The Current Events, News, and Politics Thread
10-18-2018, 08:39 AM
Boost Czar
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for joe:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/u...itter-ban.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/u...itter-ban.html
What Is NPC, the Pro-Trump Internet’s New Favorite Insult?
Twitter has barred hundreds of right-wing accounts for posing as soulless, “nonplayable” liberal activists.
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10-18-2018, 08:50 AM
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Remember when Braineack used to participate in conversations in this thread, rather than just flooding it with copies of whatever politimeme he most recently discovered?
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10-18-2018, 11:18 AM
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see:
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10-18-2018, 01:36 PM
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I think the whole social media private company vs free speech debate is interesting. My first reaction is that private companies can do whatever they want, and if people don't like it, they can use another platform. I think the capitalist response to all this is to create an alternative social media platform that actually supports free speech.
However, the monopoly aspect complicates it a bit. People generally don't have any problem with the government (at least ostensibly) breaking up monopolies because it's not good for a single entity to have so much power over a market. I think a good argument could be made that Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter are monopolies in their respective forms of media, so there could be an argument in favor of the government regulating them.
What I really have a problem with is the double standard of the left. They're perfectly ok with huge private companies with 99% of the market share not promoting, or even actively preventing the expression of, ideas that they disagree with, but they have an aneurysm when a tiny company with an infinitesimal market share refuses to support their ideas. Even worse, activist judges force those tiny companies to conform to the leftist agenda, and blithely let the huge companies off the hook.
However, the monopoly aspect complicates it a bit. People generally don't have any problem with the government (at least ostensibly) breaking up monopolies because it's not good for a single entity to have so much power over a market. I think a good argument could be made that Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter are monopolies in their respective forms of media, so there could be an argument in favor of the government regulating them.
What I really have a problem with is the double standard of the left. They're perfectly ok with huge private companies with 99% of the market share not promoting, or even actively preventing the expression of, ideas that they disagree with, but they have an aneurysm when a tiny company with an infinitesimal market share refuses to support their ideas. Even worse, activist judges force those tiny companies to conform to the leftist agenda, and blithely let the huge companies off the hook.
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10-18-2018, 01:46 PM
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They created a social media app call GAB or something like that whose premises was actual free speech, then the Play and Apple stores removed it because ***** used it.
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10-18-2018, 02:06 PM
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However, the monopoly aspect complicates it a bit. People generally don't have any problem with the government (at least ostensibly) breaking up monopolies because it's not good for a single entity to have so much power over a market. I think a good argument could be made that Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter are monopolies in their respective forms of media, so there could be an argument in favor of the government regulating them.
The purpose of this, of course, is to permit for a diversity of opinion. The thought being that even if Company A is a shill for a certain specific interest or party, Company B will likely counter that bias by delivering a different view.
There's little question that "social media" is a form of media. Likewise, there's no question that the reach of platforms like FaceTwit encompasses 100% of the US.
In situations such as Alphabet (Google), there's also no question that they own multiple platforms which reach 100% of the US.
So right off the bat, if the same rules applied to online companies as do traditional media companies, things like YouTube and Facebook would not be able to exist. On the whole, that would probably be worse than letting them exist as monopolies.
Now, with relatively few exceptions, the US Government does not regulate the content of traditional media. Sure, you're not allowed to say "****" on television, but I'm talking about editorial content. If my TV station decided that it was going to broadcast nothing but pro-socialist propaganda 24/7, we'd be free to do so, provided that we didn't say "****" in the process. And if the Chicago Tribune (a newspaper which used to be affiliated with WGN, but can't be any more because of the ownership rules) wanted to print nothing but Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto every day, again, they are free to do so.
Given that regulating social media companies in the same way as traditional media companies (by ownership / coverage limitations) would be massively impractical and would cripple the functionality of the platforms themselves, perhaps imposing limitations on their ability to exercise selectively-biased editorial judgement is an equivalently-functional alternative?
What I really have a problem with is the double standard of the left. They're perfectly ok with huge private companies with 99% of the market share not promoting, or even actively preventing the expression of, ideas that they disagree with, but they have an aneurysm when a tiny company with an infinitesimal market share refuses to support their ideas. Even worse, activist judges force those tiny companies to conform to the leftist agenda, and blithely let the huge companies off the hook.
Last edited by Joe Perez; 10-18-2018 at 03:19 PM.
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10-18-2018, 02:30 PM
^ There's many more places than FB or Twitter on the internet to "express" yourself. But, because both of them have done a good job at pulling in the user base one side or the other gets pissy. At it's most basic level is FB any different than MT.net? They both advertise and they both choose at times to delete content deemed offensive to someone. Personally, I don't think any of the 2 places commonly mentioned are true monopolies in a legal sense.
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10-18-2018, 02:53 PM
Again, at it's most basic level why is Twitter any different than this site? Just because someone's "smart" doesn't make them right... I used to work with a really smart guy. Had the common sense of a rabbit...
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10-18-2018, 02:58 PM
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^ There's many more places than FB or Twitter on the internet to "express" yourself. But, because both of them have done a good job at pulling in the user base one side or the other gets pissy. At it's most basic level is FB any different than MT.net? They both advertise and they both choose at times to delete content deemed offensive to someone. Personally, I don't think any of the 2 places commonly mentioned are true monopolies in a legal sense.
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