Then it isn’t neutral since those terms will always have a measure of subjectivity.
Let’s use your words.
The platform provider suggesting that a user should “do some research” on a Trump tweet, but not a Xi Jinping (or any other prominent figure) tweet, in no way reflects the opinions of anyone at Twitter. It is not editorializing or an indication of bias at all.
You find this to be a helpful public service, and no reason for concern, correct? You also presumably find this to be in keeping with the spirit of the findings and policy objectives of the 1996 law.
But they are a private company. Can’t they make the decisions they want to? Don’t we agree to user terms and conditions often? The President did when he started his account. I can’t show porn on YouTube. I can’t show porn on this forum. I will be censored on here if I say certain things and possibly outright banned.
Do you think someone said “I want to get the entire US military together and kill every n word in the country. Since we aren’t ready yet join me at this address with your guns and we will start” that Twitter should have no response as they should stay neutral? It seems logical that for the sake of their company they do something about this. Who’s going to use Twitter when it turns into storm front completely? Seems like you’re asking them to risk their entire business to appease everyone.
It seems odd to mention communication titans at a time when the amount of users on these places is smaller and more spread out. The Twitter/Facebook is a monopoly had more weight a while back (they weren’t then either but they were stronger).
By definition. It is not.
No.
In my opinion, it is.
If you are not a liar.
Yes.
The truth is, it’s because it’s Trump. Suggesting that people fact check the president, would not get a negative reaction out of anyone. Suggesting people fact check THEIR president is the problem. This forum has shown how some posters give Trump a pass they would not give anyone else. It’s borderline idolatry.
If you want to argue like a strict libertarian, you can make that argument. I’m not. In simple terms, I’m making the argument that the social media landscape, taken as a whole, is the modern equivalent of the town square, except here is no real precedent for what this is today.
In 1996 the internet was a public novelty that had not yet taken hold, with almost anyone who wasn’t on a college campus using dial-up connections and watching your VGA-quality naked lady picture fill in line-by-line. The social media landscape that is now the town square did not exist. Today almost everyone is part of it.
The town square needs to be a neutral place where everyone has the same opportunities to be heard. Reasonable, easily-agreed on restrictions that keep behavior “decent” are all that is needed.
The guys who maintain the town square aren’t responsible for what’s said in the town square. They just push the brooms and handle the administrative work while quietly collecting billions in perfectly legitimate advertising revenue. Their “bouncers” who kick the people out who get violent or flash their junk in public aren’t acting in a politically biased way. They’re enforcing the easily-agreed on standards.
That does bring up the interesting question of a president who breaks community standards, but I think that can be sorted with an exemption that applies to all elected officials. A “user beware” warning in plain English that “Elected Official Twitter” may result in vile or even inaccurate words being read would be fair and unbiased.
In plain English, this is what I’d like to see. Again, we seemed pretty close to that mark for quite a few years, until the #resistance took hold anyway.
That wouldn’t be editorializing?
And isn’t that what they are doing? (and no, they haven’t only gone after Trump).
A year ago Twitter announced that it would attach a label to a politician’s tweet if it violates their content guidelines. Is that editorializing? If yes, then why didn’t Trump sign an EO back then?
What does lying fall under when talking about decent behavior?
Yes, but this wasn’t an answer to the problem “politicians lying on Twitter”. If you look at tweets from politicians everywhere, they’re pretty anodyne. Sure, they lie but look at Marco Rubio’s twitter feed. Boring as fuck.
The introduction of a fact check for POTUS’ tweets wasn’t a result of a dastardly plan to stifle conservative voices, but a immediate conundrum for Jack Dorsey - the POTUS repeatedly told his 80+ millions followers that a woman who died of a heart attack was banging her boss who killed her.
He didn’t post it once, he posted it five times. So as the CEO of Twitter, what do you do? When the widower sends you an open letter asking to take down these tweets? He chose the tamest possible option, which nevertheless was huge issue from Trump because it’s immersion breaking for the intended recipients.
I recognize the conundrum. I’m saying that people lying on the internet isn’t a problem that can be solved, whether it is you, me or the leaders. Getting into the game of trying to just opens up a can of terrible worms no matter how good your intentions may be.
Now it’s brought us here. Good questions to sort out, in my opinion.
I gotcha. Except we have thousands of town squares then. And you’re saying that the thousands of town squares should all be ran the same?
How exactly do you think this should go? It seems like it would be way easier to let private companies decide these things than trying to figure out how to regulate it.
If Hitler is the best person ever is acceptable, is let’s celebrate Hitlers birthday by finishing off the Jews? Let’s meet her with our guns and bombs and kill them for the next two weeks? I don’t mind restrictions on that, but if I’m a proud boy or white supermacist I don’t agree that should be censored.
Who’s going to agree on it and how? Is nudity ok? If not how about a picture of a lady breastfeeding? I’m fine with either, but church lady may be appalled by both. And she may tell her friends not to use Twitter. And twitter may cease to exist at some point.
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that when you sign up for twitter you agree to their terms and conditions? And if you don’t agree to those or the way they do things you go to Facebook? Or Snapchat? Or instagram? Or Tik Tok? Or What’s App? Or Reddit? Or wechat? Or Tumblr? Or Gab? Or Pinterest? Or medium? Do I need to continue?
I’ve seen the argument you’re making made regularly and I don’t know that I would disagree in a scenario with no alternatives or a monopoly. But you have probably tons of sites to post whatever you want on. Absolutely tons.
No, because all elected officials would receive the same immunity and get to use the platform as a direct-to-voter communication tool.
Every Trump apologist:
It was Trump so we shouldn’t be surprised or expect any better. He speaks his mind and isn’t PC and that’s what we need. He’s just the president so what’s the big deal anyway? Besides, can anyone prove that the woman wasn’t cheating on her husband. I mean, people are saying. I’m hearing things.
Like what has been going on already? Trump, despite his need to demonstrate his victim-hood to his cultists, has not been singled out.
They already have it. Trump was been posting for almost a decade on Twitter and for almost four years round-the-clock as POTUS, including easily provable falsehoods. He lied. Everybody knows that. So did Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and others.
Had the libs wanted to stifle Trump on Twitter, they could have gone with the summer of 2016. Just sayin’.
This is a problem of Trump’s own making. And it’s not lying (every politician lies) but lying about a dead woman having an affair with her boss who killed her. For many non-cultists this stopped being a “lie” and became “holy fuck, he’s telling the husband publicly that his dead wife was banging her boss”. Not once, but five times and counting. And because it stopped being a case of “lying” but “non-sociopathic decency” Dorsey felt compelled to to at least something.
@zecarlo Yes, of course, this is all about Trump.
Look, if you like having the top social media sites getting into the activist game because you think their activism is helpful, just say so. But don’t pretend like the outcome we have today is at all in keeping of the spirit of open, free communication envisioned in the findings and policy goals of the 1996 law that set the framework down that we operate in today.
Nowhere in there was it stated that,
- Decades in the future, when people spend an average of two hours per day on social media, it would be great if the social media “platform” providers got into the activist game via as many mechanisms as possible, but keeping just enough wiggle room to stay in the confines of this law.
(a)FindingsThe Congress finds the following:
(1)The rapidly developing array of Internet and other interactive computer services available to individual Americans represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources to our citizens.
(2)These services offer users a great degree of control over the information that they receive, as well as the potential for even greater control in the future as technology develops.
(3)The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.
(4)The Internet and other interactive computer services have flourished, to the benefit of all Americans, with a minimum of government regulation.
(5)Increasingly Americans are relying on interactive media for a variety of political, educational, cultural, and entertainment services.
(b)PolicyIt is the policy of the United States—
(1)to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2)to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation;
(3)to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;
(4)to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material; and
(5)to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal criminal laws to deter and punish trafficking in obscenity, stalking, and harassment by means of computer.
C’mon. Don’t disconnect that from the context I used it. I said I wanted a neutral platform with easily agreed-upon community standards. I recognized that a president (or any elected official) presents a conundrum for a neutral content provider, hence the plain-English concept of “Elected Official Twitter”, where we allow elected officials to breach decency standards that might earn a regular user a ban.
That’s it, so please don’t make it out like I was arguing that in a context in which I wasn’t.
Elected officials, plural? We’re talking about a set of one that breached decency standards.
Don’t pretend that it happens all the time by “elected officials” and that there’s a pressing need to create a system to allow them to “breach decency standards”. It does not.
This wasn’t an issue before those tweets in question. You’re trying to build a detailed framework so that one individual could lie about the infidelity of a dead woman.
There’s nothing detailed about the framework I proposed. I don’t see the need for extensive regulation. I’m not sure how much clearer I can be about it.
I see a need for a clear framework that recognizes the present social media landscape and the role it plays in society that produces a free and open platform to share ideas. Not just twitter, either.
Like I said above, if you’re okay with tech giant political activism because you think it is helpful, just say so. I don’t like the idea of any political agenda shaping what I see, what I don’t see, what “needs” a fact check and what doesn’t, what is hateful and what isn’t.
Provide the platform, I will take care of sorting out the good information from bad, just like every other area of life. I accept the risk of becoming offended, as should anyone who interacts with other humans.
It is because, as stated, he isn’t the first person, let alone politician to have posts flagged. The whole warning label for politicians you mentioned has been part of Twitter policy for a year.
And you haven’t proven that Twitter editorializes Trumps posts. The fact that they have already been providing warnings to political posts and no one called it editorializing only further makes that claim by you wrong.
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How is Trump calling a dead man’s wife a whore, political? That is what started all of this.
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21 May 2020
Jack Dorsey CEO
Twitter Inc.
1355 Market Street
Suite 900
San Francisco, California 94103
Via email: jack@twitter.com
Mr. Dorsey:
Nearly 19 years ago, my wife, who had an undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head on her desk at work. She was found dead the next morning. Her name is Lori Kaye Klausutis and she was 28 years old when she died. Her passing is the single most painful thing that I have ever had to deal with in my 52 years and continues to haunt her parents and sister.
I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage. As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life. There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.
The frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies ever increases on the internet. These conspiracy theorists, including most recently the President of the United States, continue to spread their bile and misinformation on your platform disparaging the memory of my wife and our marriage. President Trump on Tuesday tweeted to his nearly 80 million followers alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough. The son of the president followed and more directly attacked my wife by tweeting to his followers as the means of spreading this vicious lie.
I’m sure you are aware of this situation because media around the world have covered it, but just in case, here it is:
When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!
“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
What show is Joe going to go on to discuss Lori Klausutis?
My request is simple: Please delete these tweets.
I’m a research engineer and not a lawyer, but I’ve reviewed all of Twitter’s rules and terms of service. The President’s tweet that suggests that Lori was murdered — without evidence (and contrary to the official autopsy) — is a violation of Twitter’s community rules and terms of service. An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.
I am now angry as well as frustrated and grieved. I understand that Twitter’s policies about content are designed to maintain the appearance that your hands are clean — you provide the platform and the rest is up to users. However, in certain past cases, Twitter has removed content and accounts that are inconsistent with your terms of service.
I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain. I would also ask that you consider Lori’s niece and two nephews who will eventually come across this filth in the future. They have never met their Aunt and it pains me to think they would ever have to “learn” about her this way.
My wife deserves better.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Timothy J. Klausutis, Ph.D.
This is the type of “man” you are defending. If you can read that and still defend him, still come up with convoluted arguments about “editorializing” and “activism” and “content creation” then I have to ask, where is your soul? The fact you think this is about free speech, the internet and liberals shows you have fallen for what Trump is selling you. Do liberal tears really taste so good that you would give up any semblance of integrity and humanity?
Is this all about Trump? Ask yourself this instead: what other president or major political figure would have stooped so low as to be in this situation in the first place?
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