Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

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Well, for one, democratic countries are supposed to be governed by representatives elected by people, not by corporate boards.

Ability to selectively enable or disable people from being able to access voters is tantamount to having a huge influence on election results.

While in the past you could avoid using social media, today this is THE way to reach most of voters. Most people no longer pay substantial attention to what happens on television, forgot what radio is (it is a little bit of noise your car gives so that it is not quiet) and don't read printed papers.

Now, this time it happened for Trump and we can discuss whether this was or was not a good decision, but the question is who is going to wield the power like that in the future and whether it is even permissible do to something like that.

On one side you have the idea of free speech, but then added to social media you have inevitable disinformation as anybody can get amplified and amount of information is such that it is not possible to verify and vet it.

In the past you would have handful of news-generating organizations and it was easy to spot and call false information. But this is forever gone, there seems to be a need to find out some kind of new equilibrium that will allow detect and filter misinformation without anybody having power to singlehandedly "vanish" people from public life.

You discuss governance, access to voters, wielding of power and free speech but not the meat of my comment: a customer not playing by the rules they agreed to, and the implication that they should be allowed to break the rules they agreed to simply because they're important. An organisation must now allow people to flaunt their rules, helpless to remove them despite the abuse that they perpetrate?

Simple, how about just like a store is not allowed to refuse service, an online platform also not be allowed to refuse service? Is someone misbehaving, great, inform the actual authorities of their jurisdiction.

Actual governments, with the people's mandate, are the only ones with authority to set the laws. Not tech monopolies.

>Simple, how about just like a store is not allowed to refuse service

A store is absolutely allowed to refuse service. You're not allowed to walk in to Costco without a Costco card. Plenty of restaurants and clubs have a dress code. Most places have "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" rules.

> A store is absolutely allowed to refuse service.

No, that is not true for all private services.

For example, common carriers have strong restrictions on their ability to refuse service to others. Common carrier laws aren't particularly controversial.

These existing common carrier laws could be expanded to apply to other things.

Common carriers are a tiny minority of businesses. Plenty of other exception exist too, but they are exceptions. Because the default is that businesses do reserve the right to refuse service.

They are exceptions yes. And people are advocating for additional exceptions to be made and they are giving justification for it.

So you cant just straight up dismiss the idea that we should consider requiring a few more businesses to fall under our existing and uncontroversial laws common carrier laws.

I don't think you can square that circle.

Let's say it's 2024, and the dominant social media platform is called Witted[1]. They have their terms of service, but the terms of service have some ambiguity. In fact, Witted deliberately left some ambiguity, for two reasons. First, you can't absolutely codify human interactions - human communication is too complex. Second, Witted wanted the ambiguity, because it gave Witted more power.

Now President Harris is running for re-election, and she is aware of how much power Witted has. She wants to rein it in. Witted therefore finds some grounds for declaring Harris to be in violation of Witted's terms of service, and kills her account. That leaves the Republican candidate, Romney, a channel to voters that Harris can't adequately respond to. Romney wins the election. (There's talk about Witted being biased, but that resonates less with voters than what Romney can do with a Witted feed that Harris can't answer.)

Now, you say, that shouldn't be allowed to happen. I agree. But how are you going to stop it, without giving the exact same power to someone else? And who are you going to trust with that power? The government? Absolutely not. The EU commission? Equally not. But who?

I assert that there is nobody that you can trust with that power. But the power already exists, and we've just seen it used. Now what do we do? (Preferably before 2024 rolls around...)

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[1] Actually, Witted would be a pretty good name for a social media platform.

Democratize it: put government in charge of that company. (And also campaign finance.)

The power a media company has is derived from its market share, which starts with zero for a startup, and grows with the successful performance of the company.

Similarly, the effect a company has by withdrawing access to its services is proportional to the power it has earned through its performance over time.

Thus, the power and influence a media company has is not arbitrary. it is a function of its social relations i.e. the percentage of society it has converted into customers, patrons, and followers.

To directly address your example - it already exists. One example: Fox News is selective with its choice of guests. Some types of guests get more access than others. The way the system deals with this is to allow other vendors besides Fox to operate competing networks.

Thank you for clarifying the nuances at play. You've given me food for thought.

I think it's easy to say the rules are vague, a statement I agree with. In my understanding of how the big social media players have finally applied their rules against Trump it was for inciting violence and spreading disinformation. I'd suggest the latter is pretty clear-cut, with the former being somewhat more challenging. Trump's tactic of inciting violence while calling for peace is the pinnacle of examples. Even in this case, however, the fact he calls for peace doesn't nullify his call to arms.

In your example however, Harris surely has other wide-ranging channels to spread her message. She would also likely be able to bring a legal case that her alleged breaking of the terms was not the case - but I'm sure this would be decided on much to far down the path to be relevant. The damage would already be done.

Witter would likely already be known to have an axe to grind against Harris or her politics - would she even deign to engage on the platform at all?

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs and/or cherrypicking. It's not my intention to discuss this in bad faith. Just the thought of an organisation not being allowed to apply its rules really does shock me.

I think normal people have enough trouble sifting through the noise.

Having the noise additionally filtered by corporations with potentially strong, unclear interests, being able to arbitrarily decide who can or cannot use their platform is going to make the process of getting at truth impossible.

You are not able to tell what happened because you were not there. Most things that are discussed are things that you did not witness or have no expertise in.

To be able have some chance at telling the truth you need to listen to arguments presented by BOTH sides and decide which arguments you think are logically stronger. That ability to tell truth is compromised when you are not allowed to listen to one of the sides.

I personally believe people should be allowed to say whatever they want and be responsible for what they say according to the law. There are existing laws that can be used to determine whether something is incitement, libel, fraud, etc. and those should be used to prosecute in a court of law.

This rather than preemptively remove the possibility of committing a crime by deciding to block an account by a private company.

>Just the thought of an organisation not being allowed to apply its rules really does shock me.

It shouldn't. Think about this - hierarchically these organizations (companies) exist because of charters authorized by the government. The less your company impacts the greater society to the negative, the less likely you are to be regulated. As your company amasses power, influence, and data, your activities may be regulated by the government as they have a greater impact on how society works.

Your organization is only authorized to exist because of the government. Tomorrow they could remove your leadership, shut it down, or break it up - the only thing that is needed is a plausible justification and reason for social acceptance to overcome resistance.

This is all new territory for the human species, in many ways.

The point is that writing the rules should to a large extent be taken out of these organization's hands, because they control vital infrastructure. The new, regulated rules will probably look pretty similar to the existing ToS except without the "the company is allowed to do whatever it wants" clauses, and with actual appeals processes.

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