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1061 points danso | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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partiallypro ◴[] No.23350905[source]
Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.

Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.

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kingnight ◴[] No.23351063[source]
The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand.

It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.

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koheripbal ◴[] No.23351357[source]
The legal issue is that their legal protection from defamation and libel under section 230 requires them to moderate "in good faith". If they only selective moderate accounts, then that protection may not survive in court.

...but I think a greater concern we can all agree on, is that for the type of communications that Twitter does - Twitter is effectively a monopoly. The people being censored here can't even themselves go to any alternative platform, because there's really no other platform at that scale for that content format.

...that's a bigger problem, because it gives Twitter the power to shape global communications unilaterally. Something no corporation should have the power to do.

I think, broadly, that censorship should be regulated by democratically elected bodies - not corporations.

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1. vharuck ◴[] No.23351806[source]
>The people being censored here can't even themselves go to any alternative platform, because there's really no other platform at that scale for that content format.

What about setting up a blog on whitehouse.com? Most normal people can't get the same audience, but Trump's not normal.

>If they only selective moderate accounts, then that protection may not survive in court.

Even assuming there was a service moderating by purely political guidelines, I don't see how 230 would stop applying. Otherwise, a lot of websites will be screwed. For instance, any website run by a political party that allows comments.

>that's a bigger problem, because it gives Twitter the power to shape global communications unilaterally. Something no corporation should have the power to do.

The solution to a monopoly abusing its power isn't to write piecemeal law curtailing things as they come up. The solution is to get rid of the monopoly (breaking it up, making it so competitors join the market, etc).

But this order isn't about monopolies. It's a party plank and rallying cry.