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from the is-a-Trump-tweet-called-a-Treet? dept.
You were warned. Now it begins.
Since the implementation of Twitter's new algorithmic timeline back in February of this year, conservatives, libertarians and anti-establishment dissidents alike have been waiting for the social media platform to interfere in the current U.S. election cycle. Now it seems that there is clear evidence of Twitter censoring the current Republican front-runner, Donald Trump.
A tweet sent from Trump's account at 3:04 PM EDT yesterday is not visible from his timeline, even when showing "Tweets and replies." That message included a video wherein Trump declared that "the establishment and special interests are absolutely killing our country."At the time of this writing, the tweet is still publicly accessible via a direct link and thus has not been deleted either by Twitter or by someone operating on the Trump account.
This archive.is link has a copy of the timeline taken before this article was published which clearly shows the tweet not appearing where it should be — between a tweet sent at 12:10 PM EDT and one sent at 3:27 PM EDT; it is possible that the tweet may be reintroduced to the timeline in order to hide the manipulation.
Today it's one Trump tweet, tomorrow it will be you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday April 27 2016, @12:57PM
Like it or not, they can decide whether or not to show a tweet.
As long as they're willing to pay the staggering legal consequences.
Kids like to think they invented sex and drugs and electronically mediated communication and censorship, however this was all figured out about a century ago with telegrams and early telephones.
If you perform no editorial control you're a common carrier and have no liability for anyones message. Think Ma Bell or the US postal service.
The minute you perform editorial control, you're 100% legally liable for anything anyone ever says on your service. Every craigslist scammer who you should have edited, every crime, every conspiracy, every insider trade, every spam, every illegal pr0n image (like of kids or celebrities). Think of your local TV station or newspaper.
Twitter is playing with fire, assuming its not just an accident. Go ahead twitter, play with those matches, what could possibly go wrong?
This BTW is the "right" way to shut down censorship. All this esoteric talk about freedom and ethics means nothing to a corporation. Being named in zillions of lawsuits and criminal cases as a willing conspirator who's editors permitted illegal or at least legally actionable traffic, that'll get their attention.
(Score: 2) by danmars on Wednesday April 27 2016, @02:58PM
Sorry, but CDA section 230 says you're completely wrong.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160208/00235033544/20-years-ago-today-most-important-law-internet-was-signed-almost-accident.shtml [techdirt.com]
"A key, and often overlooked, part of Section 230, is that it actually does encourage sites to take proactive measures to filter content, by noting that any kind of moderation or guidelines absolutely does not remove the protections of Section 230. As such, sites get to decide for themselves whether or not to moderate their content in any way, without facing the legal risk of suddenly being declared the publisher."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 27 2016, @03:33PM
It'll get fixed soon enough. Like I wrote, this was all figured out a century ago and is nothing new. Its the same arguments just different tech.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday April 27 2016, @10:55PM
Dear God will this idiotic wingnut "common carrier" bullshit zombie myth please DIE DIE DIE!!!
Twitter is NOT a common carrier, and common carrier status has zero to do with liability for users' actions -- and it never has. Internet message boards and the like are protected by the CDA as stated by sibling poster and by the DMCA's safe harbor provision. Neither of those laws say that you lose protection if you censor or filter. YouTube for instance does a lot of stuff not required by the DMCA to police copyright infringements. It doesn't lose safe harbor for doing that, not would it make any policy sense to pass a law saying it would.
This asinine nonsense is the result of a bunch of Slashdotters repeating each other's misinformation ad infinitum. Look up the actual laws or at least use real sources of information before repeating other people's stupid, pleasekthx.