> Ok, so that's dangerous enough to suspend, but accounts of literal tyrants and wannabe dictators are just fine?
Tough. That's Twitter (and any other platform) [0]. They are with in their right to suspend who ever they want.
But that's not the actual issue, the real issue is coordinated and targeted bans from 'Big Tech'. These bans will always result in users using alternative platforms and the 'problem' they tried to remove is still there.
Instead of using PayPal, they'll just send Bitcoin to them instead which that is harder to stop. Sure, they can blacklist the address, they'll just create a thousand more wallet addresses.
These bans are becoming pointless. If not, making it even worse.
> Instead of using PayPal, they'll just send Bitcoin to them instead which that is harder to stop
If you have a technologically sophisticated user base who is on board with cryptocurrency, you'll only lose 90% of your payments switching from credit cards to cryptocurrency.
Don't minimize the damage that these bans and actions do merely because there is, in principle, a way to route around the damage. It's still plenty enough to kill off businesses, and anything with network effects that wants to be a platform will end up being stunted before it can take off.
For now. Acting as if there isn't incentive - bankrolled incentive - to escape these bans and establish places where these punishments don't exist is equally foolish. People with massive media followings have the power to single-handedly blow up new networks and content distributors.
> They are with in their right to suspend who ever they want.
I realize this is heresy, but maybe they should not be?
> But that's not the actual issue, the real issue is coordinated and targeted bans from 'Big Tech'. These bans will always result in users using alternative platforms
Good. Please continue the coordinated and targeted bans. Compared to a Twitter that can't ban people, a diverse ecosystem of alternative services is a usable second place.
> Good. Please continue the coordinated and targeted bans. Compared to a Twitter that can't ban people, a diverse ecosystem of alternative services is a usable second place.
So when the Big Tech companies start to coordinate, target and suspend YOUR accounts for 'any reason' that is also good?
The outrage shows that people don't like being banned. Banned people generally tend to be outraged regardless of the circumstances. There's plenty of night clubs, but every person that I've ever seen getting thrown out of one was pretty mad, even if they were completely wasted and tried to get into a fistfight with the bartender. There are real alternatives to existing social media platforms, they're a click away. It's not clear to me at all what coercive power is being exercised here.
Keep in mind that a company having large market share does not imply they hold that position undeservedly. You actually need to show that this is the result of exercising market power, not consumer choice.
You interact with a limited # of people. I don't think it matters if there are 100 million or 1 million (or fewer). You can follow people, monitor your feed, chat with friends. There are enough people on the fediverse that it doesn't feel like you're missing much from twitter besides corporate accounts.
What do you mean by a “left-wing moderation policy”? The naïve interpretation gets nowhere near 99%.
You can get up to 95% if you interpret that as “a moderation policy where spamming slurs at other users isn't looked on kindly” – but if “basic decency” is your definition of “left-wing”, then what's up with your “right-wing”‽
You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. Please don't post any more flamewar comments to HN. The site is overrun with them right now, and we're banning accounts that do it. I'm not going to ban you because you've only been doing it some of the time, not most of the time—but please do it none of the time from now on. The rules apply regardless of wrong other people are and how badly they are behaving.
> Tough. That's Twitter (and any other platform) [0]. They are with in their right to suspend who ever they want.
The article isn't claiming it's illegal for Twitter to do this. They're saying they shouldn't. There are lots of things that people and entities are well within their legal rights to do that we rightfully criticize.
This is such a boring, off-topic argument. No one that you're responding to even argued that Twitter can't lawfully do it. Merely that this is a bad way for them to choose to behave.
If I ask an alcoholic if he really wants to spend his days in a drug induced stupor, a good rebuttal would not be "Well he has every right to do that".
> They are with in their right to suspend who ever they want.
Isn't there a whole argument that if they are allowed to censor / ban, they should not enjoy the freedom of being labelled "publishers"? I don't understand that argument legally speaking, but that is an argument in opposition to this.
Right. If you are allowed to censor and ban, then anything that remains on your platform you've implicitly deemed acceptable and should be accountable for.
Currently in the US you don't lose section 230 protection as a platform by restricting some content. All that matters is who created the content. Curating is not the same as creating.
Some want to change this and it will be interesting to see what happens
Could be interesting to find out to which extent ‘Big Tech’ is complicit in stirring up people.
Assuming the big services are the agents of manipulation usually suggested here.
And assuming blocking accounts will drive some groups to use more neutral services (I absolutely no idea if this is the case, but I imagine censorship resisting services have a more freee software like ethos than profit driven)
It could mean that it could be studied to what extent the platforms shape things in relation to the users them selves.
Also it’s ironic that the same people who cheer for the recent bans are outraged when censorship targets their political beliefs (for instance when LGBT groups are removed from VKontakte). The thing is the wind can, and will probably turn, and one day the people advocating for bans now will be on the other end of the stick.
> ... But that's not the actual issue, the real issue is coordinated and targeted bans from 'Big Tech'. ...
Since this language is divisive and emotionally charged is there any evidence to back this up? Is there direct evidence of active coordination or, per Occam's Razor, was it simply a set of similar reactions in response to the same stimuli?
> These bans will always result in users using alternative platforms
No it won't. There are two app stores of consequence. Google just nuked free speech supporting Parler from their app store for example, trying to force them into ideological censorship compliance.
When aggressive monopolies are doing the censoring in tandem, it's identical to an act of violence by the companies in question as there are not reasonable other channels left. It stops being a matter of a stray private corporation merely controlling how its property is used and becomes a matter for the government to defend the people being assaulted.
Monopolies are always ultimately a matter of force and the sole way to deal with them short-term is to call upon the government to use its legal powers to stop the violent monopolists.
A coup definitely occurred the other day, just not the one the laughable headlines proclaim ('unmasked, unarmed man in buffalo hat and jeans conquers US Government in daring toppling of superpower!'); rather, by big tech over speech. They've all been waiting for this moment of convenience (it's a Patriot Act kind of moment). From here on out they'll unabashedly use their co-monopoly over everything online to dictate speech.
Quick question for everyone on HN: who actually seized power given our present context? The clown in the buffalo hat, or the billion & trillion dollar corporations that control most of the channels of communication? Now that that power move is taken care of some of the interested parties in the government will put the companies to work on more interesting privacy-destroying tasks.
Right, but these tech empires didn't 'seize control' just the other day when Capitol was overrun. They have been slowly ratcheting up control since years. Slowly boiling the frog while providing an ever-increasing dazzling trinkets of technology and convenience to the general public to distract them from festering underlying issues is their tactic.
And they're succeeding all too well, and very much in cahoots with most governments, elected or not. Ultimately decentralisation of power/wealth has never succeeded in human history so far. It's just that in the last century or two, it has reached ridiculous levels of disparity, even though superficially it seems as if ordinary people are more empowered than ever.
Exactly! And what makes it worse is that Silicon Valley is ideologically inclined to the left (and some extreme left). This is largely overlooked but is a pretty important discussion to have. Because moderator decision making is increasingly turning ideological. In India for instance, the ideological divide is quite clear. Twitter regularly bans right wing accounts while keeping left wing accounts active. Accounts like that of TrueIndology have been banned multiple times and resurrected without any proper reasoning provided. It only ended up forcing the account user (who was operating pseudonymously) to instead reveal his identity just so Twitter stopped harassing him.
There should be some regulation to make the moderation team independent of the company. That is probably a good first step in breaking apart these Big Tech giants. Else we should all be ready for balkanization of the internet which is where we are headed. Whether it is a good thing or not only time will tell.
There are two app stores of consequence because Apple and Google have historically been good stewards. If they abuse their position alternatives will turn up. Their position isn't as defensible as it looks if they start taking on serious chunks of their own userbase.
All the manufacturing power is in Asia. The market is wide open for competition if the big players make space for it.
A coup definitely occurred the other day, just not the one the laughable headlines proclaim ('unmasked, unarmed man in buffalo hat and jeans conquers US Government in daring toppling of superpower!');
Don't focus on the clown, keep an eye on the paramilitary folks who showed up with guns and restraints.
Apologies in advance for side tracking the discussion. I came across this post on r/india looking for a volunteer Russian Interpreter for a talk by Alexandra Elbakyan, the founder of Sci-Hub. If anyone is interested, please reach out to the OP of https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/kpl5l4/looking_for_a...
There's probably a scenario where the Indian courts claim that being able to access it whatsoever within the country means they haven't complied with the order (ie. VPN-based access), but this is probably more because it's easier for Legal to hit 'ban account' than do the work of asking engineers to implement geo-based account bans (this is assuming there aren't already geo-based account bans on Twitter; I can't find any reference to one).
AFAIK no Indian court has complained about VPN access to twitter accounts. The parent seems to be right, there seems to be an overreaction by Twitter to an issue under consideration, not even completed. Twitter might have, as you said, just said that it is easier to suspend the account rather than bothering with geo-based blocking.
In this case, the Delhi High Court hasn't even asked Twitter to ban the account. Instead it "rejected" a plea to ban the account. Twitter definitely censored Sci-Hub on its own volition.
Quoting from the article:
"In December, academic publishers Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society filed a suit with the Delhi High Court, asking Indian internet service providers to block Sci-Hub and similar site Libgen. The court rejected the publishers’ requests that the sites be blocked immediately, instead declaring it an “issue of public importance” and allowing time for the scientific community to weigh in."
There are geo based account bans. I have seen a few from India with a message similar to "This account has been withheld in India due to a legal request"
But reading from the article it is at least clear that the Courts "rejected" a request to ban Sci-Hub and instead gave time to the Scientific community to figure out a way forward. I don't see where you get that the Court in India was in favour of banning Sci-Hub.
Quoting:
"In December, academic publishers Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society filed a suit with the Delhi High Court, asking Indian internet service providers to block Sci-Hub and similar site Libgen. The court rejected the publishers’ requests that the sites be blocked immediately, instead declaring it an “issue of public importance” and allowing time for the scientific community to weigh in."
Tough. That's Twitter (and any other platform) [0]. They are with in their right to suspend who ever they want.
But that's not the actual issue, the real issue is coordinated and targeted bans from 'Big Tech'. These bans will always result in users using alternative platforms and the 'problem' they tried to remove is still there.
Instead of using PayPal, they'll just send Bitcoin to them instead which that is harder to stop. Sure, they can blacklist the address, they'll just create a thousand more wallet addresses.
These bans are becoming pointless. If not, making it even worse.
[0] https://www.coindesk.com/blackballed-by-paypal-scientific-pa...