Justice Clarence Thomas suggests US should regulate Twitter and Facebook:
Justice Clarence Thomas suggested on Monday that Congress should consider whether laws should be updated to better regulate social media platforms that, he said, have come to have "unbridled control" over "unprecedented" amounts of speech.
The provocative and controversial opinion comes as Twitter banned former President Donald Trump from its platform for violating its rules on incitement of violence and some conservatives have called on more regulations in the tech world to combat what they view as political bias on social media.
"If part of the problem is private, concentrated control over online content and platforms available to the public, then part of the solution may be found in doctrines that limit the right of a private company to exclude, " Thomas wrote in a 12-page concurring opinion Monday.
Thomas's stance will raise concerns from critics who point out that social media platforms have not historically been subject to such content regulation, but instead have been left to devise their policies on their own.
[...] Today's digital platforms, Thomas argued, "provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech," but he said it also concentrates control "of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties."
[...] "The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions," he added.
[...] The conservative justice said that the court will soon have "no choice" but to address how legal doctrines apply to "privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms."
Katie Fallow, a First Amendment expert at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said that the group actually shares Thomas concern about the power over speech being concentrated in the hands of so few. "But we think that concentrating that same power in the hands of government regulators will not necessarily solve the problems associated with social media companies." Instead, she worried it might exacerbate the issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:50AM (12 children)
Power over free speech should be outsourced to the cheapest bidder.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:53AM (6 children)
President Joe wants to tax free speech, so he can spend more money for research into new tax sources.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:06AM (4 children)
Republicans are overtly threatening companies from their free speech all while they cry about "cancel culture." Go noodle that, genius.
They are threatening them with laws, which is a real First Amendment violation. The turtle who has loudly and proudly championed free speech (and unrestricted and secret campaign donations) is now saying that companies need to watch what they say or they'll be in trouble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @07:33AM (1 child)
Yeah because a corporation should have same rights as citizens right?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:30PM
The moment you can't choose to stop paying a business you don't like is the moment you're gonna go "woops, that was a freedom I lost." Good luck blaming Biden after that.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Revek on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:18PM
You can always tell what they are going to do by what they accuse their opponents of doing.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:20PM
that's because they are both on the same side. the side that wants to censor and completely control americans/people of the world. they just use different ruses to get there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:20AM
This isn't a partisan issue. This is a civil rights issue. Stop alienating your fellow man over which geriatric you (or they) picked for emperor. You're playing into the hands of those who would see us torn into powerless atoms to cement themselves as rulers. Don't expect noblesse oblige when they're done painting you for the fool you are.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:46AM (4 children)
Or, bear with me here, people can choose to use different platforms. Facebook, Twitter and Google restricting your speech? Publish somewhere else! What we must do is safeguard our ability to self-publish, prevent authoritarians from violating our constitutional rights.
I can imagine some legislation to regulate social media companies that would not violate the constitution, but it is a tricky proposition.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:52PM (3 children)
This has its own subset of issues. Hypothetically, the more removed a platform becomes the smaller the sample of the population and thus the higher the probability for biases. What you end up with in short is echochambers, which is an issue of no small magnitude itself. Additionally, you have smaller counts of bona fide professionals interacting and elucidating the crowd on the finer nuances of special-topic X; even removing the bar of professionality, you're also reducing the general count of the well studied in all topics which couldn't necessarily be described as "professional". One outcome I can imagine emerging from such a confounded rot is the election of de facto leaders, and further unification of thought. In itself not a bad thing, but it's quite probable that without the challenge of argumentative assertion from the wider spectrum a person could conceivably enchant themselves, and thus their supplicants with a degree of delusion. And I'm under the impression this is precisely what happened with the Parler incident, but I won't lie: my knowledge of the whole debacle is limited to a small handful of very public incidents. If that is so, it indicates to me that deplatforming has a net-negative effect of creating the very same circumstances described above.
What we have to engage with is the power-law distributions that occur naturally. We're not working in a vacuum. We're working with humans. There is a winner-take-all effect, and the winners in this case require regulation or there's a good chance that ideological conflicts will multiply a thousandfold as a product of pseudo-anonymity, walled gardens, and unchallenged delusion. Not to mention the serious implications that further isolating the individual, as in political atomization and the helplessness it induces as described a la Chomsky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:37PM (2 children)
People are free to associate with whomever they'd like, and no one is guaranteed a platform. Myspace disappeared when people left, just don't participate and keep spreading the word to your friends and family about how these mega platforms abuse them. Anything else is likely to be authoritarian bullshit, so any regulations applied must prioritize protecting constitutional rights.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @06:27AM (1 child)
You completely skated the issue. It's about having the largest intersecting surfaces. The more communities intersect, the faster the shit ones get stomped out. When you deliberately eliminate one from a platform, it just creates a new environment with a much higher probability of radicalization. In one hand that's good, I mean, that's kinda how the US emerged. This isn't the late 18th century, the workings are far more abstract in basically every capacity, which means information itself is more complicated, and can be used to construct fallacious narratives. If you have 3b twatters ejecting, you've got a much higher probability of finding a ground truth or resolution. That requires open platforms, period. Not to mention your "solution" solves nothing, it just moves the winner around. I agree with your assessment of the hazards though, regulation is hardly a sufficient means. Really, all that needs to be done is "don't deplatform anything that doesn't tangibly threaten direct harm or what have you" and we've eliminated the whole of the issue, except maybe advertisers don't want associated with certain groups, so maybe a cute little subsidy package, or tell them to get over it - this is America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @06:27PM
Obviously false or the propaganda campaigns done over social media would have failed. You are simply pushing the paradox of tolerance, intentionally or not. Freedom of association is VERY American, though I am open to regulating any communications platforms like we did to Ma Bell. Better be careful, your desired authoritarian approach to web services just might impact places like SoylentNews in ways you may not like.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:53AM
Regulate ISP first.
Then you can think about regulating SNS.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:56AM (19 children)
Good summation, Katie. The First Amendment was created so that there would not be super powerful gatekeepers on speech. Yes, it only applies to government. Yes, they should have considered that there could wind up being other gatekeepers with far more power than is viable for a free society. No, SCOTUS has no business allowing the government to regulate the power these companies hold by judicial ruling. Yes, Congress does have the authority (and it looks increasingly like they also have the necessity) to do so but only with extremely careful deliberation, only as invasively as absolutely necessary, and only via Constitutional Amendment.
Did I miss anything?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:00AM (18 children)
You think Fuckbook/twatters are the gatekeepers?
Hell no. It's AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. that are the REAL gatekeepers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:18AM (10 children)
Yeah, totally. Sprint is always cutting my phone service off because I said something woke-prohibited in a text message. Fucking retard.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:29AM
About time they cracked down on your inciteful posts, Buzzrard. Think of it as a "reverse aristarchus"!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:00AM (4 children)
They will if the government tells them to. Regulation of service provision is infinitely more important than regulating entertainment providers, which is all facebook et al are, and we always have another channel to tune in. It's no big deal if facebook cuts you off, but it sure is if your ISP does. They must be classified as common carrier utilities. Leave facebook alone.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:33AM (3 children)
Not just no but hell no. Any calls for telecom regulation right now are being driven as a long term plan to demand crackdowns on those the woke do not approve of. The government needs to stay the fuck out unless abuse of that type actually starts happening.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:48AM (2 children)
Wrong again. There is plenty of abuse. Common carrier (dumb pipe) status is absolutely necessary, symmetrical download/upload, no redirection, no exclusive contracts, the right to muni/state supplied service to compete, etc. We have to open the market, ignore the lobbyists. The government needs to stay the fuck out of Facebook and Twitter and all other content providers. They are cartoon channels
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:09AM (1 child)
Pointing fingers at those who aren't blatantly fucking the American people to take the focus off the ones who actively are? Really? How much are they paying you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:48AM
But they are. Can you put up your own server? If you are consuming the same bandwidth, they shouldn't tell you what you can put on it. Bandwidth is bandwidth. That's the only thing they should be allowed to regulate, not the content. Indeed, your ISP is doing all the fucking, using facebook as its big wooden pecker. You are wagging the dog
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:27AM
How much are you paying Facebook and Twitter to publish your filthy, pseudo-libertarian, and sleepy text messages anyway?
The only reason Sprint carries your shit is because you're the customer in that relationship.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:36AM (2 children)
Listen, you lame buffoon, is your IQ still high enough to see a difference between the gatekeeper and the lord of the manor?
Let me spell it for you. If the lord of the manor throws you in jail because you said something woke-prohibited in a text message, the gatekeeper will only make sure the door to your cell is securely closed.
Now, identify the lord of the manor, your beef is with him. Hint - this wannabe [usnews.com] is not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:01PM
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:34AM
Except telecom companies are not doing that while the major speech centers are.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 07 2021, @07:20AM (6 children)
AT&T etc are relatively "dumb pipes". Fakebook/Tweeter etc consists of "influencers" who feel it is their right, and their duty, to reeducate everyone who doesn't agree with them.
What TMB said, too.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:04AM (5 children)
They have you as paying customer (and still fuck you).
Those have you (the influenced) and the "influencers" as merchandise.
You have no say over the price and conditions they sell you for.
And it is true because that's what the majority of the "market" wants. If their opinions wouldn't not attract more eyeballs and approval, Fakebook/Tweeter etc would drop them immediately.
You and TMB are second hand merchandise, no matter how much you foam at the mouth or how many times your side storms the Capitol.
Better get used to it, the market has spoken.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @08:38PM (1 child)
You wouldn't need to engage in widescale censorship, overt lies, and suppression if you were just appealing to the trends of a functioning society. Twitter is run by ideologues who have the support of just about nobody in the instances where they inadvertently let their views [forbes.com] slip out into public. As an aside, Dick Costello is now on the board of Patreon - big surprise, right?
And beyond this America now seems to be falling into increasingly rapid decline, and these companies are all contributing in substantial ways - often at their own expense. So clearly they are not driven by rational self interest, which does rather beg the question of what are they driven by? And there? I have no answer. They seem to be behaving in a way that makes no real sense for the pursuit of *any* agenda that I can fathom, whether benevolent or malevolent. Why work to destroy a system you're already effectively on top of (and that enable your rags to riches rise)? Why destroy your own business when such will result in the decline of your own influence? If all makes no sense whatsoever. If I really force myself to seek a hypothesis, maybe it's something as silly as them having done far too many drugs since achieving success leaving themselves still operably functioning but with severely impaired abstract reasoning abilities.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:54PM
You're wrong on this one. They are doing it because the rest of the worlds asks them to. You know? Europe and India alone will make an about 5 times larger market than the weird US.
Don't believe me? For example, have a look on the hate speech legislation [wikipedia.org] around the world, most of which predates the Social Media, with specific recent additions for it (2015-2019). On that list, US is the only one that stick out as a sore thumb.
Let me repeat it as a convenient reminder: "Better get used to it, the market has spoken".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @09:00PM (2 children)
Actually quite amusing. You made me go search a bit for this and something I never noticed - during Dorsey's meeting with congress, his pupils were *extremely* contracted. Here [youtu.be] is a moment where you can see them clearly. For comparison here [wikipedia.org] is the pic on his wiki page. It's called miosis. It's caused by a number of drugs including numerous opioids (fentanyl, morphine, heroin, etc). Though even beyond that photo contrasted with how he looks in the video are increasingly looking like a before and after shot of "Kids, this is why you don't do drugs."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 09 2021, @02:58PM (1 child)
Have you considered the possibility of a significant amount of "studio lights" placed out of sight of the cameras, to provide sufficient light intensity to produce a clean low-noise video recording?
The illumination level needed for a clean low-noise video is going to be more than bright enough to cause significant pupil contraction (i.e., it would be like being outside in Arizona at high noon on a cloudless day).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 09 2021, @09:48PM
No one goes outside in Arizona on a cloudless day. Maybe lizard people . . .
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:34AM (2 children)
If a corporation is a ‘person’ with equal rights to a natural person, then, it follows that they don’t have to allow anyone on their platform they don’t like. You have free speech but I don’t have to allow you to put a banner in my front yard saying something I don’t like.
So I really find it repulsive that corporations have “free speech rights” [wikipedia.org] but when they exercise their right not to associate with someone else’s speech (which is part of “free speech”) they cry censorship.
McConnell today saying it is “ ‘Stupid’ for corporations to speak out on politics“ [thehill.com] is repulsive, so long as the “free speech” is campaign contributions, it is fine; if it is against voter suppression, it’s ‘stupid’.
I don’t have FB, twitter or any other social media; I hate those companies and I really believe they should be regulated, but I would start by stopping campaign contributions from corporations, because that is a cancer that eats democracy. After that, we can perhaps have honest representatives to deal with the social media and other corporations out to make slaves out of all us.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:36AM (1 child)
Jesus fucking Christ, Read The Fucking Story even if you're not going to Read The Fucking Article. Or were you intentionally trying to strawman there?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @06:29PM
It is tangential and very relevant you Model T dipstick.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:49AM (10 children)
As far as I can tell, what Thomas is really suggesting is that when a platform becomes central to broad communications, excluding people affects civil liberties in a way analogous to restaurants excluding people - it becomes a civil rights problem.
So we return to the age-old question of whether freedom of (dis)-association was worth all those segregated lunch counters. And if not, how does this play with access to computing services?
Conversely, if the problem is that all the platforms are so big that they're holding a gatekeeping power analogous to that of government, perhaps antitrust, rather than civil rights, would be the place to start (but I didn't see Thomas mentioning that).
(Score: 5, Informative) by Socrastotle on Wednesday April 07 2021, @04:27AM (9 children)
He's referencing, without citing a number of cases, with Marsh vs Alabama [cornell.edu] likely being the most overt.
In short a guy wanted to distributed pamphlets on privately owned property. But the privately owned property had opened itself up largely to the public - a "company town". The land owners said 'Go away. We don't want people handing out pamphlets.' Guy refused and was arrested for trespass. Case went to the Supreme Court, and his conviction was overturned. The court ruled that "The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it." Pretty crystal clear comparison to today. A company that oversees the speech of literally about a third of the our entire species' ability to communicate with one another has become rather more public than private.
Some simple solutions that would have minimal directly negative consequences would be getting ride of social media data centralization and requiring companies to use open protocols once they reach a certain size. So for instance each and every post (sans those removed for law violation, and not TOS violation) that is made on Facebook becomes openly, and freely, available (without throttling) and can be accessed via API. If you want to make a "Freebook" where nothing is banned and all comments on Facebook are a subset of all comments on your site, then you'd be free to.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:59AM (8 children)
Aaaand here you hit the limits of your analogy with the Marsh vs Alabama.
Distributing pamphlets brought no direct cost to the land owners, so their "because I don't fucking like it" argument can be easily dismissed.
In contrast, calling an API to scrap the Facebook pages and make them a subset of "Freebook" comes with the bandwidth, CPU, RAM cost for Facebook - demanding them to work for nothing is servitude at best and slavery at worst.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of Freebook, but it will necessary be a P2P architecture, in which the willful participants carry the (shared) responsibility for the costs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:16PM (3 children)
So are you against all regulations? Never struck me as a hardcore libertarian type.
The not-quite-strawman there is referencing the fact that all regulations come with costs. What I'm talking about here for the entities that it would affect would have a cost of effectively zero relative to their scale - and scale being critical since the main thing we're talking about is how an entity serving 3 billion is rather different than one serving a a more "reasonable" amount. The computing cost for Facebook to server an additional copy-on-demand of whatever content is going to be a tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a single percent of their netcome. Even more so because it is by all definition 100% static data.
If you look at basically any regulation in existence on smaller entities, you're going to see what would be a dramatically larger regulatory cost for often far less clear gain - than what I am proposing here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:43PM
This would easily fall under the umbrella of digital privacy laws.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 08 2021, @12:15AM (1 child)
True... until such a moment it is no longer true.
Up to you to demonstrate that "a cost of effectively zero relative to their scale" is maintained no matter how the market outside them evolve. Especially when you operate under the assumption of a Freebook entity for which the Facebook data is just a subset.
Before raiding your stock of straw, I suggest it's better to state your assumptions and check them - an exercise of extrapolating your argument beyond those assumption will be a wise thing too.
Strawman with a whiff of "attack to person" which doesn't even get used in the argumentation. Are you sure you needed it?
Taking it at face value, as a question: no, I'm not against regulations. I'm just against simple, neat and wrong solutions to complex problems.
And I used that as an example to put into evidence the "cost" factor, which will need to be addressed in the design for a better solution (other factors to be considered may exist).
Because "externalizing the cost and plundering the benefits" is wrong no matter if it used by greedy capitalists, authoritarian commies or anyone in between the two extremes. Reality imposes consequences, you don't get free card in the responsibility matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Thursday April 08 2021, @03:57PM
I think you are misunderstanding the scale. Each and every message on Facebook is delivered to a multitude of other individuals through a wide array of methods, largely based on dynamic analysis factoring in whatever motives Facebook has at the moment as well.
This suggestion has a worst case scenario of a *static* delivery of *n* additional messages, where *n* is the number of services genuinely reposting content posted to Facebook. Simple laws could require content grabbed be used only when actively posted, and no content may be requested (by the same actor) more than once. The scale of this, even when huge, is completely negligible to the normal day-to-day business of Facebook - or any company that such a regulation could affect.
And you misunderstood my comment. I know you do not oppose all regulations. It was rhetorical, emphasizing that probably did not consider the implications of your own statement. You are, I would assume, ideologically opposed to this idea - and so you need to formulate some reason for that opposition ad hoc. Many people do this and it just as often ends up resulting in the same scenario of where the new improvo rationale ends up undermining their own other more thoughtfully considered views and values.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:40AM (3 children)
Nope. P2P simply isn't viable for social media. And don't quote me links to the failing projects that've tried it, please. They found out it wasn't viable, and why, which is a large part of why they've failed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 08 2021, @03:34AM (2 children)
Network effect, yes.
Otherwise, as technical approach, there's nothing wrong - large adhoc communities of pirates using torrent/magnets proves it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:15AM (1 child)
Erm, no, the technical reasons are the primary ones. And your example is an excellent demonstration of why. You get one of two choices with P2P:
A) You can use up a fuckton of everyone's drive space for massive redundancy.
B) You can live with the fact that a whole lot of your network's content will not be available from even one source at any given time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:35AM
Given that any average person keeps acquaintance-or-closer level of relations with max 1000 persons (Dunbar number is 150 for close, stable relations), the cached/redundancy of storage space for availability is in the affordable area for the average consumer of the social media: $250 for a 2TB SSD comes with a minimum of 2GB of cache/relation for a very well connected socialite.
Yes, that means a PC at home rather than in intermittent on-off tablet, a SoC (RasPi) with external storage will do.
The unwillingness of the Joe Average consumer to spend $300 for the setup makes the network effect act against the solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:37AM (12 children)
'Nuff said. Mr. Thomas ... if the problem was "concentrated control" why did Trump use Twitter to concentrate it?
Trump already had whitehouse.gov.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Wednesday April 07 2021, @04:36AM (1 child)
Network effect [wikipedia.org]. It's the reason any of this is even an issue.
Had Trump relied on WhiteHouse.gov he'd probably have been able to express himself to a [relatively speaking] handful of deeply committed supporters. By speaking on a more public platform he's able to engage with a much wider audience. Same reason that works for a business of 3 people doesn't necessarily work for a business of 3 million people, let alone 3 billion.
It's also the same reason that you could create a website that literally every single person on Facebook agrees is objectively better in every single way, yet manage to attract basically nobody. They won't come to your site until "everybody else" comes to your site. And "everybody else" won't come, until they do. So nobody comes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:39PM
In simpler terms: I've heard various right-wingers bitching about their inability to speak to the public ... on TV. This wasn't the White House trying to reach the people this was about an attention-starved man.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:34AM (9 children)
Why rob a bank? Because that's where the money is. He used Twitter because that's where his audience is, and it garnered him thousands of hours of free airtime on all the other mass media with no extra effort on his part.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:45PM (7 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @04:46PM (5 children)
Doesn't matter what he used it for. It was still most effective. People couldn't wait to see what he would say next. He was a shock jock prez and the people made him the true king of all media.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:06PM (4 children)
Heh. Yes it does. The POTUS has never had trouble before reaching the nation, so for Twitter to become a big part of it what it's actually used for matters. If it's all about the candidate, then no, the network effect does not matter. If it's about serving the public then you've got a point I have no immediate issue with. The guy we're talking about insisted on using his personal account so much it raised legal/procedural concerns, like blocking ppl.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:18PM (3 children)
You're barking up a tree without a paddle. The only thing that matters is that what he is doing works. He monopolizes the entirety of mass media, Twitter, TV, the papers, all of it. And it's still working [thedailybeast.com]. Let's not dwell on distractions.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:49PM (2 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:02PM (1 child)
They don't care about the voters. They care about payables and receivables. Only the voters can care about the voters. It's up to them to vote for people that do the same.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:25PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:41AM
And talk shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:49PM
Sure, I get that. But if so, don't complain if the bank guards escort you out.
(Score: 1, Informative) by crafoo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @07:54AM (5 children)
Your speech is going to be more restricted, not less. Your speech is going to be more heavily monitored, not less. Your ability to make a living and your ability to enter into commercial contracts will be contingent on what I ideas you express and how well you police the speech of your fellow citizens.
P.S. Cancel Culture is the polite euphemism the Progressive Death Cult members use in place of punishment of political dissent. No ideas are tolerated besides the dictates of The Death Cult.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @10:10AM
And I hear thought it was a favorite tool of the cons.... like you know, McConnel cancelling Obama's right to appoint judges and the entire drama with cancelling Affordable Care Act (ie. Obama Care). And the entire obsession with cancelling women's control over their own bodies or for that matter cancelling anyone's ability to control their own bodies.
Give respect where it's due. Cancel Culture has been the death march of the Republicans towards fascism for a generation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:11AM
Heaps of assertions and invectives, yet no argument was made. Redundant is the closest mod to classify this vacuousness.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:49AM (1 child)
If you don't want your face eaten by leopards, quit voting for the Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party. I know, I know, you're mad because the leopards are eating the wrong peoples' faces, right? But it's just their nature. We warned you...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:29PM
The ones not voting for the Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party amounted to a little over 1%, in fact we lost ground during the last season. The Party machine is well oiled and running smoothly. Coffers are full, mass hysteria is high, win/win...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:25PM
it is a race to see if FOSS p2p software (for everything) can get created and distributed to the masses before these scum can con dumb slaves into giving all human freedom up.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:52AM
...Thomas appears to be the last of the late Antonin Scalia's Horcruxes, meaning that when he dies we will finally be rid of them both. It is a good possibility that colon cancer will claim him, both 1) because he is a gigantic asshole and 2) every time they try and do a colonoscopy the entire image is taken up by Scalia's ghostly ectoplasmic hand twisting allllllll the way up his ass and tugging on his vocal cords and brainstem like some overweight, senile old flesh puppet.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:35PM (5 children)
Dying organizations go left. Cause and effect unclear in individual situations, but the downward slope of an org is always packed with the most abhorrently toxic Judaism. Naturally that "type" is going to be in conflict with everyone and historically led to pogroms and such. They just can't get along.
FB and other social media makes a lot of money off advertising so they have a motivation to ... juice their numbers a bit. So using made up numbers "everything is great", for awhile.
Now if my theory is true, then google stories about facebook decline in use should exist. Seems they do. Appears legacy social media is nearly dead to young users "The number of young Facebook users (age between 12 to 34) rapidly declined by almost 20% in 2 years (Edison Research, 2019)" and so on and so forth.
Eventually these situations always seem to turn into a SEC investigation where corporations complain they were falsely sold advertising that was seen and clicked on 99% of the time by bots and the 10-Q and related reports are not correctly reporting the financial situation.
So if legacy social media is a dead toxic Judaic ghetto of infinite Israeli propaganda, where are the kids going now? My guess is mass media may finally be dead, and good riddance?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:48PM (1 child)
When you go right and start saying things like certain groups of people are bad, businesses that follow that path watch their customer bases shrink. That affects voting, too. ;)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:44AM
Except it's the progressives saying that nowadays. That's not something you hear from the right much unless you call criminals a group we shouldn't be saying are bad.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 07 2021, @05:33PM
At Albuquerque, right? No, left!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:48PM (1 child)
Defying your predictions? All of history =)
We know you're a racist piece of shit, trying to whine and pretend you're part of the superior majority is quite entertaining. Then I remember that you idjits get all violent and murdery when you don't get your way, kinda ruins the fun =( Isn't murder like one of those things you're told not to do by the book of goodness? Don't murder brah, its not good brah.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @07:14AM
The snowflakes are triggered by racist dirtbags around here getting called out. Feel free to peruse VLM's comment history, he's gotten a little less overt since the US chose not-fascist-racism for leadership, like the true coward every racist dipshit is.
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday April 09 2021, @12:05AM
Didn't they rule that Trump's twitter feed was a public forum and that he cannot ban anyone from it? Seems odd that twitter can ban people from Trump on a public forum, but not Trump himself. Rules for thee not for me type thing going on here.
PS: I can't believe the soft bigotry of low expectation about Clarence Thomas in this thread. Yeah, that black guy is just parroting the white folk since he's incapable of thinking for himself. Yeah. Get fucked racists.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday April 11 2021, @07:33PM
Facebook's has algorithms that decide what to show each user.
The current algorithms are designed to promote clicks, giving opportunities to show ads.
As a side effect, they appear to promote false news, create silos, and promote extremism and divisiveness.
The problem isn't that they use algorithms. They *have* to use some kimd of algorithm necaues they cannot show you everything.
They could however, use different algorithms.
There are algorithms that appear to produce reasoned discussion leading to consensus instead of vitriol.
For example, Polis:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/01/12/0334241 [soylentnews.org]
https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/11/05/Taiwan-Crowdsourcing-Everyone-Wins-Democracy/ [thetyee.ca]
https://participedia.net/method/4682 [participedia.net]
https://pol.is/home [pol.is]
No doubt if Facebook wanted to, they could improve on this technology without doing very much censorship at all.
-- hendrik