>If the President of the United States is saying something, it is my right and duty to hear exactly what that is, verbatim, so I can appropriately participate in our democracy.
Sure, you do have that right, it is only that it is not the responsibility of Twitter or Facebook to be the avenue through which the President communicates.
Twitter and Facebook have, in my opinion, already bent over backwards trying to let the President say what he wished. The events yesterday basically forced them to make a policy decision: Protect the free speech of a person dangerous to our democracy, who will no longer be in power in a few weeks, or simply wash their hands of him? I am sure it is not too difficult to make a choice given the options.
And in addition to all of this, why in God's name, if I did support your belief in a private corporation's obligaiton to run a private enterprise as a public institution, would I try to protect the President when he has done everything he can to cause __the exact__ incidents that Twitter and Facebook are explicitly denouncing his statements for inciting & supporting?
>As time goes on I am less and less supportive of the notion that private companies can do as they please on the basis that they are private companies.
There is no such notion - private companies have to obey the laws of the land like anyone else.
Platforms like Twitter have the right to ban politicians on the basis of the rights of private property and freedom of speech and association. The same rights that allow restaurants to eject people for "no shoes, no shirt, no service" and allow radio stations and newspapers to choose what and what not to publish, and me to tell Jehovah's Witnesses off. I don't know why this suddenly makes people feel uncomfortable, when these rights, and the ability of private enterprise to exercise them, have been part of the basis of Western liberal democracies for hundreds of years.
The inverse of this would be to give carte-blanche ownership and rights over all property to politicians - including social media platforms, that supersede the rights and desires of the platform owners. That it would be illegal to ban any politician from any private property under any circumstances.
I believe it's a good thing that the President of the United States has no more right to act the fool on Twitter than you or I should. Twitter is not, and should not be, the sole nexus for all global political and cultural communication. It's a microblogging platform, ffs, the only reason it "matters" at all is because one specific paranoiac President didn't trust his own media apparatus.
It's a convenience. It's certainly useful, but it isn't necessary.
> he was a democratically elected leader of arguably, the most influential nation in the world
This aspect of the discussion around Twitter constantly baffles me. They have no obligation to offer service to anyone, and they have no obligation to ensure freedom of speech, balanced representation, or any other thing you can think of that would ensure everyone gets a voice.
General, universal freedom of speech in the US is not a right we have. We are protected via the 1st and 14th amendments from Federal or State governments (respectively) passing laws restricting our speech, which is not the same thing. Even with those amendments, some speech is restricted (hate speech, etc.). There's nothing preventing Twitter from moderating someone off its platform.
>The reality is that private companies like Google, Twitter, etc. have more power than the government to restrict speech.
Is that a bad thing?
The worst a company can do is drop your account - they can't even stop you from moving your content elsewhere. Governments can have you killed. Governments should be more restricted than the common citizen or even corporation.
>Freedom of speech does not extend to private entities such as twitter.
I was responding specifically to this claim:
>And if the President of the United States were to tweet something illegal?
Shifting the goal posts mid conversation is incredibly dishonest. You can see my other replies on the larger thread for the reason why Twitter should not censor him, even though they legally could.
>The question is, do you want a private corporation to dictate whether or not the government of the United States is able to communicate to the citizens?
no and luckily for you it cannot, because if the President of the US wants to speak on public matters he can do so through the White House press room.
However Donald J Trump, despite the fact that he thinks he is somehow synonymous with "The United States government", which he is not, can be thrown off any private platform that deems that necessary. Some people might have forgotten it over the last four years, but Donald Trump and his personal twitter account, and the office of the presidency, are not the same thing.
One thing that I hope people remain aware of is that there are a number of different arguments in play and while sometimes they have similar outcomes in specific situations, they often wildly differ.
For example, there is the argument that Twitter is not to be considered just a private company, as decided by a court when Trump was not allowed to block other accounts. The argument would be that twitter blocking a user entirely would be restricting their right to interact with their government officials through an official channel. Now, if Twitter blocked such a user from interacting with everyone except government officials, then that would be acceptable because the person is still allowed to interact with government officials through official channels. Also Twitter would be able to stop acting as an official government channel by ending any accounts that count as such and free to fully block a user thereafter.
This is not the same argument that you are talking about, but I do commonly see people treating it as the same.
> Private actors controlling the use of their private resources to select which ideas they will and will not promote with them is called “free speech”.
I have to admit that this makes sense. But still kinda disturbing in this case. Because when the private resource we're talking about is Twitter, the actors behind can exercise their right of free speech for mass manipulation. That's too much power. I guess this is the problematic part.
It's not exactly the same thing as the right to free speech of a single individual or a small company.
Your logic is sound, but sometimes scale changes the rules. Especially in this very special case where Twitter has become the digital equivalent of a global town square. That's the catch.
Anyway maybe my quick arguments weren't very good after all.
But do you really not see any problems with Twitter lately? Is everything okay?
> It certainly has nothing to do with the first amendment protections since twitter is a private company
I disagree. Because Twitter is a private company (and not a public utility), their being able to make this kind of decision is central to what the first amendment is about.
> it does have to do with censorship
Of course it has to do with censorship. Anytime a someone who owns an outlet chooses to allow or not allow their private channel to be used in a particular way, it has to do with censorship.
> if you think that social medias speech policies are developed in a vacuum from influence from politicians
Moving the goalpost. Nobody claimed private companies should ignore government sources.
You asked about “the government tell[ing] private platforms what speech is acceptable.” That would be a First Amendment violation.
> What would government restriction on speech look like if not soft (effective) influence on big media companies?
Flippantly: Russia.
Less flippantly: freedoms exist in balance. Taking an absolutist stance on individual speech curtails freedom of association. In practice, I suspect it will make most social media unusable in its current form. (Which may be for the worst.)
> I keep seeing this, and I'm confused every time I see it, because speech on a private platform isn't protected by the first amendment.
It is protected from the government. Of course, Twitter can decide to censor whatever they want, but if the government was threatening either Twitter or individuals on the platform, over protected speech, eg. criticizing the president, that would certainly implicate the 1A.
The government simply asking, with no implied threat, seems to be OK [1]. But, I don't think it builds confidence amongst the citizens if they were seen doing this very often.
> For instance, he has the right to make violent threats in certain circumstances compared to normal citizens.
No one has the 'right' to make violent threats on twitter. It is a private service with a ToS.
There are no principled reasons to treat the president as a special case here. The practical reason is simply that it is often and free advertising for them and the terms of service dictate what they can do when breached; not what they must do.
> That's a mistatement of what many of us are saying.
Actually I described you to the tee.
> I certainly am not advocating that social media companies should have even more control over our lives
So you are against censorship or for it?
> Since (a) is unlikely in the near term, that probably means (b). I don't how Twitter banning anyone (including POTUS) from their platform does anything but encourage that.
Except that if tech companies collude together to prevent that. Fine, you say go make your own twitter. They do and then it gets banned from google play/apple store/etc. And down the line it goes. That's my point.
> I also don't see how "large corporations that have used psychological manipulation and network effects to become really popular must be consider public utilities, despite no law to that effect" really lines up with free speech.
Who or what are you quoting? You just plucked a quote out of the ether. That's very dishonest and disingenuous. You almost write like a journalist.
> Do you believe that the NY Times should be required to print my op-ed's in their online version?
Of course not. But then again, they are not a platform, they are publishers. But you already knew that.
> Yes, those of us with technical know-how can argue that personal websites are that equivalent. But this is depriving those that see Twitter, Facebook, et. al. as a public platform, of the right to have their voice heard. A tweet is now the equivalent of a placard on the street. Do we really want to censor that because we messed up in how we allowed the Internet to be run?
Disagree, because street space is limited, whereas there are a multiplicity of websites you can go to. It isn’t just a matter of personal websites. There’s a Twitter-like, Gab, which can be used. The president and his multi-million dollar campaign apparatus could easily strike a deal with Gab to host some more Gab servers and get their message out via Gab to anyone of their twitter followers who wants to sign up.
Never mind that Trump is not actually being censored on twitter in any way - his message still went out to all his followers, simply with an appended notice that Twitter itself considers the message to be factually wrong.
EDIT: this is like saying that the President has the right to publish whatever content he wants in a specific newspaper. Back in the day, a city might have a dozen newspapers - they could each print what they liked and if they decided not to print a person’s letter to the editor, that was no violation of free speech. Or if they print the letter to the editor with a note explaining they disagree with it, that certainly doesn’t violate free speech either.
> Massive multinational corporations having this much power over our speech is not healthy.
Who has power over my speech? I have iPhone, Android, Ubuntu, Mac and other tech. My speech is not limited in any way.
I can write down notes on paper if I want. I can write down content freely today as I could yesterday.
What corporation out there has any power over my speech, much less "too much power"?
Edit: I seem blocked by HN temporarily (for opposing viewpoints? I don't know but I can't post any more!) so to respond to the post below me here is an edit:
Trump should hold a press conference if he wants to say something. It can easily be streamed on the internet.
No president before 2007 had access to Twitter and they could still get the word out online if they wanted to.
> this right is being curtailed by private actors.
It really isn't. They can keep you off their platform, nothing more.
> states should provide social networking/communication services to their citizens.
And you think this would be less censored?
> in social media individuals earn their own audience
So ... individuals got all those people to sign up to twitter? Twitter itself has nothing to do with it? You really think that? Platforms just pop out of the air fully formed?
A private company cannot and should not police the President’s speech.
However, it can and should (insofar as it does for other users) police the President’s use of that company’s platform for speech.
The alternative is systematically favoring the government against opponents in a way which makes Twitter a de facto government propaganda arm.
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