Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Could we have been more diligent in educating people on ways of debating and understanding, could we have built a society that is not obsessed with perfection and winning?
If it wasn't Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. it would simply be something else in their place who had to perform the job of the gatekeeper. We were on course to enabling global communication at an unprecedented scale regardless of these companies establishing themselves, it wasn't news that we'd get here. Did we just discount the discourse on this that it's 'suddenly' a concern?
Decentralization, encryption and anonymity is the only way to deal with this.
Aether is a good first draft: multi part app with a back end that can live on a single board computer in your closet and costs $4 to run for a year and a front end that you can use on your phone.
Be prepared that it's a distributed system, it takes a while for posts to show up when you first run it.
Incidentally I absolutely love it when conservatives advocate for more government, whatever happened to the market is perfect let it decide the winners and losers.
Or they can choose to moderate and/or editorialize the content they host and the conversations that happen on their platform AND be held responsible for it.
I'm not saying it is bad that a company moderates their platform, please do it! But don't pretend everyone can voice their view on their platform and be clear and forward about what you are doing.
The government is one small part of the State (as an organization). I should have probably said "Let the legislative and judiciary powers of the State handle it".
>whatever happened to the market is perfect let it decide the winners and losers
This is already happening: some people, disillusioned by the service Twitter provides, are moving to Parlor, for example.
In the end Twitter have the power to ban Trump from their platform the same way a bar owner can ban people who they don’t like. Just because everyone thinks and feels Twitter is a public forum does not make it one; it is private property like virtually everything on the Internet.
Why Twitter posts if not punishment of children? Are children that unimportant to this society?
Him: I would much rather we have A so that we didn't need B
You: Or, we could have this thing B
I know I'm on the record as saying that rationality, which is to say empirical philosophy, is incomplete. Let me clarify that by saying that it isn't the same thing as rejecting it outright anymore than rejecting Newtonian mechanics outright is the same thing as admitting it is incomplete.
That anyone can believe that simply "letting them be wrong on the internet" is a viable course of action at this point is utterly baffling.
I sincerely hope there is an alternative to totalitarian control of public discourse, but I am becoming increasingly worried that there is not.
"Warning: This site contains highly speculative & offensive gossip and might cause anxiety, stress, unattainable standards and lowered self-esteem. Information on this site should not be considered credible, and might cause radicalization and extremism."
Jesus Christ man. You think you can educate the population to the point they don’t believe conspiracies and “fake news”?
I mean, how many anti-vaxers are postgraduates?
You’re absolutely nuts if you think you can “fix” the human condition through education.
As for your very specific example, the arguments post-graduate anti-vaxxers will make are going to be different than people who're mislead and aggravated by 600-word articles or even shorter chain messages spreading bullshit. The vaccine to this bullshit is education, believe it or not.
Humans are instinctively divisive. Our species relied heavily on small communities working together and excluding other communities throughout our entire human history. Tribalism is engrained in our nature as a direct effect of our evolution. It would take another thousand years to unlearn that. Social media is a global tool, and therefore social media has just brought out the worst in humans on a global level, but it hasn't created that intrinsic tribal instinct in us to begin with. Humans are just not meant to cooperate on such a large scale. We'd all be much better off (aka leaving more harmonious) if we'd live in smaller communities and would revert a lot of what globalisation has given us.
Here in recent memory is the UK dealing with elected politicians who were silenced by force of law: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4409447.stm
(mind you, they were also members of a terrorist organisation, so all the arguments about promoting violence apply ...)
For example, they are able to breach legal injunctions against publication, in such a way that a report of the breach can then be legally published.
In any case, regardless of who you are, if you violate the terms of service of platform, you can be terminated on that platform.
The platform makes the rules, within the context of the legal systems with which it is governed by. When it comes to "free speech", that is a very tricky subject. More significantly, if even the local population cannot agree on whether certain speech should be allowed or not, then the government has no hope of regulating it either.
Nothing in terms of his day job but he is known as a fan of technology (not a particularly well-informed one) so he’s likely to have an opinion on the matter. More to the point, though, the government usually nominate a minister to go round all the Sunday morning political TV shows and answer questions on whatever is in the news.
He was being interviewed on a general politics show
>> Mr Hancock, a former culture secretary, told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show
It's usual on these shows for the interviewer to treat the the politician as a representative of the wider government and to ask general questions as well as those about the politician's own area of responsibility.
Minor nit, but he's not UK health secretary. Health is devolved so he only has responsibility for England.
A corollary of this is that when any Cabinet minister speaks publicly, they speak on behalf of the government, and they are expected to be able to respond to general media enquiries on matters outside their specific role. They may choose not to respond substantially or to refer the enquiry to a colleague more familiar with the details, and they very often do. If they don't, it is almost certain that they are expressing an agreed Cabinet position and they just happen to be the minister doing the media rounds that day.
"Step by step, private companies incorporate state businesses; even the most stubborn vestige of the old work of governing (for example, that activity which is supposed to secure private parties against other private parties) will ultimately be taken care of by private contractors..."
He'll say whatever he thinks is popular at the time.
Here he is calling for tighter regulation of social media: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/internet-laws...
> New laws will be introduced aimed at tackling the internet “wild west” and making Britain the “safest place in the world” to be online, the culture secretary has said.
> The largest social media companies could be fined billions of pounds if they do not take steps to protect users, Matt Hancock warned.
> A new code of practice to tackle online bullying, stricter age verification requirements, and a regular internet safety transparency report to keep tabs on online abuse could also be included in new legislation.
> Measures to tackle online harm could be funded through an industry-wide levy on firms such Facebook and Twitter.
This is how we get conflicting positions, such as "we value security and want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online", but also "we want our police and security services to be able to access any online communications".
The handling of social media has often been similar. Apparently we are a democracy that values free speech, yet we also want the social media companies to use unspecified technology that they are assumed to have available to identify and block harmful content, for whatever definition of "harmful" is politically convenient at the time.
A recurring theme is being seen to object to negative consequences of modern technology but without ever taking a clear stance or positive action for which they could be held responsible if it has other negative consequences of its own. It's the epitome of trying to have a cake and eat it, instead dumping the hard questions on the big tech firms. Those firms make good targets politically because obviously they do have some real problems, so a lot of people will be fine with blaming them for the evils of the tech world and won't have much sympathy for anything bad that happens to them.
I would hardly say that this counts as free time, and I would argue keeping up with the news is the job of a government minister.
I mean, it's a banal and boring law, but his use of Twitter was always a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act. They couldn't have set up a dumb finger server or something and written him a junky app, then mirrored it to FB/Twitter/Parler whatever?
I dont think they even have the ability to talk to anyone who could make that into a twitter bot.
Social spaces and infrastructure should be regulated so that they can be shielded from social justice and the government regarding user generated content.
No one will boycott twitter if they know twitter can't just press a button to ban. No one will ask for demonetization of a YouTube channel if they know that has to come from the legal system. Or pressure companies buying ads that show on channels you don't like
What is your comment even saying?
Don't dogwhistle please, write what you really mean.
For these big companies I think governments gave them the choice to censor or be broken up, so they chose censorship. Now the governments are wanting more regulation.
I don't know how they all are responding but could Facebook be handling this dilemma better than Twitter, or would Facebook also be under their sights? How could Amazon etc be targeted?
If they be a publisher, they may take editorial control but the also become liable for anything that escaped their control and can no longer claim “The views expressed here are not our own.”.
In the alternative, they can be a platform, and may not take editorial control and only be required and allowed to remove content they are legally required to remove.
The current situation is that they want their cake and eat it too.
Any platform that tries to do this will quickly fill up with spam.
They're permitted to implement restrictions on that only humans and not bots may post, not on content, provided that it be legal.
8chan had a system where one had to solve a captcha every day and where one was not permitted to post more than one message per minute.
It’s a little weird he tries to characterize Twitter exercising their ability to choose who has a voice on their platform as a new thing. That’s not new. They’ve been doing this all along.
If you only promote free speech in defense of authoritarian sedition, you aren’t promoting free speech. You’re promoting authoritarian sedition.
Their Dubai office is especially spicy, considering that countries stance regarding woman and LGBT rights.
Still, I fear they will just accept being publishers and deal with regulations while still being considered impartial platforms by the public.
I never understood why my own government seems to feel the need to jump on every social medium out there. It gives those legacy, leverage and goes against many years of tradition.
It's due to the unbelievable amount of manipulative statements and outright lies (e.g. many of the statements made by the current UK government and the "Brexiteers" - not just Trump) that this is even an issue.
A platform labelling or blocking repeated offenders seems sensible to me - however I do think the rules they are enforcing should be fair and equally applied.
Last I checked I publish a blog site and I did not get the necessary permission from Chinese authorities to do so... and I don’t care, I have no link to China.
The UK has regulations that companies have to follow to serve UK citizens.
It’s not that strange and is quite common.
The EU's strategy with the GDPR, in attempting to make it viral so that businesses it could reach within its own jurisdiction could be penalised if they dealt with businesses it couldn't reach elsewhere, is a dangerous path to be following. Taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of strategy becomes a significant barrier to international trade and can leave businesses in impossible positions.
A better way to address these issues is for governments to make proper international agreements with each other on matters where they agree on the principles, so that businesses in any state that is party to those agreements know what the rules are, and the rules are consistent and enforceable throughout the states making the agreement.
Without such agreements, one would hope that governments of states that have not implemented some rule would protect their own businesses, including actively intervening to support those businesses if they were being "leaned on" to enforce the rules of other states extra-territorially. We really don't want a world where any sufficiently large political power -- the US, EU, China, India, whoever -- can unilaterally set rules that apply to everyone else as well.
EDIT: minorities still have a chance in two ways: (1) they can have discussion groups which can be large but still limited (2) the majority will have some tolerance and thus will only suppress the ideas of minorities if they find them objectionable.
Well, the entire point is that free speech is not the same as broadcasting rights. You can still have free speech. You just don't get a "free platform".
Minorities can still have discussion groups. It's just that their ideas never achieve mass broadcasting if the majority finds those ideas objectionable.
“You still have freedom of speech, but can only talk about subjects I approve of”.
No, it is:
“You still have freedom of speech, but not a free platform”.
To do this is to revisit some of the worst days of the 20th century. I am astonished that views like this are getting more popular. Have we learned nothing from history?
In all seriousness, what do you think will be the eventual outcome when you marginalise people this way? Don't just reply to me here. Go and do some real reading.
Democracy is violently (under threat or by direct action) imposing the will of majority on a minority.
The reason I think this is because of the USA: the USA started as a minarchy, it became very rich (probably because of it) and then slowly became the largest, fattest government ever.
Similarly, tons of smaller governments in EU keep growing larger and more inefficient instead of cutting down and freeing the economy.
Ironically, it leads to the exact opposite, where certain minorities express disproportionate power. For example, the rules always favor the status quo, so a minority in power can retain power, and subvert even largish majorities from passing rules they favor.
Democracy may well be the least worst form of government, but it's even worse than I think most people give it credit for. The assumption is that at least half the people are happy with at least half of the results, and it doesn't even guarantee that much.
I think you're conflating democracy in general with social democracies.
Social democracies are much more complicated - but they have a corruptible government which pretty much guarantees that the richest minority will be able to get laws that appear to satisfy everyone while benefiting them.
A clear example is progressive taxation - it sounds fair to a laymen. Then you see that all the rich people use tax loopholes to pay close to zero while middle class people struggle to get rich because of the extra tax hurdle.
I think the situation is slightly better in Switzerland because it's a semi-direct democracy and the greater use of referendums gives the population a greater chance to shape their society.
In times gone by, that would have prevented people spreading information about the world being a sphere and orbiting the sun. The flat earthers and proponents of the earth being the centre of the universe would have suppressed Copernicus' and Kepler's discoveries of heliocentrism and elliptical orbits.
New ideas displace old ideas all the time, and that displacement can only occur if there is both a rational evidence-based reason for displacing it and there is the opportunity to do so. To suppress an idea is to remove opportunity for discussion and to entrench the established viewpoint irrespective of its merits. It's the very antithesis of modern liberal thought.
Suppression of ideas also conversely prevents the objective discussion of bad ideas and dismissing them. Too much conversation in the present days is not grounded in objectivity, and this lets bad ideas fester. Open and fair minded discussion is a basic requirement for living in a free society.
There is a disturbing tendency to wish to suppress discussion of "sensitive" or "controversial" topics in recent years. That is a path which will lead to tyranny. Because it boils down to other people telling us what we are and are not allowed to say, think and do. This would not be a fair or free society.
Having groups "approve" information means having gatekeepers who wield a lot of power. Censors. Who is to ensure that they exercise that power both fairly and accurately? It opens a huge can of worms. It might seem to make sense for "obviously" black and white issues. But most are not so clear cut, and choosing a "correct" side is impossible.
"False information" isn't countered by suppression. It's countered with facts and open discussion.
I absolutely agree that the current state of affairs with social media is problematic. That's the reason I quit all of them and deleted my accounts permanently. But what you're advocating still amounts to censorship and a failure to treat individuals as capable of evidence-based rational thought, and is still the antithesis of what we want in an open and free society.
You can choose the moderators at random. This would be somewhat akin to the idea of sortition:
But, more importantly, people like to spread what they want to believe, even if it's not true. Trump really played into that: He started by promoting the birther theory, which people who didn't like Obama chose to believe. Finally, he promoted the theory that there was widespread election fraud, even though it was thoroughly disproven. Again, people chose to believe Trump's lie even though it was thoroughly disproven.
IMO, we need to strengthen our slander laws, and have a higher "burden of truth" on our media companies. Specifically, if a media company covers provenly false information in a way that implies it is, or could be, true, that media company needs to be prosecuted for slander, or worse.
But, more importantly, we need to prosecute elected officials who contradict fact; and ban candidates who brazenly contradict established fact.
Even today, there are teachers who spout that homosexuality is somehow a bad thing.
Controversial topics will take time to reach mainstream agreement, no matter how you shape the spread of information. The question is how to do it in a way such that society is not disrupted by a strong opinion.