Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

The neutral companies, such as utilities, online hosting or financial providers serve nearly everyone with little objections - they defer to the law rather than any internal policies. The more selective companies such as newspapers and TV channels are expected to restrict who can get published.

By representing itself both as an open platform and as a company with progressive values, Twitter has put itself into an awkward in-between spot and is bound to create such controversies.

Fact-checking obvious lies is a "progressive value"? Wow, that really shows how bad things have gotten.

If the lies are obvious, why do they need "fact checking"?

Because, for better or worse, the sources of truth that normal people historically relied on for their barometer of what is true or not have been democratized by the internet.

We live in a world where a substantial number of people believe the earth is flat, that 5G cellular is a mind control scheme, that vaccines cause autism, that COVID-19 was created by a political party, that the concept of climate change is manufactured, or that major national crises are actually just actors being paid to further a political narrative.

Most of these ideas aren't new, but in decades past you might have heard about them from a conspiracy-therorist neighbor, a low profile website, or an alternative magazine with little reputation of its own.

Now, these ideas are spread on the exact same platforms as objectively truthful / scientifically sound media. Your Youtube conspiracy theory channel is right next to the BBC's videos. Your viral Facebook post could be from the New York Times, or it might be from a propaganda organization - or worse, an account that looks like a normal person but which was specifically created to spread misinformation that seems plausibly truthful.

Credibility is distributed and anyone can publish to a huge audience, which is wonderful sometimes, and othertimes deeply problematic, because the viewer often doesn't know enough to distinguish fact from fiction and can't trust the publisher at face value anymore.

Its uncharted territory. The cost to distribute is zero, and ideas spread far and wide - but that means that there are equally as many incredible sources on any given topic as credible ones, and telling the difference is hard, and sometimes not knowing the difference is dangerous. Dunning-Kruger writ large.

I agree.

The question is, if it's hard to figure out who you can trust, then who can you trust to decide what's fact and what's fiction?

I think trusting any one person or organization to decide is dangerous. Everyone has biases, including the people making decisions at Twitter.

I'd prefer to see the arguments for both sides clearly laid out - "Here are the arguments for and against". Ideally anyone would be able to contribute to either side. Maybe giving each argument its own HN-style discussion.