> exercises restraint on its immense natural power
I would have agreed with you provided it was the Government that had to do the banning first and took it's time and exercised restraint.
This is different. Big Tech cut off US Government communication lines from the rest of the World. Now we will never know what Trump is thinking except if he does a press conference. We will never know what the White House is doing. This causes major network effects across the World as people across the World want to know what is going on in the White House and what is on Trump's mind. Before internet and social media all communications were between the World leaders/bureaucrats and the rest of the World was pretty much oblivious to what was happening unless it became breaking news. Everything was opaque. That is not what I want to go back to. Trust me you don't want to wake up one day to learn your country is at War with another nation because everything was kept under wraps till the last minute. If you had known earlier you would have rallied the masses and built public pressure.
It is a public expectation to know what their leaders are upto. I want our leaders to be in the spotlight at all times. Trump is not just the President of USA, he is also a representative of USA to the rest of the World. Cutting off Trump's direct lines of communication cuts off feeds to the rest of the World about what is going on in his mind and the White House. This does not bode well for America as a responsible Democratic power. You do not cut off the lines to the Head of the Country with the World. No matter how much you disagree with him. This is irresponsible with Big Tech allowing it and US Congress keeping mum about it.
> This will go down as a very important day in American Internet history. A very important week in American history.
The day Censorship was made valid with hordes cheering them on. A very bad and sad precedent. This is going to backfire very, very badly. The Big Tech tested waters and realized they can behave like Supranational Powers and have support from the people. All it takes for Big Tech is for them to convince the popular masses on how to think. That is the last step to complete control. Elected Governments will be powerless against this kind of power. If they can do this to a sitting US President they can do it to anyone else and can influence elections and electorates in ways we have never imagined before.
> Perhaps in these specific cases, they are justified
Not justified at all. Nothing can justify censoring a sitting President and destroying a small competitor. America is on the wrong path. This I say as a observer of American politics. Big Tech has too much power in its hands now.
> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon collective destroy a competitor
Highly problematic.
> We just saw Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon censor a sitting President
What are you talking about? He's the president. If he has something to say, there are a million ways for him to get the message out.
> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments
A government compelling a person (or a private company) to publish something is in violation of the law in many countries, often a constitutional law (Example: That violates the first amendment quite clearly, in the USA). I also think most folks would find that highly suspect.
Bigger companies shutting out smaller ones is highly problematic, but then laws do exist to stop this (anti-trust laws). These probably need an update. Whatever update they get, if they prevent Parler's shutdown they went too far. I'm pretty sure that shutdown wasn't about 'eliminating' a competitor at all.
> another perspective is possible, that Trump should be able to speak freely as the leader of the country supported by half its population
Arguably Trump would've been banned under Twitter rules a whole lot quicker if he hadn't been the leader of the country supported by half its population.
> people can be suppressed for saying the wrong thing (see: Trump).
People are lying to themselves if they think they are in favor of unfettered speech. Otherwise your favorite online forum would be chock-filled with Viagra links, crypto, nft and forex spam, multipage crank proofs of the coming singularity, race-baiting rants of the worst sort, ASCII art, Base64 encodes of Blu-Rays, etc. We all want limits on speech, we just differ in where those lines should be drawn.
> What are the upsides of this? A more engaged voter population. A move of politics back towards the center of cultural life, where it should be. A closer integration of politics, culture and ecommerce.
People become strongly politically engaged because there is something they strongly dislike about current public policy. Politics being the center of cultural life is a sign of bad things going on. So I don't see fighting angrier and more hypercharged online wars as an upside. If anything it just primes people for fighting angrier and more hypercharged offline wars, which is where we seem to be headed.
>It is stunning to me that so many otherwise intelligent people do not see the problem with big tech colluding with government officials and intelligence agencies to brazenly attempt to distort and censor public discourse - especially right before an election.
You took a giant leap from maybe people at Twitter were acting with bias. You’d need a lot more information to justify this assertion, and who is saying this wouldnt be a problem? I al saying this didn’t happen, not it wouldn’t be a problemZ
> And given that blocking is part and parcel to the app, it would seem like everyone is buying into the terms of the environment when they start using it
That isn't how this works. Just because Twitter allows people to block stuff, doesn't mean Trump gets to block stuff.
In a "normal" government, they'd pick a vendor with software that would let them make official policy statements in a way that complied with the laws around people having the right to reach out to their government officials.
Just 'cause twitter's software lets him do something doesn't make actually doing that thing legal, moral, or ethical.
This judgement makes perfect sense and is completely reasonable when you remember that technology is a mere tool designed to serve humans. Just cause you can do something in a tool doesn't make it right.
> How can the public form an opinion if the information they get about it is skewed by the affected companies?
When Trump was in power, you had the right wanting to regulate Reddit/Twitter, and the left wanting to regulate Facebook.
I don't think the companies are successfully skewing people in their favor of not being regulated.
Big tech are a necessary evil for most people. Philip Morris' customers don't talk about it being a great company, they just need its product.
People blame big tech a lot though, but what if they did give people visibility and control of their algorithms in terms of what content they want...and if we had more competition...would there be less extremism, or would people just up their own dosage?
In the end it will come down to personal responsibility and education.
> Hopefully countries will start banning facebook outright soon
After living long time in a country where “ban it” is the answer to all the problems (drugs, child abuse, election interference, terrorism, name it) (USSR, and then recent Putin’s Russia) I’m deeply worried about western voters seriously consider banning the solution to all the problems.
If you don’t like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, just make another one, better, safer, fairer.
Split it if you consider it a monopoly. (I’d personally prefer Apple to stop advertising their streaming service using their devices).
Don’t open the door of government censorship. Once opened that door is very hard to close.
> Yet look at the complete suppression of any Trump-related social media group since the 6th.
You have a right to say what you want, but nobody is forced to help you spread that speech. Parler still found a way didn't it? Huh, it's almost like there are a whole lot of competitors for any given internet service that people could turn to.
> It should be a perfect example of the outsized political influence that these massive multinational corporations have.
They hardly need to censor their platforms for that, they have billions of dollars at their disposal.
> Network effects make it extremely difficult to just move somewhere else.
Facebook built that network, why do you have a right to tell them who can and cannot use it?
If you don't like it, don't use it, and recommend that others don't use it either. If that's too big a sacrifice to you, then you've made your priorities clear. You talk a big game, but when push comes to shove if you aren't willing to inconvenience yourself even a little bit then I don't know why you expect anyone in a position to change things to care.
> We will now see a democratic government that is fully aligned, and has deep ties with, silicon valley. The big tech industrial complex has infinitely more control over our thoughts and proclivities than any previous power center.
Nope. Huge swaths of the democratic party are opposed to these SV companies because they see Twitter, FB, etc, as having played a huge part in Trump gaining the influence he did and the conspiracy nutjobs evangelizing their craziness as well.
I expect pushes for regulation, just a different sort than Trump would've pushed for.
Here we have people dying because a President who was afraid of losing spent months preemptively setting up a fraud excuse. An excuse that was enabled and amplified by social media platforms that also helped people spread conspiracies about the supposed non-existence of a global pandemic, and thus the need for different behaviors.
Even if you end up saying Trump himself shouldn't have been banned, you have a huge echo chamber problem that has now passed the point where we can dismiss it with stuff like "they just need to feel heard." Lots of people listened, and it led to lots of violence, and is the way we're currently (not) regulating social media sufficient?
All of these nutjob theories have gotten MORE prevalent in the past 4 years DESPITE their candidate winning the 2016 election and DESPITE their candidate completely failing to expose any national pedophile conspiracy or any of the other nonsense they spout... The ultimate influence of the big social media platforms has been anything but left-leaning.
> But these are actions that ought to be taken by governments, not businesses.
I fully agree. And let's not ignore that leaders of the free world are pretty shocked by what's happening.
- German canceler, Angela Merkel: “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-...
- French minister, Bruno Le Maire: "Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary." https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-...
- Mexico president, Manuel Lopez Obrador: "‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse on the subject. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”"https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-lea...
> On the other hand, locking in a monopolistic player, particularly in the context of a government that has shown a desire for more control over the flow of information is a real downside.
This may warrant more than a single sentence. The government has in the past gone as far as turning the internet off in areas it doesn't want in the public eye. Censorship and banning of outlets is fairly common, and rarely as high profile as the recent tiktok ban.
> Countries and people that value censorship really shouldn't have a say in american social media. I believe they should develop their own social media.
If American social media chooses to be global (it does!), then putting up with the rules of the countries it chooses to operate in is part of the game.
> When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President
This is … not even remotely how I remember that period, more of a sense of outrage and companies rushing to encrypt internal connections and deploy PFS.
> If the leader of the free world can be banned from all social media and co, who are based in the very same nation, and who are monopolies, then what hope is there for the rest of us?
This isn’t a great fit: Trump isn’t being banned for being a conservative or talking policies, but for inciting violence which lead to a deadly mob. If all that happens are companies enforcing their terms of service against violence or hate speech evenly, that bothers me a lot less — especially since in this case it’s treating everyone consistently rather than singling him out for special treatment.
> Big Tech will at least pay lip service to the idea of moderation
You are not really watching if you think that is what is happening. They are controlling the narrative. They are promoting some topics and pushing down other. Facebook deleted WalkAway, a group that had full moderation, did not allow any posts which called for violence, and which was pure political speech. Reddit is deleting each and every sub that goes against what their management believes; over 2000 have been banned last year only.
They are not paying lip service. They are directing narrative. They are banning things they don't like. They are deciding which scientific exports are orthodox and which are banned. They are controlling language. They are controlling thought. If you don't think that's happening, then they are controlling your thoughts as well.
This is the most dangerous time for us to be in and this will not end well. Censorship is the tool of cowards. Censorship is the tool of authoritarians. We are literally watching Big Tech and Big Media openly rewrite history. We are in 1984 + Fahrenheit 451 and half of us have bought so far into this narrative of protectionism we do not see it at all.
> Take a good, hard look at WeChat. You just proposed that we force the plethora of existing social media platforms to transform themselves into WeChat.gov portals.
No, that's obviously only true if we picked a protocol that was designed to support mass surveillance (a la WeChat), but there's no reason said protocol needs to be anti-privacy. This is baseless FUD.
> We tried that with the only elements of the internet that actually are utilities: the networks themselves. It was called Network Neutrality, and the Trump administration killed it as soon as they took office on the grounds that it was government overreach.
I don't think the Trump administration killed it because it wasn't working out very well in practice; they killed it because of an ideological disagreement (or more cynically, corruption). Which is to say, this is a political problem and indeed my proposal, like any proposal that pits the people against wealthy special interests, is subject to the same problem--we need to fix our national corruption problem, but that's an entirely different conversation so I'm ignoring it to focus on the practical aspects.
I would have agreed with you provided it was the Government that had to do the banning first and took it's time and exercised restraint.
This is different. Big Tech cut off US Government communication lines from the rest of the World. Now we will never know what Trump is thinking except if he does a press conference. We will never know what the White House is doing. This causes major network effects across the World as people across the World want to know what is going on in the White House and what is on Trump's mind. Before internet and social media all communications were between the World leaders/bureaucrats and the rest of the World was pretty much oblivious to what was happening unless it became breaking news. Everything was opaque. That is not what I want to go back to. Trust me you don't want to wake up one day to learn your country is at War with another nation because everything was kept under wraps till the last minute. If you had known earlier you would have rallied the masses and built public pressure.
It is a public expectation to know what their leaders are upto. I want our leaders to be in the spotlight at all times. Trump is not just the President of USA, he is also a representative of USA to the rest of the World. Cutting off Trump's direct lines of communication cuts off feeds to the rest of the World about what is going on in his mind and the White House. This does not bode well for America as a responsible Democratic power. You do not cut off the lines to the Head of the Country with the World. No matter how much you disagree with him. This is irresponsible with Big Tech allowing it and US Congress keeping mum about it.
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