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Comment by dariusj18 | Hacker News Reader

> “Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear,”

Pretty sure that is the opposite of what we (generally) allow our elected officials to do.

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Great observation! I was lost in Cruz's angry theatrics, did not even catch the invalidity of his premise.

At the very least it seems the opposite of what Republicans/Conservatives espouse.

How so? If there's a single group that's allowed to restrict the media, then it's politicians e.g. defamation laws.

Alternately, if there's a single group that's allowed to restrict the media, it's the media.

Following that, it's the people, who can restrict the media based on what they pay attention to.

How do you do that, if all the big platforms you use are beginning to censor political information that would threaten their power.

So that's the media censoring the people.

That's not what I was arguing.

I was stating that the media is in a better position to censor themselves than the government is, and that the media will follow views, so people can censor the media by paying or not paying attention.

Besides that it really feels like across the board; politicians, pundits and the wider media have really let themselves get lost in this story. Twitter is one media company in existence at one point in American history. How it exercises editorial control feels like a bit of a minor point. Especially considering America's long history of media empires which have been far more subservient to the whims of moguls (i.e. Hearst, Murdoch, Clear Channel, etc.)

Twitter isn't a publisher that is the difference to "media". They are held to a different standard because they claim to not publish just host stuff. You cant exercise editorial control as a hostler. Thats like if a library would change the content or their books according to their own definitions of what should and should not be read by the people.

Twitter is a publisher. Anyone who controls a platform through a centralized structure is one IMO. The "host v. publisher" construction is purely courts tying themselves in knots so some can have their cake and eat it too.

Well, they are not ATM. Thats the reality.

Yeah, the gist of what he was saying probably should have been worded as "who made you king?"

Which seems to have a clear enough answer:

The billion+ active users of Twitter & Facebook, for whom these rules seem acceptable & decent.

It's not that straightforward. The rules are anything but obvious. It's one big echo chamber.

The rules are not the problem. People agree or go somewhere else. Its how they are applied. Having hacked material not allowed would be totally fine but you cant allow it once and then block it another time. Either is against the rules or not. And before creating such a rule there would need to be serious effort to figure out how to enforce it fair and if that's not possible the rule should never even be set up. This no hacked content rule for example was nonsense form the beginning. You would need to block everything instantly or at first report because you simply cant know if its hacked content. And it puts twitter in the position to judge if something is in fact hacked content or not. And by the time they decide its already all over the internet anyway because the Streisand effect is real. Its just a useless rule with no concept to implement but it opens doors to suppress something from becoming a trending topic.

I'm sure Cruz understands the absurdity of what he's saying. He's not stupid or ignorant (he clerked for Rehnquist, just to give an example) and would probably agree that viewpoint-based liability shelter is unconstitutional. But at some point the Republication party decided it was a good strategy to play the victim and he's toeing the line.

He didn't say that such a person is or should be elected. Its just rhetoric, no need to imply something into it that he never said. Hes obviously aware that the first amendment can not be overruled by anyone elected or not.

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