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Comment by sixstringtheory | Hacker News Reader

We don't have to speak in hypotheticals here. There are plenty of examples: voat, gab, TD, etc. What laws are/were being pushed by liberal politicians to use the force of law to shut them up?

Please do link to government documents or quotes from elected officials.

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It’s not a question of laws used, more psychological factors. Some people seeing those statements made by twitter may believe them blindly. We need people reading into important topics like this and forming opinions without being bated. Part of the problem you’ll also see in this thread. The downvotes here set the tone for the comment the viewer is about to read. Why is it’s view changed at all? Nothing this commenter said was offensive yet on some sites their comment would be hidden entirely.

What statement was made by Twitter that could be followed blindly? All I saw was "Get the facts about mail in ballots".

You can only infer a bias on that based on your own preconceived notion about Twitter's biases. A completely ignorant and unbiased individual may just as likely think "Twitter wants to show me why Trump is right" as they are to think "Twitter wants to show me why Trump is wrong".

If you really want to have people

> reading into important topics like this and forming opinions without being bated (sic)

then you should be all for this kind of neutrally positioned link to more information. I'm certainly open to entertaining alternatives, though.

The existence of the link in the first place. You have to be pretty far removed from reality to not know Twitter execs have a left lean to their bias. So the a completely unbiased person will notice that only some tweets show this link and could build a bias based on other psychological factors, such as wanting acceptance from a seemingly majority of peers.

I am for neutrality. I’m also a realist. IFF they could pull this off universally, in that all tweets are subject to these same fact checks, then I’m all for it. Removing personal biases of the person doing the fact checks will be a challenge but we can achieve this through multiple fact checkers with specific biases. Like the bulls and bears statements you find with stocks. But we cannot achieve this, we lack both the peoplepower and technology given Twitters scale. Short of it being universally applied to all accounts it can’t meet the definition of neutral. Therefor, don’t do it at all. Instead someone else using Twitter can reply to his tweets with the fact check. This keeps Twitters hands and potential biases entirely out of a very complicated topic.

> You have to be pretty far removed from reality to not know Twitter execs have a left lean to their bias.

Is that why they only remove nazis if you set your location to germany? That's bias to the... left?

I mean are you really trying to argue the Twitter execs are right leaning?

I don't know about what they do in their personal lives, but the actions I've seen applied to the site itself don't seem to be left leaning.

Well, they have posted many times on their position on Trump, which is a left leaning position. Then, rather quickly they throw this fact check on one of his tweets. Regardless of what their actual intents were the actions to me look a bit shady. Especially since the fact check comes down to “no evidence”, which is completely different then proven false.

If tech companies instead shut down people clamoring for unions and worker rights then you'd see the left rushing to introduce measures like the one signed by Donald Trump right now. So this is really a bipartisan issue and not just a right wing one, we should all work together to regulate the power of big tech. They might be mostly well-intentioned today, but it is best we regulate them before they have a chance to turn bad.

What about those of us who do not identify as "left" or "right" and would prefer that both gangs leave the Internet alone?

Tech companies are way too powerful to be left alone. With great power comes great regulations, as they say.

That's an entirely subjective opinion - and one that should ideally be left up to voters and/or their elected representatives, not to any single individual (like our president, or unelected bureaucrats in the FTC/FCC/etc.). And I continue to maintain that it's insanity to be terrified of Twitter's power when the government can order any one of us killed or locked up indefinitely and there are zero consequences when they screw up.

> down people clamoring for unions and worker rights

If those people are lying egregiously to do it then, sure, shut them down too.

Start by repealing the Citizens United ruling. If corporations can't have free speech, then this isn't an issue.

Does Gab silence liberal views? Bans, shadow-bans liberal accounts? Puts "fact checking" marks on their posts? If they do, then liberal politicians are more than welcome to take action.

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