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Comment by tosc | Hacker News Reader

So every troll and bot farm should be able to have each tweet judged by a jury?

Definitely not.

I'm more looking for a gesture towards respecting our values, and a more open negotiation process for developing safe use for this kind of powerful control system. The fact that the administrators of the process on the twitter side were quite polarized politically makes people doubt its fairness, as does the fact that it was mostly done in secret.

i.e. it was more of a China-style "the state doesn't like you and bad things will happen to you and your family" style of punishment where you don't know what has actually happened (limitation of tweet reach, weird glitches in your tweet's spread with no acknowledgement) than a clear "you are charged with X and have received this penalty Y for time Z."

Why not just stop using Twitter? Who cares whether the FBI has its thumb on the scales or if it’s Elon Musk and his friends?

“The world’s digital town square” is a marketing slogan, and nothing more. If you instead accept that is simply just another way to sell eyeballs to advertisers, it’s easier to understand.

If we do need a digital town square, someone needs to build one. If it needs to have free speech protections, then the government needs to run it because they are the only ones who are restrained by the 2nd amendment.

How about we settle for at least some decent evidence of wrongdoing before eradication by the three letter agency army?

The examples given in these leaks showcase accounts getting banned simply for the opinion they hold, LACKING any other indicators like account origin, IP logins, email domain registration, etc.

Would a tag that says "USINT suspects this post/account may be part of a foreign intelligence/disinfo campaign" be a good compromise?

I'm not arrogant enough (surprisingly) to think I am not vulnerable to disinformation and yet I'm also uncomfortable with unilateral censorship.

No. Bring it to court, like literally every other case of law enforcement action.

I'm not going to touch bot farm, but the problem with labeling someone a troll and thus is that is subjective and not clearly defined. There's a level of intent behind being a troll vs being thought of as a troll.

Here, in the USA, we do have the right to freedoms of speech, press and association. These freedoms cannot be encroached on by the government without due process, and yes, that means it would need to go in front of a jury. It's on the government to prove that a law was broken before they can intervene with otherwise lawful speech. It's not up to a government bureaucrat to decide.

Just because you disagree with someone does not a troll make.

My problem with modern discourse is we've lost the ability to disagree with people without resorting to labeling and name calling. And that we think we need the government to protect us from things we may find distasteful or offensive. Because matters of taste are individual and subjective.

Ok, this is fine, but that means we have to classify Twitter as press, with all of the responsibilities as a publisher that this entails.

There is no such thing as a "press" classification in the US with respect to the first amendment. The press has the same rights as everyone else.

Right, but there is an exception for carriers such as Twitter from being treated as publishers, responsible for the material they distribute and monetize from their website.

They aren’t treated like press, but they need to be.

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