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Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

Whenever these topics come up, the comment section is full of people advocating for no limits based solely on slipper slope arguments: who is going to determine what is politcal? Who is going to determine what is true?

But we all life with boundaries and we cope just fine. Why should this street in front of my house have a 35 MPH speed limit? What is special about 35? Why not 36? Why not 34? Who is to say that one is better than the other, so let's not try and all and let everyone pick their own speed.

Just as it would be possible, but stupid, to invoke slippery slopes to argue there should be no speed limits, invoking slippery slopes to argue against any regulation is a cop-out. Why not advance a real argument vs just arguing picking the optimal boundary is impossible?

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The concern is about categories, not magnitudes, though.

A better analogy would be a certain tax rate for "cars" and another lower one for "trucks" so as to not harm blue collar small businesses. We would start seeing more personal vehicles designed to be "trucks" even if they weren't used for large hauls or some sort of business purpose.

And, of course, we already see exactly that happen to car designs.

The argument is that the incentives are there to follow the letter of the law and abuse the spirit, putting less onerous personalities at a disadvantage.

> A better analogy would be a certain tax rate for "cars" and another lower one for "trucks"

That would be a pretty poor analogy since taxes are mandatory and imposed by the government.

Nobody should feel obligated to use Twitter.

You can't just decide to create an alternative tax system, but you're definitely free to build your own microblogging / social network.

You can decide to ride a bus or train. Or ride a bike. Or a motorcycle.

And I wasn't going for a perfect analogy, just a better one.

yep, the whole "who decides on the truth?" thing is extremely irritating. Do we throw out every court case now because apparently it's impossible to determine what is fact and what is fiction, or to establish common rules or guidelines for conduct? We've been doing nothing else for thousands of years.

It's more of a, "what is fact and what is opinion," rather than, "what is fact and what is fiction."

"9 out of 10 doctors recommend Colgate," is a fact when Colgate picks the sample of doctors. A trained eye will realize that's actually an opinion, while it's designed to represent a fact. This works because people's opinions can be shaped by presenting an opinion as a majority.

This technique is probably one of the most commonly used and it has many variants, such as, "Your child could be in danger of edibles in their Halloween candy." Technically a fact, but actually a disguised opinion.

A basic legal doctrine is that "it's better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be unjustly imprisoned."

If anything, prosecutors have been taking your attitude and gaming the system with plea deals, so you're not merely wrong, but horribly wrong.

Treating everything as if the consequence of getting it wrong is sending an innocent person to prison doesn't make any sense. Courts don't even do that. They use different standards when imprisonment isn't an option.

and I don't see how this doctrine is violated if companies like twitter act with caution when in doubt. (which they have every incentive to do)

But nobody says "Johnny the crazy axe murderer gets to roam free because who is to decide what is true or not?" Which is just about where the speech debate is for some people.

Trying to make a slippery slope argument about a private corporations private, for-profit website is hilarious.

Twitter will do whatever the hell it wants on its own property and has no obligation to listen to anyone except the voice of 51% of its shareholders.

If you don't want your communications to be under the total absolute control of a corporate entity you have no influence over, you might want to pack your bags and get off for profit social media.

You don't need to have an "argument" about "policy" on your own Mastodon instance. If upstream does something you don't like, you fork it. If another instance does something you don't like, you block it. Because thats actually your platform then.

Im scared of such arguments. And im telling you as a libertarian. No, private companies should be regulated and shareholders cant be the only voice to be heard. I mean, what if starbucks shareholders decide that, lets say, african americans are no longer allowed to buy coffe on their shops. Would it be ok to allow it?

> I mean, what if starbucks shareholders decide that, lets say, african americans are no longer allowed to buy coffe on their shops.

If the shareholders are motivated by religious belief? Great question. I'm afraid to consider how the supreme court would decide

I never said not to. But complaining on the platform itself is not petitioning your representatives to regulate Twitter. Its wasting time and throwing words into a bottomless hole.

And given the studies showing how little the will of the people influences the conduct of congress in the US I'd strongly consider petitioning the government barely a step beyond an equal waste of time.

Which isn't just rolling over and taking it - but actually fixing it goes way beyond a moment of outrage enshrined in text on the Internet.

No. We have the civil rights act of 1964.

But presumably, were this discussion taking place in 1963, there would be someone saying:

<company> will do whatever the hell it wants on its own property and has no obligation to listen to anyone except the voice of 51% of its shareholders.

Yes. Exactly what I tried to suggest.

This is all well documented history. I encourage you to look at the circumstances and conversations in govt that lead to the civil rights act.

I think that's really beside the point I am making. My argument is that history is full of people defending the status quo, until it stops being the status quo. Then it becomes taken as truth that the new status quo is how things must be.

We can have discussions about what a business can and cannot do beyond what they are currently allowed to do.

So you agree that they should be regulated. Law is regulation.

That would be against the interests of the shareholders. But if they all got together and decided to do so, the result would be that racists would go under, and I do not want to help racists succeed in business!

Evergreen: Twitter is a public company.

And the grandparent just argued that we should easily be able to regulate companies. You're saying the opposite, now we can't regulate because they're quote-unquote "private"?

Well, which is it? Can we regulate for-profit companies for the good of the nation or not? If not, why not?

> Twitter is a public company.

Correction: Twitter is a corporation with publicly-traded equity.

A "public company" isn't the same as a "public good" or controlled by government and regulated as if it were owned by the entire republic

> Correction: Twitter is a corporation with publicly-traded equity.

Is this a joke? Literally The New York Times refers to Twitter as a "public company"[0], as does the rest of the known universe. Educate yourself.

[0] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/live-blog-tracking-t... "Twitter began life as a public company on Thursday..."

No, it's not a joke.

Yes, the term "public company" is used widely, but it doesn't mean what you think it means given the rest of your comment.

Whether a company is publicly traded or not makes no difference on how much the government can regulate it. Educate yourself.

We already regulate companies through laws. Pass the appropriate laws! The alternative is that we hope for companies to self-regulate, which may or may not align with what's good for society.

My suggestions for lawmakers is as follows:

If you have a user base in excess of 1% of the general population, you are a "Platform" and cannot restrict entrance by individuals or businesses, or full participation thereof, except upon a court order limiting said participation. [Fines t.b.d., but expect them to be punitive in nature.] This law supersedes any Terms of Service a provider might wish to enforce.

Want to enforce "whatever you want" on your "platform"? Stay below the 1% threshold and you're good. Otherwise, you need to interact with the public in a completely neutral manner.

> And the grandparent just argued that we should easily be able to regulate companies.

That is what you got out of comment? That certainly wasn't my argument, and rereading what I wrote, I still don't see how you get it.

Let me be succinct: I wasn't arguing for or against Twitter's actions or making any suggestions for what I would do. I was simply pointing out that making an argument solely on the grounds it is a slippery slope is vacuous.

Most cops won't hassle you for going 45 in a 35 zone unless it's meaningfully unsafe, and the Autobahn's speed limit "don't be an idiot" at human discretion.

One problem is the fuzzy nature of "political" advertising: For example, many people think of Planned Parenthood as a political organization, and some people think of Planned Parenthood as a health care provider. Ought Planned Parenthood to be allowed to advertise abortion services on Twitter?

I would say yes because it's not actually a political ad, a political ad would be 'support abortion rights', 'keep abortion legal', etc, what you're talking about is directly an advertisement of a service. It could blur the line depending on the exact content but just because a service has been politicized doesn't mean ads about that service inherently become political.

Heh... I find it funny that this issue underscores just how difficult it is for humans to uniformly decide on ground truth... but oh sure, let’s turn everything over to AI... that’ll be awesome! (Sorry for the non sequitor)

There are places where there are no speed limits. The autobahn for one.

Arguing against 'the optimal boundary is impossible argument' assumes you agree with his base axioms, that things like money are more important than the exploration of other principles. These are not slippery slope arguments, but the very base of politics itself. Why have any rule.

> There are places where there are no speed limits. The autobahn for one.

Notpick: only some portions of it don’t have speed limits. Even on those, it’s recommended to drive under the usual limit.

You are begging the question by assuming that the autobahn is valuable beyond a speed-regulated road. I will agree the autobahn has novelty value for the sake of it's own peculiarity, but that isn't something you can generalize as valuable for other roads. If going as fast as you would like was valuable for any reason beyond novelty and/or tourism, we would be doing it already.

>You are begging the question

I would like to think, using the autobahn as an argument to make the point that parent's post wasn't as self-evident as it could appear. I agree the autobahn has it's own value judgement to be discussed if one so wishes.

I think you just made a slippery slope argument against slippery slope arguments!!!

I think it was an argument by analogy, not a slippery slope argument. Although I suppose the distinction between the two is a bit ... slippery.

But it's so... smooth!

(Yeah, I know, Reddit-style jokery, bring on the downvotes...)

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