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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

You have an oddly efficient view of "government agency sues $company for doing obviously horrible thing." These lawsuits drag on for ages, become huge political battles, and are a just a huge expenditure of resources for everyone involved that it's saved as a last resort.

I don't think you would like living in a world where things like this could be settled swiftly and decisively. Having a government where voluntary compliance is the expected norm and applying real force takes time and resources is a feature not a bug.

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Why should people and corporations voluntarily comply with stupid laws which limit freedom of expression? It would be better if everyone drags things out to the extent that those laws become unenforceable. In general, given that the EU itself is so fundamentally flawed, anything that undermines the power of EU bureaucrats and wastes their time is probably a net positive.

You just need to look at Twitter's downward slope towards the misinformation abyss to recognize the expected results of unmoderated expression. Bad actors take advantage of this freedom to drive up clicks with little regard for accuracy or nefarious side effects. If that only affects the platform, it requires no action from government: let Twitter circle the drain onto oblivion. If negative externalities affect society as a whole, intervention is required.

In short: freedom of expression isn't an absolute right. The EU is correct, blatantly false posts should be suppressed. Twitter should have a moderation team, twitter MUST have someone answer take-down requests.

Nah, I don't need to look at anything. I see little or no misinformation in my feed. If you see a lot then you're probably using it wrong.

Freedom of expression isn't absolute, but should be close to it. The EU (or constituent national governments) should adopt the US Constitution's Bill of Rights. We have an existence proof that it works better than whatever unprincipled, haphazard policies they happen to pursue.

> We have an existence proof that it works better than whatever unprincipled, haphazard policies they happen to pursue.

Do we have such an existence proof?

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/almo...

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/covid...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tucker-carlsons-scorn-...

You have just provided links. That is not an argument.

Neither is the naked assertion "We have an existence proof." Especially in the context of a 250-year-old country stacked up against thousands-of-years-old countries.

Which countries specifically? Iceland? The USA has pretty much the oldest continuous government of any major country.

England has a monarchy going back thousands of years. Meanwhile, I think it remains to be seen if the younger governments failed to learn the right lessons from the US or have learned from the US's mistakes.

We shall see. Probably on the next quarter century, given how precarious the political situation is in the US right now.

> Nah, I don't need to look at anything.

This is not indicative of an open and inquisitive mentality.

> I see little or no misinformation in my feed. If you see a lot then you're probably using it wrong.

Another possibility is that you are experiencing confirmation bias.

However, I'll bite. What is the correct way to use twitter?

I don't need to look at anything because I already see my feed every day. There's no confirmation bias involved.

The correct way to use X is to follow high-quality accounts and like their posts. Mute or block low-quality accounts (including those reposted by accounts you do follow). Never read the replies as they are almost entirely junk.

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