum?

The reason twitter gave for the ban was along the lines of "Trump said he wouldn't go to the inauguration, therefore he's inciting violence because of the broader context." I kid you not.

If he was actually breaking the rules, I'd call for his ban too. They've let people on the left who call for death against the right stay up. Pretty sure the Iranian and Chinese accounts are still up too lol

That's the thing, Twitter can decide what they think is the context of tweets.

Like I said, if their platform is THAT dangerous if they didn't ban people why allow the platform to exist?

[eddie13]

I think things are about to get bad..

The way the media spun this trying to make this protest out to be worse than what BLM have been doing all summer in their “peaceful” protests, calling this white supremacy, they are starting a civil war..

The Trump protesters didn’t burn blocks to the ground, they went straight to the congressional buildings and TOOK them.. Didn’t even burn them..

They are scared and made a very faulty decision emotionally..
They made a big mistake not giving this protest any respect at all after giving every excuse in the book for BLM..

These patriot protesters are MUCH more powerful and MUCH more intelligent than BLM protesters..
I’m not sure they know what they are doing pissing them off this badly..

By the way, when it comes down to it, resisting oppression and tyranny matters a whole fucking lot more than a million black lives, plus another million white lives, and a few million more lives of any kind..
Principles matter more than lives..

Lives don’t mean fuck all compared to what is happening to us people these days, which is just getting worse and worse..
They are using a damn cold as an excuse to shut us down, tell us what to do, and slowly step by step control every point of our lives, basically enslaving us..
Things are bad.. Lives will likely be traded soon..

Not to mention they VERY likely just got away with rigging a presidential election..

Their is no proof, but I believe probably 70% chance this election was rigged..

I saw MY own vote changed with MY own eyes 100% fucking fact, through dominion software..
Their excuses flew and they changed the vote reports AFTER getting caught, but I don’t trust them one Satoshi with their excuse and for all I know they were paid off but got too greedy with the change %s and got themselves caught..

[BitcoinBunny]

I think things are about to get bad..

The way the media spun this trying to make this protest out to be worse than what BLM have been doing all summer in their “peaceful” protests, calling this white supremacy, they are starting a civil war..

The Trump protesters didn’t burn blocks to the ground, they went straight to the congressional buildings and TOOK them.. Didn’t even burn them..

They are scared and made a very faulty decision emotionally..
They made a big mistake not giving this protest any respect at all after giving every excuse in the book for BLM..

These patriot protesters are MUCH more powerful and MUCH more intelligent than BLM protesters..
I’m not sure they know what they are doing pissing them off this badly..

By the way, when it comes down to it, resisting oppression and tyranny matters a whole fucking lot more than a million black lives, plus another million white lives, and a few million more lives of any kind..
Principles matter more than lives..

Lives don’t mean fuck all compared to what is happening to us people these days, which is just getting worse and worse..
They are using a damn cold as an excuse to shut us down, tell us what to do, and slowly step by step control every point of our lives, basically enslaving us..
Things are bad.. Lives will likely be traded soon..

Not to mention they VERY likely just got away with rigging a presidential election..

Their is no proof, but I believe probably 70% chance this election was rigged..

I saw MY own vote changed with MY own eyes 100% fucking fact, through dominion software..
Their excuses flew and they changed the vote reports AFTER getting caught, but I don’t trust them one Satoshi with their excuse and for all I know they were paid off but got too greedy with the change %s and got themselves caught..

The problem I see is that the Democrats are doing nothing other than pouring petrol on fires that have been lit for a very long time.

The storming of Capitol Hill is wrong (although there are conflicting reports of police facilitating some it) and sadly resulted in death. But at the end of the day normal proceedings could resume a few hours later.
Chuck Schumer: This was just like Pearl Harbour.

If Trump supposedly belongs in a straight jacket Chuck Schumer should have been wearing one years ago.

[TwitchySeal]

The way the media spun this trying to make this protest out to be worse than what BLM have been doing all summer in their “peaceful” protests

Always with blaming the media.  The first hand videos that came out today show it was even worse than I thought while watching it happen live.

They literally broke the doors down of the Capital with guns in their face while the Senate (including the VP) and House were in session with the intent to take elected officials hostage or worse.

They beat the shit out of and stole from journalists who's credentials were from any of the outlets Trump deemed 'enemy of the people'.

They ransacked and stole stuff (laptops, cameras, likely with classified information) out of personal offices belonging to members of congress, including the Speaker of the House.

They built a gallow while chanting about hanging the Vice President while others 'hunted him down'.

If BLM were responsible for all of the above, it would by far be their defining moment and the thing you mentioned first when talking about how bad they are.


PS: The vast majority of BLM protest have been peaceful.  The violent ones weren't called peaceful.  So no need for the quotes in "peaceful".

[theymos]

So aside from this being dangerous I think it's important to talk about the implications of banning the current sitting President, soon to be ex-President.

These are private platforms, and legally-speaking they should be able to do what they want. If the government says that they have to allow X, or must ban Y, then you're giving the government a dangerous level of control over speech. If section 230 is repealed, then you're giving these companies a huge incentive to delete anything even remotely controversial, since they could be held liable otherwise. In either case, you're discouraging competition to the huge companies because you're creating a situation of regulatory capture: big companies are better-able to handle burdensome legal regimes. For example, a few years ago Congress carved out an exception in section 230 for certain sex crimes. As a result, Craigslist had to shut down their dating sections because they didn't have the resources to moderate them strictly enough. Later, Facebook created a dating service, since they have much more resources, and they can deal with the 230 carve-out. Regulations lead to centralization at the top.

If you don't like how these companies do business, then use a different site. There are ways that this is bad/uncomfortable, but the alternative ways of possibly handling it are much worse.

As for the decision to ban this stuff itself: I can see how honest, well-meaning actors at these companies might justify their recent actions. Many of the people who participated in the capitol riot thought that they were doing the right thing, and maybe didn't even realize how much danger they were putting themselves in, but yet a few of them are dead and many of them are going to prison for a long time. People at these companies might reason that too many people are just too susceptible to being manipulated, and at least the top platforms should try to protect them from themselves. The most persistent believers will go elsewhere, and they should have the freedom to do so, but by having the most popular platforms cultivate their communities more, they might actually succeed in reducing the future growth of some of these crazy thought-bubbles.

There is a big risk, however, that this just creates more division. These people can go to Parler, and if Parler is gone from Google Play then they can create their separate app store. It leads down a road of basically splitting the Internet in two, and then we're going to have two almost completely separate cultures of people living amongst each other, which is a dangerous situation. Also, I think you're right in that a big part of their motivation is in appeasing the incoming administration, and these companies do have a history of being very biased. The recent decision by Twitter was clearly them just jumping onto a bandwagon, not a principled decision. IMO they'd be better-off trying to completely redesign the structure of their sites with the goals of 1) making manipulation more difficult and 2) not even giving themselves the opportunity to let their bias affect moderation. It's a difficult problem, though.

[DaveF]

So aside from this being dangerous I think it's important to talk about the implications of banning the current sitting President, soon to be ex-President.

These are private platforms, and legally-speaking they should be able to do what they want. If the government says that they have to allow X, or must ban Y, then you're giving the government a dangerous level of control over speech. If section 230 is repealed, then you're giving these companies a huge incentive to delete anything even remotely controversial, since they could be held liable otherwise. In either case, you're discouraging competition to the huge companies because you're creating a situation of regulatory capture: big companies are better-able to handle burdensome legal regimes. For example, a few years ago Congress carved out an exception in section 230 for certain sex crimes. As a result, Craigslist had to shut down their dating sections because they didn't have the resources to moderate them strictly enough. Later, Facebook created a dating service, since they have much more resources, and they can deal with the 230 carve-out. Regulations lead to centralization at the top.

If you don't like how these companies do business, then use a different site. There are ways that this is bad/uncomfortable, but the alternative ways of possibly handling it are much worse.

As for the decision to ban this stuff itself: I can see how honest, well-meaning actors at these companies might justify their recent actions. Many of the people who participated in the capitol riot thought that they were doing the right thing, and maybe didn't even realize how much danger they were putting themselves in, but yet a few of them are dead and many of them are going to prison for a long time. People at these companies might reason that too many people are just too susceptible to being manipulated, and at least the top platforms should try to protect them from themselves. The most persistent believers will go elsewhere, and they should have the freedom to do so, but by having the most popular platforms cultivate their communities more, they might actually succeed in reducing the future growth of some of these crazy thought-bubbles.

There is a big risk, however, that this just creates more division. These people can go to Parler, and if Parler is gone from Google Play then they can create their separate app store. It leads down a road of basically splitting the Internet in two, and then we're going to have two almost completely separate cultures of people living amongst each other, which is a dangerous situation. Also, I think you're right in that a big part of their motivation is in appeasing the incoming administration, and these companies do have a history of being very biased. The recent decision by Twitter was clearly them just jumping onto a bandwagon, not a principled decision. IMO they'd be better-off trying to completely redesign the structure of their sites with the goals of 1) making manipulation more difficult and 2) not even giving themselves the opportunity to let their bias affect moderation. It's a difficult problem, though.

Or, they took a look at how much advertising revenue the Trump side was generating and how much advertising revenue the anti-Trump side was generating and made a business decision that they could throw a reason over.

Kind of like Nike with the Colin Kaepernick Just Do It campaign.
Nike did research, found a substantial majority of the people who buy their products were for Colin. And that most of the rest were ambivalent. The few that were Nike consumers that would leave because of the advertising were deemed an acceptable business loss vs the potential gain.
Looking at their stock price and sales it was a good call.

If you don't think it's all about the money you are deluding yourself.
But telling a lot of people you are worth more to us in advertising dollars and as a revenue stream then those other people over there just drives everyone away.

-Dave

[PrimeNumber7]

So aside from this being dangerous I think it's important to talk about the implications of banning the current sitting President, soon to be ex-President.

section 230

As a society, we should consider if it is acceptable for a company to influence society via the way they moderate their content while being largely unaccountable to citizens.

I don't think 'start a new platform' is sufficient to address the above. Major social media platforms serve as an effective town square and speech at a real town square is protected by the first amendment.

Parler for example is a customer of AWS and Google. There are a very small number of apps that are banned for political reasons and are probably insufficient to get most people except the people with the strongest political ideology to use alternative platforms that are open to these apps.

Changing 230 with regard to what content is removed should be fairly simple. Currently, social media companies can remove content they deem 'objectionable'. The term 'objectionable' is specifically up to individual social media companies. The definition of 'objectionable' could be more narrowly defined to include only a subset of content. Social media companies could also mark content with various labels that individual users can decide to either view or not view. Changing 230 with regard to who gets banned is much more difficult.

BTW, I don't think Craigslist's "dating" subs were really for dating. I think it is more likely that most of the ads were for sex work. Facebook did open their competing dating site, but they also have many competitors that don't have 1% of the resources that Facebook has.

[TwitchySeal]

As a society, we should consider if it is acceptable for a company to influence society via the way they moderate their content while being largely unaccountable to citizens.

That's not what's happening though.  Society is holding them accountable, especially since Trump took office.

You just don't like that they fact checked and banned Trump.  Imagine for a second it was someone like Hillary Clinton that got banned from Twitter for inciting a violent mob to storm the Capital to stop congress from certifying Trump as president.  Would you be upset when Twitter banned her?  Of course not.  That's what makes your argument in bad faith.  Step back and look at what you're really saying without Trump in the equation.  It's ridiculous.

[BADecker]

As a society, we should consider if it is acceptable for a company to influence society via the way they moderate their content while being largely unaccountable to citizens.

That's not what's happening though.  Society is holding them accountable, especially since Trump took office.

You just don't like that they fact checked and banned Trump.  Imagine for a second it was someone like Hillary Clinton that got banned from Twitter for inciting a violent mob to storm the Capital to stop congress from certifying Trump as president.  Would you be upset when Twitter banned her?  Of course not.  That's what makes your argument in bad faith.  Step back and look at what you're really saying without Trump in the equation.  It's ridiculous.

If anybody fact-checked Trump and found him wrong, why won't they simply let him present his evidence before Congress? Looks more to me like they found Trump right, and are trying to silence him because... because the truth would be their downfall if it ever came out into the open.

[TwitchySeal]

If anybody fact-checked Trump and found him wrong, why won't they simply let him present his evidence before Congress?

Are we just pretending dozens of judges heard his boatload of lawsuits and threw them in the garbage due to lack of evidence and/or logic?

[BADecker]

If anybody fact-checked Trump and found him wrong, why won't they simply let him present his evidence before Congress?

Are we just pretending dozens of judges heard his boatload of lawsuits and threw them in the garbage due to lack of evidence and/or logic?

You can answer your own question. What are you pretending?

I'm not in any special contact with Trump, his people, Congress or judges. Are you?

If you have been listening to the standard media, and that is where you get your ideas and info, you've been played.

[suchmoon]

I'm not in any special contact with Trump, his people, Congress or judges. Are you?

Judges tend to make their decisions known quite eloquently so you don't need to be in any special contact with them.

BADecker, you already have a bunch of threads for this BS. Please leave this one.

[Gyfts]

As a society, we should consider if it is acceptable for a company to influence society via the way they moderate their content while being largely unaccountable to citizens.

That's not what's happening though.  Society is holding them accountable, especially since Trump took office.

You just don't like that they fact checked and banned Trump.  Imagine for a second it was someone like Hillary Clinton that got banned from Twitter for inciting a violent mob to storm the Capital to stop congress from certifying Trump as president.  Would you be upset when Twitter banned her?  Of course not.  That's what makes your argument in bad faith.  Step back and look at what you're really saying without Trump in the equation.  It's ridiculous.

They didn't even fact check him lol

They banned him because he refused to attend Biden's inauguration. I posted a link to @TwitterSafety earlier where they openly admitted this. Trump did not tell people to go out and be violent, if he did, he deserves the ban.

If we're playing by your rules, should Bernie Sanders be banned from twitter after demonizing Republicans causing some sick fuck to go out and try and execute the minority whip? There's no way anyone should be defending Trump's ban. Twitter is a private company and can do what it pleases, but I'm not going to pretend like this isn't completely bizarre and deranged. It's also what leftists were begging for over the last 4 years.

First it's Trump, then who?

[suchmoon]

They banned him because he refused to attend Biden's inauguration. I posted a link to @TwitterSafety earlier where they openly admitted this. Trump did not tell people to go out and be violent, if he did, he deserves the ban.

Context matters. Sure he didn't tell them "go and kill a cop at the Capitol" but he did tell them to go there and disrupt the proceedings and it resulted in violence. It's disingenuous to deny that Trump's rhetoric is inciting violence. And he is not backing down from the underlying false claims of election fraud, which is what encourages his supporters to be violent.

I'm not defending Twitter in any way - I think their whole system is thoroughly fucked since it's basically a trolling platform - but Trump doesn't have any plausible argument in this dispute. If he's too obnoxious even for Twitter that's entirely his problem.

[TwitchySeal]

They didn't even fact check him lol

Yes, they did - over and over.  Mostly when he was spreading misinformation about the election process and outcome.

They banned him because he refused to attend Biden's inauguration. I posted a link to @TwitterSafety earlier where they openly admitted this.

You should click on the link and read the article.  If you already did, it would seem like you're intentionally taking it out of cont

Trump did not tell people to go out and be violent, if he did, he deserves the ban.

Are you really going to play the 'he didn't explicitly say to go be violent'?  That's so lame.

He was responsible for the "Save America/Stop the Steal Rally", scheduled to coincide with congress counting votes.

Then he hyped the event tweeting things like "it will be wild", "the country needs you to fight"

And here's what he told them right before they marched over and stormed the capital:

"And after this, we're going to walk down and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down--

We're going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol--

And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."

If we're playing by your rules, should Bernie Sanders be banned from twitter after demonizing Republicans causing some sick fuck to go out and try and execute the minority whip? There's no way anyone should be defending Trump's ban. Twitter is a private company and can do what it pleases, but I'm not going to pretend like this isn't completely bizarre and deranged. It's also what leftists were begging for over the last 4 years.

Bernie didn't incite violence.  Trump did.  Many times. So, no, I don't think Bernie should be banned from Twitter.  But if Twitter wants to ban Bernie, I think it should be the response of their users they have to worry about, not the government.

And they aren't my rules.  It's basic ethics. Dorsey built twitter and is the current CEO - if someone is using twitter to do something horrible, it's his responsibility to stop them from using twitter.

First it's Trump, then who?

Trump wasn't first, they ban tons of people for violating their terms every day.  They already explained that he would've been banned a while ago if it weren't for the fact that he was president.  Personally I wish they would've held him to the same standards as everyone else.