Well you have Devin Nunes and Mike Postle types abusing libel laws currently with their frivolous bullshit, so its more that the system needs a complete overhaul rather than just being easier.
Was Going Clear, the scientology HBO documentary and the book it was based on, released in Canada? It was never released in the UK because of their libel laws. Which also demonstrates what a chilling effect on speech plaintiff-friendly libel laws can have.
edit:
I’m just perfectly fine with twitter not allowing the NY Post to tweet garbage and people having to buy the NY Post or going to their website. I’m fine with them banning Alex Jones and making people go to infowars own website if they want his content. I won’t agree with every decision social media sites make, they’ll probably get more wrong then they get right. But, for too long they’ve been too lenient and real people have gotten hurt/abused/killed because of it.
Millions of people believe in Q/pizzagate and stuff like that now. That is a gigantic societal problem that will have long lasting impact!
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It just surprises me that a forum who talks about social media companies being evil (maybe 80% of the people who post here believe this) simultaneously have no problem with them picking and choosing what gets shared.
It seems to me people are being results oriented here.
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Oh they’re evil, but they’ve always chosen what gets shared. They always will. We’re just talking about where they draw the line. Facebook or Twitter can’t be 8chan where anything goes. Facebook doesn’t allow nudity, excessive violence etc.
Even the status quo for every social media site hurts a lot of people, we just don’t hear about them as much because their voices are smaller. We hear about it when conservatives whine. They’re great at telling the refs how to call the game.
It’s not really that they are evil, in my mind, it’s that they have absolutely zero incentive to be good. It needs to be heavily regulated. We’ve already seen the damage social media can do - it seems hardly hypocritical to ask social media companies to undo some of the damage they’ve caused.
And most of us on this site believe the leftist things we do because we were exposed to those ideas online, on platforms owned by people who have a very real financial interest in limiting the spread of those ideas.
This is just not a good precedent to set, and we have seen over an over again how outrageous abuses of civil liberties very quickly become just ho hum realities of every day life.
It seems way more likely that 3 years from now we’re in a world where people on twitter have to use workarounds to share legitimate lefty information than one where these companies are responsibly limiting disinformation.
I dont think we should equate the ideas of “single payer Healthcare is good” and “democrats are running sex slave operations so they should be arrested” as equal ideas to be shared online. I do draw the line there.
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I’m fine with twitter banning Alex Jones, not fine with this NY Post decision, and not able to articulate what makes the cases different. So it’s hard for me to say what my desired system is.
I still retain the right to bitch and moan, though.
This is why social media sites need to curb the spread of fake news. In my local city group a guy posted that trump tweet where he linked that babylonbee article about twitter shutting down to slow the spread of negative biden news.
When I pointed out that babylonbee is satire and this (obviously) didn’t happen, I got a response “well they only made the satire because it’s happening anyway.”
Basically “i know it’s fake, but I believe it anyway.”
This stuff is so toxic and damaging and it spreads like a virus. Of course companies should try to curb the spread. It’s taken people to full on loony tunes levels of absurd belief and there’s no sign of it getting any better on its own. You can’t have ~30% of a society that lives in an entire reality that doesn’t exist.
You’re right about the laws being dumb, but at least we got this out of it. It’s the documents prepared for the defence, which is now a nice read on debunking Holocaust denying morons.
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Censorship is a very slippery slope. Therefore, I do not favor censorship of any kind. But just as there are truth in lending laws, why can’t there be truth in journalism laws? Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, and Anderson Cooper are not fucking journalists! They spend most of their time opining, interviewing, and holding discussion panels. Why can’t there be a watermark on the screen when they aren’t actually reporting news?
As for social media, same thing. You have all these indy publications and so-called journalists. You have to be certified to represent yourself as an electrician or even a barber in many states. Why can’t there be a regulating body that certifies journalists and publishers for news? I’m sure that just opens up a whole other world of corruption, but if it can be kept clean, I’m not so sure it’s a terrible idea
I love reading stuff like the Palmer Report for it’s dunking on Trump and Republicans. But I can tell when it veers far from being actual news and becomes just biased Trump bashing out of pure hatred for Trump. I’m sure many can’t tell. If there were some accredited journalistic standard that had to be met, then these types of publishers would have to decide if they want to be labeled news reporting journalists or opinion writers. I wouldn’t even care if they were divided into different departments of each as long as it were labeled
You’re not allowed to cause panic by yelling fire in a crowded movie theater and you shouldn’t be allowed to cause panic by espousing batshit crazy theories like a secret cabal of pedophiles running a political party or pizzagate bullshit without some sort of disclaimer. Let them say whatever they want. But there should be a way for dumb people to tell if what they’re reading or listening to is founded in reality
wtf is this
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I am happy that they made a beneficial decision in this one instance AND I want Ds to destroy them if they take power. No inconsistency whatsoever.
Lol at believing “precedent” is even a thing for these social media companies. They have spent four years violating precedent and their own rules to actively aid and abet Trump because he had the power, and now they are starting to change directions because they think he is likely to lose.
The respect power, that is it. Period. If Trump wins, Facebook will let the craziness return and ramp up, and we will get another 4 years of anyone opposing Trump being labeled a pedophile that deserves to be executed spreading like wildfire on Facebook. If he loses, we will get… not that.
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LOL at thinking the D’s will destroy them.
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This is why I want to blow it all up and start over from scratch. The best metaphor I can come up with for the product FB has built is the one ring to rule them all from Lord of the Rings ffs.
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Non-sequiter, you asked about the inconsistency in opposing thinking. That is what I want. But my order of preference is:
- evil companies destroyed and/or having their power weakened
- Ds kowtowing them
- Rs kowtowing them
#4, evil companies having “principles” they follow consistently and acting as good moral beings is not on the menu
There is. Win the argument! It was also bad to believe in 9/11 conspiracies, Obama being a secret Muslim Manchurian Candidate, Hillary being personally responsible for murdering dozens of people, and god knows how many other idiotic conspiracy theories, all of which predated social media. None of which required either hard censorship or the sort of soft censorship you suggest to keep under control.
In any case, you know what really feeds belief in unhinged conspiracy theories? Mistrust of establishment institutions like government and media. Will literal active censorship of these conspiracies by the media allay that mistrust? Only time will tell!
You don’t understand my objection or position if you think I’m advocating for #4.
Edit: I’m not even sure if we disagree about anything. My position is they have to much power and can’t exist in their current form.
Your objection is straightforward, how can we think it’s okay to allow an evil company pick and choose what to share. Your argument presupposes they are not already doing that.
But they are and always will unless we destroy them. I can’t root for Donald Trump to die from Coronavirus but he can personally do shit that is 100x worse 24/7 for four fucking years… what’s going on is not complicated.
You seem to think you get some bonus points and good karma that will ultimately result in good if you object when they happen to make a decision in “your favor.” You don’t, all you do is help those that who will happily label you a pedophile that deserves to be executed gain the power necessary to destroy you.