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On January 12 2021 14:42 Belisarius wrote:I think there's a lot of different simultaneous issues here. On the Trump ban alone, I have to agree with Merkel. https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-calls-trump-twitter-ban-problematic/a-56197684Show nested quote +German Chancellor Angela Merkel is concerned about Twitter permanently suspending President Donald Trump's account, her spokesman said on Monday.
Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin the chancellor considered the ban "problematic."
"The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance," Merkel's spokesman said.
"Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president's accounts have been permanently suspended.
The chancellor agreed with the practice of flagging Trump's inaccurate posts, Seibert said. However, any curbs on free expression should be decided by the law and not by private companies.
I am extremely uncomfortable with a private company taking it upon themselves to censor the head of a major democracy. I've been jumping up and down about Trump's authoritarianism on here for years. I'm the last person to defend him. I also understand that this is happening in an environment where the proper mechanisms to hold him accountable have completely failed. Still, even I think this precedent is just too dangerous. I would be more open to it if there were a serious risk of him staging a successful coup. At that point all bets are off and if the tech giants want to deploy their unspeakable power as the last line of defense against a fascist takeover, fine. The time for that was after the election, while these goons were gathering in the safe spaces Facebook had prepared for them and the would-be-dictator openly stoked the flames. Where were the giants then? That they found their spines now, after the storm, is nothing but weathervane signalling and I have no patience for it. All it does is shift attention away from the failure of the real safeguards the US should have been able to depend on, and opens a giant can of worms in the process. How many people are talking about this now, versus about the terrifying reality that 147 US lawmakers voted to undermine democracy in favour of the man who literally just attempted a coup against the chamber they were standing in? The Republicans must be thanking twitter on bended knee right now for providing another deep state bogeymen just when they needed one most.
Why is it bad to ban the leader of a country? Is there any circumstance where it is warranted to you?
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The storm is not over though. The success of his coup is no longer the primary issue, it is the violence that continues to be threatened. Far right groups are now calling for armed demonstrations in all the state's capitols. I think these tech companies have an obligation right now to hinder these groups because we have seen with our own eyes that lives are currently in danger. Republicans using this as another bogeyman is to be expected. We first need a functional and safe government to begin to tackle the issue of tech company regulation, but Republicans are doing all they can to make sure our government is neither safe nor functional.
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Multiple congresswomen have tested positive for COVID-19 after sequestering with Republicans during the attack on Wednesday, with them refusing to wear masks even as they were recommended due to poor ventilation at the time. This should be considered assault. They knew they were exposing people, they knew they were taking completely unnecessary and ill-advised risk. They put the people around them in harm's way anyway. There need to be consequences for this.
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I just wanted to comment on the Navalny tweets that someone linked in the previous pages. I think by accident he illustrates right wing persecution complex spot on. The difference between Trump and him is that one of them is an opposition figure in a totalitarian regime. One of them is the head of the state and the executive branch in the US. Trump is not some persecuted opposition figure at risk of being assassinated by military intelligence of the US. The state isn't censoring him or actively spreading misinformation on him. Trump is probably in the single most influential political role in the world. There zero equivalency between treatment of Trump and Navalny there. Big tech is too powerful to exist under the laissez-faire regime it's seen so far I agree, but that doesn't mean Trump is under assault by state actors. If Navalny disappears from the Russian social media platforms it is reasonable to assume foul play, if Trump while being the sitting president of the US gets banned from twitter there is absolutely no reason to cry censorship.
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It's also worth mentioning that 44 different presidents before Trump managed to go about their workweek just fine without Twitter, and so invoking the President's status and job as reason for the ban being unreasonable holds 0 water for me. His decision to make Twitter his main platform was just that, his decision, and Conservatives can cry me a river about how bad it sucks that he got his ass banned on a privately-owned forum, despite all the sensationalist leeway he enjoyed there for years. I honestly don't care. He attacked the capitol of the United States. He can never fuck off enough in my eyes.
The hysterics resulting from his Twitter ban should be a wake-up call that we had a President who spent most of his (and his aide's) time on Twitter rather than doing his job, and that that was probably an issue.
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On January 12 2021 16:07 Oukka wrote:
I just wanted to comment on the Navalny tweets that someone linked in the previous pages. I think by accident he illustrates right wing persecution complex spot on. The difference between Trump and him is that one of them is an opposition figure in a totalitarian regime. One of them is the head of the state and the executive branch in the US. Trump is not some persecuted opposition figure at risk of being assassinated by military intelligence of the US. The state isn't censoring him or actively spreading misinformation on him. Trump is probably in the single most influential political role in the world. There zero equivalency between treatment of Trump and Navalny there. Big tech is too powerful to exist under the laissez-faire regime it's seen so far I agree, but that doesn't mean Trump is under assault by state actors. If Navalny disappears from the Russian social media platforms it is reasonable to assume foul play, if Trump while being the sitting president of the US gets banned from twitter there is absolutely no reason to cry censorship.
On January 12 2021 16:26 NewSunshine wrote:
It's also worth mentioning that 44 different presidents before Trump managed to go about their workweek just fine without Twitter, and so invoking the President's status and job as reason for the ban being unreasonable holds 0 water for me. His decision to make Twitter his main platform was just that, his decision, and Conservatives can cry me a river about how bad it sucks that he got his ass banned on a privately-owned forum, despite all the sensationalist leeway he enjoyed there for years. I honestly don't care. He attacked the capitol of the United States. He can never fuck off enough in my eyes.
The hysterics resulting from his Twitter ban should be a wake-up call that we had a President who spent most of his (and his aide's) time on Twitter rather than doing his job, and that that was probably an issue.
I agree with both of you and to add to this we also can't forget that him being removed from twitter in no way gets rid of his ways of reaching out to people. I think someone in this thread before even mentioned he could just hold a press conference like so many have done before him whenever he wants. He can always get his messages out that way so it's ridiculous to claim this somehow censors Trump or leads to some sort of slippery slope where twitter decides who is and isn't heard. It takes away a convenient method for him to reach out to people and that's pretty much it.
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It's true that it's hard to not come to the conclusion that the problem is not Twitter banning the President but rather the president posting like a vulgar troll. For years.
Trump never behaved like a President, never tried to elevate himself to the dignity of the function. It's no one fault if he ends up being treated like a toxic kid if he always behaved like one.
I still believe Danglars has a point and that it should open a debate on the responsibility of tech companies. But right now, the story is Trump having failed his responsibility, not Twitter.
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On January 12 2021 15:13 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 14:42 Belisarius wrote:I think there's a lot of different simultaneous issues here. On the Trump ban alone, I have to agree with Merkel. https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-calls-trump-twitter-ban-problematic/a-56197684German Chancellor Angela Merkel is concerned about Twitter permanently suspending President Donald Trump's account, her spokesman said on Monday.
Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin the chancellor considered the ban "problematic."
"The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance," Merkel's spokesman said.
"Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president's accounts have been permanently suspended.
The chancellor agreed with the practice of flagging Trump's inaccurate posts, Seibert said. However, any curbs on free expression should be decided by the law and not by private companies.
I am extremely uncomfortable with a private company taking it upon themselves to censor the head of a major democracy. I've been jumping up and down about Trump's authoritarianism on here for years. I'm the last person to defend him. I also understand that this is happening in an environment where the proper mechanisms to hold him accountable have completely failed. Still, even I think this precedent is just too dangerous. I would be more open to it if there were a serious risk of him staging a successful coup. At that point all bets are off and if the tech giants want to deploy their unspeakable power as the last line of defense against a fascist takeover, fine. The time for that was after the election, while these goons were gathering in the safe spaces Facebook had prepared for them and the would-be-dictator openly stoked the flames. Where were the giants then? That they found their spines now, after the storm, is nothing but weathervane signalling and I have no patience for it. All it does is shift attention away from the failure of the real safeguards the US should have been able to depend on, and opens a giant can of worms in the process. How many people are talking about this now, versus about the terrifying reality that 147 US lawmakers voted to undermine democracy in favour of the man who literally just attempted a coup against the chamber they were standing in? The Republicans must be thanking twitter on bended knee right now for providing another deep state bogeymen just when they needed one most. Why is it bad to ban the leader of a country? Is there any circumstance where it is warranted to you?
One of the hallmarks of a fascist authoritarian is their attempt to exploit the structures of democracy in order to destroy democracy. I think we should be very careful in attacking those structures ourselves in order to oppose them.
Really, this is one of the rare situations where both the idealist and the pragmatist in me reach the same conclusion. The idealist thinks that blowing up the ship is only warranted is when it's about to be overrun, and since that's no longer the case, can't now support an attempt by some of the most powerful companies in history to censor the leader of a major democracy when that leader is about to be voted out anyway.
Further, the pragmatist thinks that twitter is the rope trump is using to hang himself, and the best thing in the long run for the structures of US democracy would be to let him twitch a little longer. The storming of the capitol was the republican party coming face to face with the monster they've created. I think it's possible that the only way forward is for them to be pushed up against that monster over and over until they break in half.
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On January 12 2021 15:51 NewSunshine wrote:
Multiple congresswomen have tested positive for COVID-19 after sequestering with Republicans during the attack on Wednesday, with them refusing to wear masks even as they were recommended due to poor ventilation at the time. This should be considered assault. They knew they were exposing people, they knew they were taking completely unnecessary and ill-advised risk. They put the people around them in harm's way anyway. There need to be consequences for this.
Assault? There have been some very disturbing cases when people who knew they were positive have spitted on others, but that was not the case here.
The Capitol Hille rally was certainly a massive superspreader of the worst kind, but I would worry even more about the US democracy and avoiding more violence.
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So, the people that call for less gouvernment and more free markets are now unhappy with the free market making decisions they do not agree with? And Twitter would only be allowed to deplatform conservatives if their religion told them conservatives were against their god? That makes sense. The free market is a good way to bring cheap healthcare to americans but the right to twitter has to be put into an amendment of the constitution?
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On January 12 2021 16:26 NewSunshine wrote:
It's also worth mentioning that 44 different presidents before Trump managed to go about their workweek just fine without Twitter, and so invoking the President's status and job as reason for the ban being unreasonable holds 0 water for me. His decision to make Twitter his main platform was just that, his decision, and Conservatives can cry me a river about how bad it sucks that he got his ass banned on a privately-owned forum, despite all the sensationalist leeway he enjoyed there for years. I honestly don't care. He attacked the capitol of the United States. He can never fuck off enough in my eyes.
The hysterics resulting from his Twitter ban should be a wake-up call that we had a President who spent most of his (and his aide's) time on Twitter rather than doing his job, and that that was probably an issue.
44 presidents before him used whatever medium was popular before and had a large reach. Times are changing, twitter, reddit and facebook aren't just private forums anymore, they are large scale mass communication forms. It's a bit like banning a president from giving interviews in large scale newspapers or mainstream radio stations.
The problem isn't Trump's ban as a private person from twitter, everyone agrees he's toxic and inciting violence and the ban is justified. The problem is the implication that you can ban a person of public interest from 3-4 large scale private platforms and essentially shut them up for major parts of the population.
So the problem, as so often, is how monopolized the IT-sector is, because if there were 10-15 platforms they'd compete and have an interest in keeping their people with large reach. But with the 3-4 large scale forums we realistically have they can easily come to an agreement or feed off the same groups to sustain themselves, essentially giving them a free pass to do whatever they want.
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Monopolistic trade practices are actually a pretty old issue, not some new, devastating refutation of free markets that just cropped up yesterday. The power to crack down on something justified, like Trump's tweets around actual incited violence, should make you wonder if the same thing can be just as easily done to black and minority groups after a race riot, should they use a social media platform, an app, or a website. A group of men on the west coast have the power to do that today. Trump himself won't have trouble finding a microphone and connecting to his audience in time; it's actually the less prominent and connected people that are exposed here.
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It's a bit like banning a president from giving interviews in large scale newspapers or mainstream radio stations.
No private media outlet has an obligation to print or air anything. They can ignore anything and anyone as they wish, and they absolutely do.
If a STATE RUN tv station banned a leading politician it would be more serious.
I saw meme going:
"To anyone complaining about a private media company kicking Trump off their platform:
Think of Twitter as a Christian bakery and Trump as a gay wedding cake."
https://twitter.com/JohnSmithChgo/status/1347711178328444928?s=20
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Norway28678 Posts
While that distinction makes for a country like Norway (our state run broadcasting has wider reach than any private platform), I think banning someone from NPR and PBS hardly matters in the US compared to big tech all banning someone from all their platforms. It might well be that the problem is the concentration of power given to the big tech companies (and that all of this is just more fuel for the 'big tech needs to be broken into smaller entities'-argument) rather than a problem of private entities deciding that they don't want to be a platform for someone.
I do think Trump's tweets should have received some form of moderation at a much earlier point (I do like what essentially amounts to flagging his posts as false), and I think some of the social media platforms (facebook and twitter especially) deserve some/considerable amounts of blame for the spread and proliferation of fake news. But I am not convinced that banning him from Twitter is the right thing to do. It's not that I don't recognize the arguments in favor of doing it, but there's both the potential for a dangerous precedent (pun not intended I guess) and the creation of more division and distrust. (Trump being shut out by all the big actors at the same time 'proves' that there's an elitist conspiracy against him, etc. )
Media should never have put Trump on full display the way they did because they were addicted to hits and ratings. That was a grave error. (What % of exposure given to republican candidates was given to Trump? Way higher than any other individual candidate, despite every other individual candidate making considerably more sane policy suggestions.)
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If someone makes up consipracy theories out of thin air, why should it matter if there are some events that might collude with those theories. The people that believe in QAnon already will not stop because one of their prophecies did not become observable reality. I just find it odd, that the people that debate the need for reform of government entities like the police to be lest racist are now asking for more control over private companies because they may discriminate "minorities". It is in the clear interest of social media companies to include as many people as possible, yet suddenly Danglars cares about protecting "black and minority groups" from Twitter but not from pepper spray and batons.
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Hi all. I generally never understood the west's concept of freedom of speech. What makes trump acceptible to block on twitter/fb, but calls to block religious/racial comics not acceptible?
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On January 12 2021 20:54 DucK- wrote:
Hi all. I generally never understood the west's concept of freedom of speech. What makes trump acceptible to block on twitter/fb, but calls to block religious/racial comics not acceptible?
If those religious/racial comics are calling for violence, sure.
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On January 12 2021 20:54 DucK- wrote:
Hi all. I generally never understood the west's concept of freedom of speech. What makes trump acceptible to block on twitter/fb, but calls to block religious/racial comics not acceptible?
I dunno what specific event you're refering to, but there is quite a difference between those two. In the former you're just blocking a means of communication, in the latter you're censoring the message itself.
A closer (though not perfect) comparison would be twitter banning trump and some publisher refusing to work with religious/racial comics.
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On January 12 2021 12:32 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +There can be no neutrality in the eyes of conservatives. Either you go along with whatever they want or you're a deep state pizzaphile. If Twitter had a committee of named individuals decide to ban Trump then all that would have changed is there would be a bunch of bombs now being mailed to people with the same name as the committee members.
And that's precisely the issue. If you're not for something, you're against it. There's no middle ground. The one thing where i'd disagree is the "in the eyes of conservatives". Here's one thing to keep in mind, what's currently "conservative" would be considered far right fringe in many other countries, if not flat out insane conspiracy theorists. The only excuse "we" have is that there's more sane liberals than there's sane conservatives. Once you widen your horizon just a little and look beyond the tip of your nose, the far left is exactly the same. I remember vividly being accused of racism etc pp because i disagreed with BLM behaved - even with a disclaimer in basically every post that i don't dispute the reason for it. If you're not okay with BLM acts, you're a racist, oppressor, white supremacist etc. The "absolute" rhetoric needs to stop on both sides, but probably ain't going to happen in a two party system, because all you can do is either lose or win. It's inherently just two sided. And this goes across the world, this isn't a US problem. If you weren't for Corbyn, you're a brexiter, elite, against the people etc pp.
Yes I agree.
If you ignore all facts, context, intentions and reasoning and then squint really, really hard, the far left is identical to the far right.
Also Corbyn was a Brexiter.
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On January 12 2021 20:54 DucK- wrote:
Hi all. I generally never understood the west's concept of freedom of speech. What makes trump acceptible to block on twitter/fb, but calls to block religious/racial comics not acceptible?
Asking people to revolt on your behalf and exciting people to revolt against you are not the same.
If Trump had tweeted "antifa have small peepees" and they would have burned a city in response to that, I would have defended Trump.
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