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Tech giants’ censorship of history must be thwarted
EDITORIAL
12:00AM JANUARY 11, 2021152Incoming US president Joe Biden would show his country and the world he is a genuine libertarian and democrat if he took the lead in insisting that Twitter, Facebook, Google and other players overturn their alarming efforts to silence Donald Trump online. Regardless of his faults as a world leader, including his egregious behaviour last week, Mr Trump is an important figure at a fascinating point in history. His election in 2016, as a rank outsider, exposed the deep fissures in American society and since then he has been controversial. When professional historians come to write and analyse the current period in the context of its strategic challenges, economic struggles, culture wars, Chinese expansionism and the COVID-19 pandemic, primary sources will be central to their work. Twitter has long been Mr Trump’s preferred platform for addressing his followers, whose number had grown to 88 million — foes as well as friends — and millions more who read his tweets but were not signed up. The tweets were candid, spontaneous snapshots of his reactions and attitudes, largely undoctored by officials and spinners. In reaching for the Twitter button at all hours of the day and night, he was often his own worst enemy. But this makes it more important to preserve the record openly and transparently. As former UN ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted: “Silencing people, not to mention the President of the US, is what happens in China not our country.’’
Twitter’s attempt to justify its permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump does not stand scrutiny. Nor is its claim that it acted “due to the risk of further incitement of violence’’ any justification for obliterating his account. The tech giants’ cancelling Mr Trump also provokes a key question. Which controversial figure will they target next? In pulling the plug on the President, they have crossed a crucial line; from being purveyors of first-hand, unedited political utterances to controllers of whose views the public will and will not be allowed to see and hear. Mr Trump has been a consequential president who, in his final days in office, as The Times writes, “may have added another notch to his complicated legacy: bringing the curtain down on the first phase of our social media age’’.
On Friday, The Australian castigated Mr Trump in relation to the violent breach of the Capitol’s security, which resulted in five deaths, including that of a police officer. The President, we said, “had been inciting the mayhem for days, tweeting exhortations to his followers to rally in Washington when both houses of congress were scheduled to go through the ceremonial process of formally certifying Mr Biden’s victory. ‘It’s going to be wild,’ he tweeted. ‘Don’t miss it’.’’ It would be hard to imagine a more incendiary act by an incumbent President, we said, than to exploit passions that were running high. The time for social media to edit or contradict those tweets was then.
In contrast, the two tweets on January 8 that finally provoked permanent suspension of his account were mild. The first said: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” So what? The second, while significant, was not incendiary: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” He will be the first president in more than 150 years not to attend his successor’s inauguration.
Christchurch gunman Brenton Tarrant demonstrated the potential of terrorists and other criminals to misuse the internet to glorify violence. All media, including social media, must guard against such abuses. Examples abound of Twitter giving voice to militant dictators, such as Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. In Australia, it has also given jaundiced has-beens missing the limelight new leases of life as they spew their bile in limited vocabularies. Social media, in general, is more open to abuse and misuse than traditional media, which accounts for its potential to plant dangerous ideas in the minds of unstable individuals. This, regrettably, is how it has evolved; it is not a call for censorship.
But cancelling Mr Trump violates the principle of free speech, a democratic cornerstone, without sufficient reason. So do the actions of Facebook and Instagram, which have blocked him indefinitely, or for “at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete”, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. Google, Apple and Amazon are also culpable, for booting Parler, a free speech-focused social media network favoured by conservatives. Across the world, the general public and traditional media organisations should be wary of the unchecked power of a small group of unelected tech titans, including Californian billionaires Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mr Zuckerberg, to manipulate public discourse and thinking. They must not be allowed to delete history. As Republican senator Marco Rubio has tweeted: “Even those who oppose Trump should see the danger of having a small and unelected group with the power to silence and erase anyone. And their actions will only stoke new grievances that will end up fuelling the very thing they claim to be trying to prevent.”
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@Godder said in US Politics:
Some amusing names for the folks storming the Capitol... Q Clutz Klan and Vanilla Isis...
More seriously, apparently they are now making no fly lists, and are shocked that their actions may, in fact, have negative consequences.
I got the impression that the majority of the mob had no particular plan ... seems once they got in, chanted USA, USA, USA a few times, they stopped, looked around and said "umm, now what?".
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@Godder said in US Politics:
Some amusing names for the folks storming the Capitol... Q Clutz Klan and Vanilla Isis...
More seriously, apparently they are now making no fly lists, and are shocked that their actions may, in fact, have negative consequences.
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Somebody asked if Arnie had attacked Trump before. Oh yeah, they had a wonderful Twitter/video fight.
Trump slammed Arnie's the Apprentice attempt, and Arnie replied:
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@JC said in US Politics:
@voodoo And right on cue, Matt Hancock, the ex-Culture Secretary in the UK, has flagged up the Trump ban as an area of interest:
“It means that the social media platforms are taking editorial decisions,” he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme on Sky News. “And that is a very big question because then it raises questions about their editorial judgments and the way that they’re regulated.
“It is obviously one for the culture secretary — but as a former culture secretary I can tell you that I think it does lead to very interesting questions about the role of social media and the role of the social media companies in the decisions, in the editorial decisions that they take.”
I think they may rue the day they stepped into this. Any person who considers they have been done harm on these digital platforms can legitimately ask why the editors aren't acting quickly enough to mitigate it. What do they say to the mother of an anorexic teenager who is being targeted with pro-ana bullshit? When can we expect the purging of any anti-vax promotion? How will they balance conflicting jurisdictional requirements - for example if the UK proscribes unconscious bias training but the US promotes it?
Glad some light is being shed on big tech. These guys have the potential for changing life all over the globe, and not in a good way. Biggest issue facing humanity in my opinion
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@Siam said in US Politics:
@JC said in US Politics:
@voodoo And right on cue, Matt Hancock, the ex-Culture Secretary in the UK, has flagged up the Trump ban as an area of interest:
“It means that the social media platforms are taking editorial decisions,” he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme on Sky News. “And that is a very big question because then it raises questions about their editorial judgments and the way that they’re regulated.
“It is obviously one for the culture secretary — but as a former culture secretary I can tell you that I think it does lead to very interesting questions about the role of social media and the role of the social media companies in the decisions, in the editorial decisions that they take.”
I think they may rue the day they stepped into this. Any person who considers they have been done harm on these digital platforms can legitimately ask why the editors aren't acting quickly enough to mitigate it. What do they say to the mother of an anorexic teenager who is being targeted with pro-ana bullshit? When can we expect the purging of any anti-vax promotion? How will they balance conflicting jurisdictional requirements - for example if the UK proscribes unconscious bias training but the US promotes it?
Glad some light is being shed on big tech. These guys have the potential for changing life all over the globe, and not in a good way. Biggest issue facing humanity in my opinion
Does your teenager have direct access to nuclear codes or crowds of angry young men and women with plastic ties, pipe bombs, and unattractive beard grooming habits? Oh and threatens national security?
Consider him/her blocked then. -
@nostrildamus said in US Politics:
@Siam said in US Politics:
@JC said in US Politics:
@voodoo And right on cue, Matt Hancock, the ex-Culture Secretary in the UK, has flagged up the Trump ban as an area of interest:
“It means that the social media platforms are taking editorial decisions,” he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme on Sky News. “And that is a very big question because then it raises questions about their editorial judgments and the way that they’re regulated.
“It is obviously one for the culture secretary — but as a former culture secretary I can tell you that I think it does lead to very interesting questions about the role of social media and the role of the social media companies in the decisions, in the editorial decisions that they take.”
I think they may rue the day they stepped into this. Any person who considers they have been done harm on these digital platforms can legitimately ask why the editors aren't acting quickly enough to mitigate it. What do they say to the mother of an anorexic teenager who is being targeted with pro-ana bullshit? When can we expect the purging of any anti-vax promotion? How will they balance conflicting jurisdictional requirements - for example if the UK proscribes unconscious bias training but the US promotes it?
Glad some light is being shed on big tech. These guys have the potential for changing life all over the globe, and not in a good way. Biggest issue facing humanity in my opinion
Does your teenager have direct access to nuclear codes or crowds of angry young men and women with plastic ties, pipe bombs, and unattractive beard grooming habits? Oh and threatens national security?
Consider him/her blocked then.Do you consider privacy a human right? How about manipulation on a large scale? (something Facebook has been caught multiple times doing).
How about free and fair elections? Free speech?
We are in a huge transition period from print and tv to new mediums, and the same mistakes made a century ago are being repeated. We are in a situation now where the majority of people (in the west) get their news from Facebook and Twitter. So two people (Jack and Zuck) have fair too much power.
This is a concern to both sides of the debate in the US, chances are being made in Europe too to reduce the the power these networks have and to introduce some accountability.
That's not going into the super-charged nature of the mob that these platforms have enabled on an incredible scale (1.8billion active daily users for Facebook). These mobs can harass, stalk, abuse and "cancel" people.
Moderation on these platforms is aligned with the politics of the staff and CEO, so is unevenly applied. Competitors are being denied banking, payment and hosting services.
Surely you can see how many problems that is causing? If you don't feel listened too, or feel agrieved (rightly or wrongly) then the next step is violence for a lot of people.
Need to address the right problems, and let people air their opinions and start a constructive dialogue. Instead we have group-think and labelling people nazis.
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Wow. Which button did I push? Merely meant to point out there is a duty of care (and a question of scale and impact) regards a world leader accused of using Twitter (or whatever) to stage a coup and a bullied teenager (or their bullies).
I believe the social media giants should be regulated and that they blur journalism and duty and so forth when they feel like it. But currently, they are private companies and IMO can ban who they like. And yes, there are huge gaps in the laws protecting citizens from them, but I could say giant media companies also still seem to shirk responsibility (the phone tapping scandals were disgraceful).
The question of privacy is different (I hope) to question of access. -
@nostrildamus said in US Politics:
@Siam said in US Politics:
@JC said in US Politics:
@voodoo And right on cue, Matt Hancock, the ex-Culture Secretary in the UK, has flagged up the Trump ban as an area of interest:
“It means that the social media platforms are taking editorial decisions,” he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme on Sky News. “And that is a very big question because then it raises questions about their editorial judgments and the way that they’re regulated.
“It is obviously one for the culture secretary — but as a former culture secretary I can tell you that I think it does lead to very interesting questions about the role of social media and the role of the social media companies in the decisions, in the editorial decisions that they take.”
I think they may rue the day they stepped into this. Any person who considers they have been done harm on these digital platforms can legitimately ask why the editors aren't acting quickly enough to mitigate it. What do they say to the mother of an anorexic teenager who is being targeted with pro-ana bullshit? When can we expect the purging of any anti-vax promotion? How will they balance conflicting jurisdictional requirements - for example if the UK proscribes unconscious bias training but the US promotes it?
Glad some light is being shed on big tech. These guys have the potential for changing life all over the globe, and not in a good way. Biggest issue facing humanity in my opinion
Does your teenager have direct access to nuclear codes or crowds of angry young men and women with plastic ties, pipe bombs, and unattractive beard grooming habits? Oh and threatens national security?
Consider him/her blocked then.All my teenagers are in ISIS and Khomeni's death squads. They've already murdered and beheaded countless innocents by hand.
We watch them recruit other teenagers on twitter everyday though...
Then again, of course, Twitter almost solely enabled Trump to win an election 4 years ago. Made a good coin from him too🤔
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@nostrildamus said in US Politics:
Wow. Which button did I push? Merely meant to point out there is a duty of care (and a question of scale and impact) regards a world leader accused of using Twitter (or whatever) to stage a coup and a bullied teenager (or their bullies).
I believe the social media giants should be regulated and that they blur journalism and duty and so forth when they feel like it. But currently, they are private companies and IMO can ban who they like. And yes, there are huge gaps in the laws protecting citizens from them, but I could say giant media companies also still seem to shirk responsibility (the phone tapping scandals were disgraceful).
The question of privacy is different (I hope) to question of access.Probably read more shrill than I intended.
The private company line works if they are not publishers. Publishers have different liability under US law, and IMO they have crossed the line with recent actions.
I’m also sick and tired of Google and Facebook, and a lesser degree Twitter, buying their competitors or working in collusion with other service providers to make competition impossible.
They are pulling up the ladders behind them and controlling the 21st century’s version of electricity. It’s deeply concerning for our democracy, our right to privacy and just having choice as a consumer.
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The best part of the latest Republican presidency for me was pushing back on critical race theory.
Calling the bluff of the self flagellating, racist Princeton University was a pretty clever move. Never heard the follow up though:Now that orange man has gone, for the best, I hope the next administration is analysed and assessed as vigorously as the previous one.
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In the first sign that perhaps the world is starting to return to normal (yeah, right) Piers is writing things I totally agree with again
TL;DR ... twitter if your going to dump Trump, but let everything else that goes on from other world leaders, it's politically motivated and subsequently these platforms are taking a view.
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Putting aside the rights and wrongs of Trump, and the laws around 230 and platforms/publishers etc, and taking into account Kirwans legitimate concerns above, it still doesn't strike me as being the absolute worst thing in the world if Twitter and other platforms performed a deep purge of their platforms and stopped giving voice to anyone preaching violence, genocide and the like.
Obviously not an easy task, very tough to do fairly or uniformly, but you'd think starting with people with war crime records or accounts with obvious links to terrorist groups would be a decent place to start.
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Aren't these 'whatabouts' regarding who is on twitter actually examples of what people are wanting Twitter to do? They are allowed to use the platform as long as they don't break behaviour code. Even then it is the posts that get deleted until they keep infringing and then they get cut.
Seems very similar to the moderation here in fact. -
@Crucial said in US Politics:
Aren't these 'whatabouts' regarding who is on twitter actually examples of what people are wanting Twitter to do? They are allowed to use the platform as long as they don't break behaviour code. Even then it is the posts that get deleted until they keep infringing and then they get cut.
Seems very similar to the moderation here in fact.There are posts up there right now calling for the genocide of Israel from the leader of Iran, so your point is incorrect.
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@Kirwan said in US Politics:
@Crucial said in US Politics:
Aren't these 'whatabouts' regarding who is on twitter actually examples of what people are wanting Twitter to do? They are allowed to use the platform as long as they don't break behaviour code. Even then it is the posts that get deleted until they keep infringing and then they get cut.
Seems very similar to the moderation here in fact.There are posts up there right now calling for the genocide of Israel from the leader of Iran, so your point is incorrect.
100% this. There are Iranian women's rights activists that have had large accounts consistently incite violence against them, they report them, and nothing happens. The enforcement of their terms appear completely arbitrary which is why the obvious conclusion is to say they are politically motivated.
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