Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub(sciencemag.org)
sciencemag.org
Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/twitter-shuts-down-account-sci-hub-pirated-papers-website
333 comments
Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between Elbakyan and Elsevier et al. Few people would have issues if Twitter shut down the Sci-Hub account after they received a valid court order, but a private monopolist cannot be trusted to be the arbiter of what is permitted speech.
These massive websites/broadcast SMS cannot have it both ways.
They cannot seek the protections of being "critical infrastructure" of any sort, common carrier, public forum, etc. and then, at the same time, disable user accounts for any reason just like any other private website.
They have to pick one or the other. The arguments I am seeing online are folks who have chosen one or the other and are arguing from their chosen perspective. For example, I am content to see them as just another handful of private websites, no matter how large they have become.
Meanwhile, the companies themselves, like Twitter, are content to bask in this ambiguity instead of clarifying what they are or intend to be.
EDIT:
Once the number of users has grown past a manageable threshhold where violations of rules can be detected by administrators (instead of relying on others to report them), it may cause some to wonder what are the reasons absent any legal or other compusion when a user's account is suspended.
Looking at the Twitter rules, the possible reasons this account may have been suspended, e.g., copyright violations, are not obvious. What is their justifcation for suspension. Some sources, e.g., The Verge, are reporting that this Twitter account was being used to solicit statements of support from academics to be used in some litigation in India that seeks to block access Sci-Hub in that country. Apparently the Indian court denied the initial request from publishers for an immediate decision in order to allow time for the scientific community to weigh in on the issue.
I hope someone is setting up another means for the scientific community to weigh in on the non-monetary value of Sci-Hub.
They cannot seek the protections of being "critical infrastructure" of any sort, common carrier, public forum, etc. and then, at the same time, disable user accounts for any reason just like any other private website.
They have to pick one or the other. The arguments I am seeing online are folks who have chosen one or the other and are arguing from their chosen perspective. For example, I am content to see them as just another handful of private websites, no matter how large they have become.
Meanwhile, the companies themselves, like Twitter, are content to bask in this ambiguity instead of clarifying what they are or intend to be.
EDIT:
Once the number of users has grown past a manageable threshhold where violations of rules can be detected by administrators (instead of relying on others to report them), it may cause some to wonder what are the reasons absent any legal or other compusion when a user's account is suspended.
Looking at the Twitter rules, the possible reasons this account may have been suspended, e.g., copyright violations, are not obvious. What is their justifcation for suspension. Some sources, e.g., The Verge, are reporting that this Twitter account was being used to solicit statements of support from academics to be used in some litigation in India that seeks to block access Sci-Hub in that country. Apparently the Indian court denied the initial request from publishers for an immediate decision in order to allow time for the scientific community to weigh in on the issue.
I hope someone is setting up another means for the scientific community to weigh in on the non-monetary value of Sci-Hub.
> These massive websites/broadcast SMS cannot have it both ways. They cannot seek the protections of being "critical infrastructure" of any sort, common carrier, public forum, etc. and then, at the same time, disable user accounts for any reason just like any other private website.
It's never been proposed that platforms like Twitter become common carriers. That designation was intended for the layer beneath them, ISPs.
I agree that allowing that layer, ISPs, to effectively monopolize content via regional monopolies and ever-growing media conglomerates is problematic. Now they're implementing zero rating in broadband and that means there's a high bar for starting the next Netflix, Twitter etc. If you're not already part of that club you'll have to be super wealthy or take on huge debt from existing tech/wealth dominance just to get your foot in the door.
We really need to encourage competition at the ISP level in order to allow for competition among services like Twitter.
It's never been proposed that platforms like Twitter become common carriers. That designation was intended for the layer beneath them, ISPs.
I agree that allowing that layer, ISPs, to effectively monopolize content via regional monopolies and ever-growing media conglomerates is problematic. Now they're implementing zero rating in broadband and that means there's a high bar for starting the next Netflix, Twitter etc. If you're not already part of that club you'll have to be super wealthy or take on huge debt from existing tech/wealth dominance just to get your foot in the door.
We really need to encourage competition at the ISP level in order to allow for competition among services like Twitter.
And ISPs were not common carriers until they were. It was only meant for the layer underneath them: telcos. The world changes and we should not be stuck with the technology of the 80s until the end of time.
actually they were from the start, or more accurately telcos were required to provide their lines for ISPs.
Actually isps weren't common carriers until 2015 and aren't again today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/14...
They were until 2003 when they were classified as information services. The FCC then enforced net neutrality rules by penalizing ISPs whenever they broke them until 2014 when court ruled that if ISPs are under Title I, the FCC has no control over them. In 2015 FCC reclassified them back as Title II, in 2017/2018 Pai reclassified back to Title I, but multiple states (I know that at least California and Washington) implemented their own net neutrality laws.
And since 2015 social media platforms have had no real competition.
I used Facebook in 2006 and it already was taking over MySpace. I don't know where you got 2015 from, because how ISPs are treated has no impact on social media.
2015 came from the parent comment. I'm saying the current tech platform powers got a lot stronger in the last 4 years.
Websites are not common carriers.
>What is their justifcation for suspension.
I don't see why they should need a justification. Just because something is popular doesn't mean people should be entitled to it. It makes no sense that an arbitrary MAU count suddenly rescinds the property rights of the people who pay money to keep the servers running, as well as to develop and maintain the software. Further, I don't see any benefit to society in policies that might encourage social media use, and speaking economically when these large platforms boot people off it actually increases competition and decreases their dominance because it creates a market opportunity for competitors, exactly like what happened with Parler. Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing? Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?
>What is their justifcation for suspension.
I don't see why they should need a justification. Just because something is popular doesn't mean people should be entitled to it. It makes no sense that an arbitrary MAU count suddenly rescinds the property rights of the people who pay money to keep the servers running, as well as to develop and maintain the software. Further, I don't see any benefit to society in policies that might encourage social media use, and speaking economically when these large platforms boot people off it actually increases competition and decreases their dominance because it creates a market opportunity for competitors, exactly like what happened with Parler. Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing? Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?
> Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing? Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?
Just spitballing here, but doesn't it seem that with the way things are going, Twitter/Facebook will become a silo for those who hold more left-leaning views and Parler/Gab will become a silo for those with more right-leaning views? I understand that there are some who only want to see their preconceived notions reinforced, but for those who are actually interested in an open dialogue and open discussion, aren't we losing something important if this is the result? It would certainly cause an already polarized populace to become more polarized, would it not?
Just spitballing here, but doesn't it seem that with the way things are going, Twitter/Facebook will become a silo for those who hold more left-leaning views and Parler/Gab will become a silo for those with more right-leaning views? I understand that there are some who only want to see their preconceived notions reinforced, but for those who are actually interested in an open dialogue and open discussion, aren't we losing something important if this is the result? It would certainly cause an already polarized populace to become more polarized, would it not?
Twitter/Facebook will become a silo for those who hold more left-leaning views and Parler/Gab will become a silo for those with more right-leaning views
Most right leaning politicians have no problem at all being active on Twitter and Facebook and the vast majority of people who describe themselves as "more right-leaning" want absolutely nothing to do with the sort of people or ideologies that where prevalent on Parler.
Most right leaning politicians have no problem at all being active on Twitter and Facebook and the vast majority of people who describe themselves as "more right-leaning" want absolutely nothing to do with the sort of people or ideologies that where prevalent on Parler.
Politics is just a small part of twitter, the overwhelming majority of twitter content is music, sports, entertainment etc, so a potential silo effect isn't much to be concerned about. Most people just don't engage in politics on social media because it's a soul draining exercise and generally not time well spent unless you're a political junkie that enjoys exchanging barbs with friends and strangers online. So is it possible some of the conservative political content on twitter might wane? Sure, but that's just a fact of life, some communities online just lean a certain direction. Finally, conservatives are not in exile from social media, just about every prominent conservative has an active twitter account with millions of followers and there are millions of conservatives posting all over twitter right now and this is something that can be trivially verified. The bottom line is that none of this is a big deal, it's politics flavored tabloid gossip.
100%. By the same token, however, despite how Section 230 has come to be interpreted, I think these companies should be held responsible for the user-generated content they publish. They should be publishing their own content not acting as middlemen, providing a so-called "platform". All in the interests of surveillance and selling advertising services.
Telcos and cable providers provide access to the medium, i.e. the internet, whereas the web is just one protocol that allows internet users to publish. Having websites with 100s of millions of people posting to them is no substitute for peer-to-peer protocols (private communication) or websites owned by news organisations that employ journalists (publication).
Telcos and cable providers provide access to the medium, i.e. the internet, whereas the web is just one protocol that allows internet users to publish. Having websites with 100s of millions of people posting to them is no substitute for peer-to-peer protocols (private communication) or websites owned by news organisations that employ journalists (publication).
In my view we should leave Section 230 alone, instead we should target the true incentive of bad behavior: the ad model. If it were illegal for companies that collect PII and track users across 3rd party sites to sell ad space on their platforms, all these companies would have to switch to a subscription model like Netflix, shifting the economic incentives to favor user retention rather than advertiser appetites. This means companies lose money when they ban people rather than make money by cutting their losses on viral bandwidth that's too toxic to monetize through ads.
Sounds good to me. And what is the gratuitously complex instrumentation by which all of these companies collect personal data and track users: the so-called "modern" web browser. Authored by, you guessed it, companies who rely on advertisers. They purport to do many other things, wonderfully idealistic and technically impressive things, besides supporting web advertising. Those alleged pursuits seem to keep everyone distracted from their raison d'etre: Make money from advertising.
> Just because something is popular doesn't mean people should be entitled to it.
We have generally acknowledged that things that are important to everyone and are monopolized need to be regulated.
Social media is practically the only effective way to participate in the global community. The same is true, although with decreasing necessity, in more localized communities.
Facebook and Twitter have massively altered the way that people engage with other people, businesses, even the government. They took public discourse and monetized it. That's fine, but they now have to deal with the implications of being the keepers of public discourse, and I think a reasonable stipulation for allowing them to monetize that is that they cannot bar someone from participating without a very good justification that isn't "lol our ToS allows us to cut you off whenever we want, and take your first born child".
> speaking economically when these large platforms boot people off it actually increases competition and decreases their dominance because it creates a market opportunity for competitors, exactly like what happened with Parler. Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing?
Sure, and what happened to them? It's a little ironic to argue that booting people off of their platform increases competition and then mention their new competitor that was immediately wiped off the face of the internet.
I think Parler attracted a lot of extremists. That's partially their own fault with their poor moderation, but it's also a reflection that Twitter has so dominated the marketplace that your only customers as a new social media site are going to be nutjobs. It has strong anti-competitive effects. The community is a huge part of a social media site. Crazy users poison the community, ensuring that the brand is tainted and not a threat to Twitter.
> Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?
Because you'd be better off writing it on bathroom stalls.
Because there is no meaningful competitor. Even Parler was tiny by social media standards, and it's probably dead now.
Because your friends and family want to use Twitter, and probably won't switch, so you have to use Twitter and Facebook.
Because Facebook and Twitter have spent so long maximizing engagement that people barely bother looking for other sources of news and information.
I'm not a huge fan of Parler or the way it was run. It does seem damning that the only app that threatened to take some of Twitter's market share was immediately scrubbed off the internet. I don't think ISIS material gets completely wiped off the face of the internet that fast.
We have generally acknowledged that things that are important to everyone and are monopolized need to be regulated.
Social media is practically the only effective way to participate in the global community. The same is true, although with decreasing necessity, in more localized communities.
Facebook and Twitter have massively altered the way that people engage with other people, businesses, even the government. They took public discourse and monetized it. That's fine, but they now have to deal with the implications of being the keepers of public discourse, and I think a reasonable stipulation for allowing them to monetize that is that they cannot bar someone from participating without a very good justification that isn't "lol our ToS allows us to cut you off whenever we want, and take your first born child".
> speaking economically when these large platforms boot people off it actually increases competition and decreases their dominance because it creates a market opportunity for competitors, exactly like what happened with Parler. Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing?
Sure, and what happened to them? It's a little ironic to argue that booting people off of their platform increases competition and then mention their new competitor that was immediately wiped off the face of the internet.
I think Parler attracted a lot of extremists. That's partially their own fault with their poor moderation, but it's also a reflection that Twitter has so dominated the marketplace that your only customers as a new social media site are going to be nutjobs. It has strong anti-competitive effects. The community is a huge part of a social media site. Crazy users poison the community, ensuring that the brand is tainted and not a threat to Twitter.
> Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?
Because you'd be better off writing it on bathroom stalls.
Because there is no meaningful competitor. Even Parler was tiny by social media standards, and it's probably dead now.
Because your friends and family want to use Twitter, and probably won't switch, so you have to use Twitter and Facebook.
Because Facebook and Twitter have spent so long maximizing engagement that people barely bother looking for other sources of news and information.
I'm not a huge fan of Parler or the way it was run. It does seem damning that the only app that threatened to take some of Twitter's market share was immediately scrubbed off the internet. I don't think ISIS material gets completely wiped off the face of the internet that fast.
> We have generally acknowledged that things that are important to everyone and are monopolized need to be regulated.
Social media is not important, it's an entertainment triviality on par with online gaming. Further, big tech does not monopolize online communication by any definition of the word, twitter and facebook are one of many thousands of ways to communicate online, and most internet users use a variety of platforms as using one does not preclude the ability to use another. Additionally, I'm not saying these companies shouldn't be regulated, check my reply in the sibling thread, what I'm opposed to is the violation of property and first amendment rights by forcing these companies to pay for hosting content they disagree with.
>Social media is practically the only effective way to participate in the global community
Totally false. The "global community" such that it exists on the internet is spread across many hundreds of thousands of applications, sites, and communities.
> they now have to deal with the implications of being the keepers of public discourse,
No, your reasoning here is completely backwards. The fraction of people who willingly choose to participate in public discourse on these sites have to deal with the implications of choosing to use such sites. There are many alternative options available.
> It's a little ironic to argue that booting people off of their platform increases competition and then mention their new competitor that was immediately wiped off the face of the internet.
No. Parler moved to a new hosting platform called Epik the same one that hosts Gab and others, this is a business opportunity for Epik created by the fact that AWS did not want to do business with Parler, this reduces AWS's dominance in the market.
> it's also a reflection that Twitter has so dominated the marketplace that your only customers as a new social media site are going to be nutjobs.
Not true. The reason that Parler attracts extremists is because it was designed to attract them. There are many other platforms that don't have this issue
> The community is a huge part of a social media site
Social media sites do not own the community, they can visit as few or as many different social media sites as they want and its trivial for them to do so.
> Because there is no meaningful competitor.
Totally false. Discord, tiktok, mastadon, pinterest, twitch, vimeo, tumblr, irc, medium, soundcloud, wordpress, blogger ete and that's just off the top of my head.
> Because your friends and family want to use Twitter, and probably won't switch, so you have to use Twitter and Facebook.
That doesn't matter. If your friends use a platform that you want to use then follow the rules of the platform and you'll have no problem. A lot of my friends communicate over Steam chat, that doesn't mean Valve owes me anything - it's an entertainment triviality.
> Because Facebook and Twitter have spent so long maximizing engagement that people barely bother looking for other sources of news and information.
This is false, but even if it were true, anyone who gets their information exclusively from social media is to blame for their own media consumption habits.
Social media is not important, it's an entertainment triviality on par with online gaming. Further, big tech does not monopolize online communication by any definition of the word, twitter and facebook are one of many thousands of ways to communicate online, and most internet users use a variety of platforms as using one does not preclude the ability to use another. Additionally, I'm not saying these companies shouldn't be regulated, check my reply in the sibling thread, what I'm opposed to is the violation of property and first amendment rights by forcing these companies to pay for hosting content they disagree with.
>Social media is practically the only effective way to participate in the global community
Totally false. The "global community" such that it exists on the internet is spread across many hundreds of thousands of applications, sites, and communities.
> they now have to deal with the implications of being the keepers of public discourse,
No, your reasoning here is completely backwards. The fraction of people who willingly choose to participate in public discourse on these sites have to deal with the implications of choosing to use such sites. There are many alternative options available.
> It's a little ironic to argue that booting people off of their platform increases competition and then mention their new competitor that was immediately wiped off the face of the internet.
No. Parler moved to a new hosting platform called Epik the same one that hosts Gab and others, this is a business opportunity for Epik created by the fact that AWS did not want to do business with Parler, this reduces AWS's dominance in the market.
> it's also a reflection that Twitter has so dominated the marketplace that your only customers as a new social media site are going to be nutjobs.
Not true. The reason that Parler attracts extremists is because it was designed to attract them. There are many other platforms that don't have this issue
> The community is a huge part of a social media site
Social media sites do not own the community, they can visit as few or as many different social media sites as they want and its trivial for them to do so.
> Because there is no meaningful competitor.
Totally false. Discord, tiktok, mastadon, pinterest, twitch, vimeo, tumblr, irc, medium, soundcloud, wordpress, blogger ete and that's just off the top of my head.
> Because your friends and family want to use Twitter, and probably won't switch, so you have to use Twitter and Facebook.
That doesn't matter. If your friends use a platform that you want to use then follow the rules of the platform and you'll have no problem. A lot of my friends communicate over Steam chat, that doesn't mean Valve owes me anything - it's an entertainment triviality.
> Because Facebook and Twitter have spent so long maximizing engagement that people barely bother looking for other sources of news and information.
This is false, but even if it were true, anyone who gets their information exclusively from social media is to blame for their own media consumption habits.
you are mixing up net neutrality and a platform.
Net Neutrality ensures that ISP do what the name says, providing Internet service without interfering with it, like restricting which sites you can visit.
A platform like twitter, facebook, parler. Is something that was created from scratch and is owned by these companies. As of now it's not their duty to allow everyone in. And enforcing it is stepping on their freedom.
Someone here or on reddit, suggested that perhaps the government supposed to provide such public platform. That's an interesting thought, because at that point I would agree that if such things would happen there such complaints would be justified.
Net Neutrality ensures that ISP do what the name says, providing Internet service without interfering with it, like restricting which sites you can visit.
A platform like twitter, facebook, parler. Is something that was created from scratch and is owned by these companies. As of now it's not their duty to allow everyone in. And enforcing it is stepping on their freedom.
Someone here or on reddit, suggested that perhaps the government supposed to provide such public platform. That's an interesting thought, because at that point I would agree that if such things would happen there such complaints would be justified.
If U.S. government provided a platform, then these "free speech" claims might have a basis in law. IMO, the issues would be easier to grapple with.
Instead these enourmous websites are filling what is now an obvious void in public services for communication.
Perhaps I should not have used the term "common carrier" as that term has very specific meaning, and only in certain jurisdictions. What I mean is common carrier-like treatment by the public. People talk about these websites as if they are public services. Messenger apps are treated like they are interchangeable with telephone service.
Practically speaking (i.e., how they are being used in practice), maybe, but beyond that I refuse to see them that way. These are not anywhere close to public services, IMO.
Even the trend of websites that we would otherwise see as "public websites" containing "public information" that urge visitors to create "accounts" or "profiles" and "log in" is a disturbing evolution to me, blurring the line between public and private websites. Traditionally, a website that is protected by a password is not "open to the public". If "accounts" are required then disabling the account can disable "public access". Accounts can be disabled for any reason.
Of course, that trend is probably driven by the commercialisation of the web as an advertiser's wet dream.
Instead these enourmous websites are filling what is now an obvious void in public services for communication.
Perhaps I should not have used the term "common carrier" as that term has very specific meaning, and only in certain jurisdictions. What I mean is common carrier-like treatment by the public. People talk about these websites as if they are public services. Messenger apps are treated like they are interchangeable with telephone service.
Practically speaking (i.e., how they are being used in practice), maybe, but beyond that I refuse to see them that way. These are not anywhere close to public services, IMO.
Even the trend of websites that we would otherwise see as "public websites" containing "public information" that urge visitors to create "accounts" or "profiles" and "log in" is a disturbing evolution to me, blurring the line between public and private websites. Traditionally, a website that is protected by a password is not "open to the public". If "accounts" are required then disabling the account can disable "public access". Accounts can be disabled for any reason.
Of course, that trend is probably driven by the commercialisation of the web as an advertiser's wet dream.
> If U.S. government provided a platform, then these "free speech" claims might have a basis in law. IMO, the issues would be easier to grapple with.
Having the government provide the platform would create a huge burden on one entity to moderate content. Any mistake would be magnified 1000x what they are now. It would end free speech as we know it and would be very expensive.
Instead we encourage businesses to moderate their own content and compete for a userbase. That allows platforms to evolve on their own dime with incremental changes that satisfy their respective userbases.
Having the government provide the platform would create a huge burden on one entity to moderate content. Any mistake would be magnified 1000x what they are now. It would end free speech as we know it and would be very expensive.
Instead we encourage businesses to moderate their own content and compete for a userbase. That allows platforms to evolve on their own dime with incremental changes that satisfy their respective userbases.
That would work if the interests of social media platforms are aligned with the interests of its users, but that is not the case. Rather, social media platform interests are aligned with their monetization vectors. This is a classic agent problem.
The point here is to expand the number of social media sites from the handful we have to several more rather than collapsing them into a single state-owned entity.
And, we can't just snap our fingers to make that happen. True competition comes from separately owned, competing services.
And, we can't just snap our fingers to make that happen. True competition comes from separately owned, competing services.
A superior outcome would be OTT peer-to-peer communication, with small groups of peers forming their own mini-networks potentially linking with others if there is mutual interest. The massive groups that form via today's internet do not reflect human nature in the real world. People usually are only part of small groups, family, friends, colleagues, teammates, etc. People usually keep the groups isolated from one another, for the most part. The internet has been hijacked to become primarily a broadcast medium that serves the interests of advertisers, marketers, promoters, etc., those who deal in hype, and a relatively small number of companies (middlemen) that enable them. The hijackers all want internet users to join large groups that can be targeted through a central point with commercial/political mesaging.
Maybe. Make it happen and let's see but I wouldn't put money on that. Everyone can't hold the ledger like btc
It's not a conspiracy that a handful of platforms dominate it's simply flawed regulation targeting the wrong incentives.
It's not a conspiracy that a handful of platforms dominate it's simply flawed regulation targeting the wrong incentives.
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Platforms have been exempted from being sued for content as they were claiming neutrality and now that they are monopolies bigger than most countries they are starting to employ their own moderation and censorship. We should either break them up and make competition possible or enforce their neutrality.
> perhaps the government supposed to provide such public platform.
Nah, inviting the government to moderate these platforms is the last thing we want. It's bad enough there are only a handful of them, we definitely don't want all that power under one person's control.
Nah, inviting the government to moderate these platforms is the last thing we want. It's bad enough there are only a handful of them, we definitely don't want all that power under one person's control.
I agree, personally I think POTUS and other government officials should even be banned (not by twitter but by law) to officially uses such private forums.
Nah that would put incumbents at a disadvantage against their competition.
And, forcing them to use more official accounts like @POTUS might give existing office-holders undue advantage.
I think drawing the line at inciting violence is proper. We do need more competition at the platform level and I think this comes when we establish a competitive environment among ISPs and content conglomerates by reinstating net neutrality and discouraging regional broadband monopolies.
And, forcing them to use more official accounts like @POTUS might give existing office-holders undue advantage.
I think drawing the line at inciting violence is proper. We do need more competition at the platform level and I think this comes when we establish a competitive environment among ISPs and content conglomerates by reinstating net neutrality and discouraging regional broadband monopolies.
Twitter wants to be relevant infrastructure and ironically Trump gave most way to that.
Personal opinion is that the best solution would be to dumb Twitter for any discussions, but especially political ones.
Personal opinion is that the best solution would be to dumb Twitter for any discussions, but especially political ones.
If the headline read Twister Shuts Down Twitter I wouldn't miss it.
I can't agree. It's their platform and they can leave up what they like. When someone starts advocating violence, treason, assassination then they can shut down that account. Also in national emergencies (like our current one with right wing extremists) it is also justified. I don't want section 230 undone, it will do far more damage than good.
Who did Sci-Hub advocate for assassination? What violence did they try to incite? What treasonous act did they commit? This conversation is about twitter nuking Sci-Hub. I understand the events you are referring to but you cannot use them as justification for actions like suspending Sci-Hub.
There probably is some Twitter-backed research on sci-hub but that's not the point. They can lawfully ban whoever they want as long as the basis is not race, sex etc.
Sci-Hub Is a PRIVATE Company. They can ban who they like. Period.
It all boils down to this:
a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter?
If yes: b) Who decides which accounts harm twitter? If the answer is "twitter", then they have effectively the right to terminate any account at their will. I don't know what other answer is possible for b) except maybe "the courts", and I'm not sure I like that one.
If the answer to a) is no, for which companies does this apply? Must every company work with every potential customer? Who decides which companies must?
Going through the options, I only see viable: twitter can ban whomever they like, for whatever reason, except for the usual exceptions (religion, race etc).
I wish they wouldn't though.
a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter?
If yes: b) Who decides which accounts harm twitter? If the answer is "twitter", then they have effectively the right to terminate any account at their will. I don't know what other answer is possible for b) except maybe "the courts", and I'm not sure I like that one.
If the answer to a) is no, for which companies does this apply? Must every company work with every potential customer? Who decides which companies must?
Going through the options, I only see viable: twitter can ban whomever they like, for whatever reason, except for the usual exceptions (religion, race etc).
I wish they wouldn't though.
Just because you have the legal right to do something doesn't mean you should do it or that you should be immune to criticism for doing it.
For example, in an at-will employment state, an employer can legally fire you for looking at them funny. No one would argue that an employer shouldn't have the right to terminate an employee if they were bad for the company, nor would anyone object to the employer being able to determine what is good or bad for the company. Nevertheless, such an act is a dick move and the employer should be heavily criticized for doing it.
For example, in an at-will employment state, an employer can legally fire you for looking at them funny. No one would argue that an employer shouldn't have the right to terminate an employee if they were bad for the company, nor would anyone object to the employer being able to determine what is good or bad for the company. Nevertheless, such an act is a dick move and the employer should be heavily criticized for doing it.
Seems like a bad analogy. I would absolutely argue an employer shouldn't be allowed to fire you for any reason of their choosing
Unfortunately, the law in many (all?) states is that employment is “at will”. If your boss doesn’t like the color of your hair, they can fire you on the spot. Doesn’t mean they will, but they can as long as it’s not for a “protected class” reason (as in, they can’t fire you for your race). The justification for “at will” employment is that your duties to the company are also “at will.” If you want, you’re free to walk out the front door on your break and never come back.
For the purposes of this analogy, it doesn't matter what they should be allowed to do, what matters is what they are legally allowed to. Likewise there is a very legitimate argument that laws should be changed so that twitter would not have the legal authority to kick people off its platform arbitrarily, but the entire point of the analogy is that there is a difference between what is legally permissible and socially acceptable.
If Twitter were just a few million users or something, I'd subscribe to the "they're a private entity, let them do what they want", but they monopolize a huge portion of our national (indeed, international) dialogue to the effect that they can unilaterally influence election outcomes for the world's most powerful democracies (at least that's the implication if you subscribe to the 'Russia manipulated Twitter algos in 2016' theory). Unless Twitter's monopoly is broken, content on Twitter (and other monopolistic social media networks) should be regulated as "free speech".
Alternatively, we all could pay a bit less attention to Twitter and avoid the issue
> a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter?
Although some people agree that is the question, it is not the fundamental one here. Most of the respectable arguments are that Twitter's bans are senselessly harming Twitter. They're building a gaping hole in their offering that a competitor can cover.
Although some people agree that is the question, it is not the fundamental one here. Most of the respectable arguments are that Twitter's bans are senselessly harming Twitter. They're building a gaping hole in their offering that a competitor can cover.
Twitter doesn't compete in a free market segment. No upstart is going to come along and beat Twitter because they monopolize users' access to their own social networks (if you want to participate in conversations your friends are having, you can't do so from e.g. Mastodon because your friends almost certainly aren't on Mastodon).
The thing is, few other companies will do business with anyone trying to compete with Twitter. Parler was nuked. Gab was almost nuked, but they've managed to survive.
There's a huge demand for alternatives to Twitter, but other major tech companies, the corporate press, and many politicians are doing everything in their power to crush those alternatives and prevent them from springing up.
There's a huge demand for alternatives to Twitter, but other major tech companies, the corporate press, and many politicians are doing everything in their power to crush those alternatives and prevent them from springing up.
Huge demand is maybe an overstatement. A quick google search shows me that Parler had ~4 million active users a couple weeks ago. Twitter has >300 million. That’s about 1-2%. I don’t think that qualifies as huge.
4 million people is a lot of people.
As someone else pointed out, their user base tripled before they were nuked.
As someone else pointed out, their user base tripled before they were nuked.
Parler had 12 million users at the time it was executed by Amazon.
There's a demand for service for narcissists, but it isn't huge. Twitter was becoming irrelevant and the only thing that brought Twitter back from irrelevancy was that POTUS was big user of it.
>few other companies will do business with anyone trying to compete with Twitter.
That's because companies don't want associated with the users on those platforms, many of whom left Twitter because twitter didn't want them either.
So businesses aren't simply in some evil cahoots with Twitter. They're associated with Twitter because that the users they do want to associate with.
That's because companies don't want associated with the users on those platforms, many of whom left Twitter because twitter didn't want them either.
So businesses aren't simply in some evil cahoots with Twitter. They're associated with Twitter because that the users they do want to associate with.
I think the answer to a) depends on whether Twitter wants to continue to have a private monopoly on public discourse.
If Twitter wants to maintain that monopoly and their walled garden, then no, they should not be able to arbitrarily ban users. I would like to see online public discourse declared to be part of the social infrastructure and be treated like a utility.
Alternately, if Twitter is willing to move to a federated-type model where Twitter users can follow Parler users and vice-versa, I think they should be able to continue to ban people.
That neatly resolves this conundrum to me. Twitter loses its absolutely staggering inertia from the size of their userbase. The data becomes open, and social media companies become focused on providing value via exposing you to this data, rather than just by building a moat with it to keep out competitors.
If Twitter wants to maintain that monopoly and their walled garden, then no, they should not be able to arbitrarily ban users. I would like to see online public discourse declared to be part of the social infrastructure and be treated like a utility.
Alternately, if Twitter is willing to move to a federated-type model where Twitter users can follow Parler users and vice-versa, I think they should be able to continue to ban people.
That neatly resolves this conundrum to me. Twitter loses its absolutely staggering inertia from the size of their userbase. The data becomes open, and social media companies become focused on providing value via exposing you to this data, rather than just by building a moat with it to keep out competitors.
> If the answer to a) is no, for which companies does this apply? Must every company work with every potential customer? Who decides which companies must?
Regulated public utilities generally speaking can't just drop customers simply because they feel like it or don't like them or view them as a "threat". Thankfully the electricity company can't just disconnect you because they don't like you. So long as you pay the bills, they have to keep you on as customer. (I think they can disconnect you if you violate technical rules about electrical safety, such as trying to draw more power from the network than your connection is authorised – but they can't simply do it because they disagree with your politics, or because you are charged with a crime no matter how heinous, or because some third party is suing you, or so on.)
And there is an argument for regulating Twitter/Facebook/etc as public utilities.
A lot of people in Australia's conservative ruling party are pretty upset at Twitter. They were asking Twitter to take down a faked image of an Australian soldier slitting a child's throat which was posted by the Chinese government. Twitter refused. Then Twitter banned Donald Trump. Twitter will argue that the two situations were very different, but a number of conservative Australian politicians don't agree. They are calling for government regulations to control when Twitter can remove content or ban people [0]. Effectively, turning it into a regulated public utility, at least in Australia. (If the Australian government goes ahead with this, I can't see any way out of it for Twitter except to either comply or block everyone in Australia from accessing their service.)
[0] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/threat-to-democracy-...
Regulated public utilities generally speaking can't just drop customers simply because they feel like it or don't like them or view them as a "threat". Thankfully the electricity company can't just disconnect you because they don't like you. So long as you pay the bills, they have to keep you on as customer. (I think they can disconnect you if you violate technical rules about electrical safety, such as trying to draw more power from the network than your connection is authorised – but they can't simply do it because they disagree with your politics, or because you are charged with a crime no matter how heinous, or because some third party is suing you, or so on.)
And there is an argument for regulating Twitter/Facebook/etc as public utilities.
A lot of people in Australia's conservative ruling party are pretty upset at Twitter. They were asking Twitter to take down a faked image of an Australian soldier slitting a child's throat which was posted by the Chinese government. Twitter refused. Then Twitter banned Donald Trump. Twitter will argue that the two situations were very different, but a number of conservative Australian politicians don't agree. They are calling for government regulations to control when Twitter can remove content or ban people [0]. Effectively, turning it into a regulated public utility, at least in Australia. (If the Australian government goes ahead with this, I can't see any way out of it for Twitter except to either comply or block everyone in Australia from accessing their service.)
[0] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/threat-to-democracy-...
> They are calling for government regulations to control when Twitter can remove content or ban people [0]. Effectively, turning it into a regulated public utility, at least in Australia.
Poland will do the same.
Poland will do the same.
> twitter can ban whomever they like, for whatever reason, except for the usual exceptions (religion, race etc).
I think we either need to get rid of those exceptions or add more. I'm not sure which.
I think we either need to get rid of those exceptions or add more. I'm not sure which.
Why would those even be exceptions or treated differently.
I find it a rather arbitrary standard I so often encounter.
How would banning for religion be different than banning for any other opinion? So long as an opinion asserts the existence of a higher being it is inviolate? All I need to claim to be unbannable for saying that vaccines cause cancer is simply add “This was told to me by the almighty creator Zefron of Zefronism” and that small differences turns an ordinary falsehood into a religion?
Can I deny the holocaust in Germany by simply making it a tenant of a religion?
It seems awfully arbitrary to me.
I find it a rather arbitrary standard I so often encounter.
How would banning for religion be different than banning for any other opinion? So long as an opinion asserts the existence of a higher being it is inviolate? All I need to claim to be unbannable for saying that vaccines cause cancer is simply add “This was told to me by the almighty creator Zefron of Zefronism” and that small differences turns an ordinary falsehood into a religion?
Can I deny the holocaust in Germany by simply making it a tenant of a religion?
It seems awfully arbitrary to me.
Before the movement of peoples accelerated greatly in the mid 20th century, identity was determined by a few factors and they were practically constitutive of who people were
Think about the adhoc communal living options that are available to people who want to live in intentional community in SF, consider side by side people like conservative Mennonite churchgoers in rural Illinois.
The idea is not that anyone can or should pull an L Ron, the point is that those identity factors are more or less taken to be extraneous of someone's behavior
They are default bad reasons to ban someone, not an exhaustive list, just good rules of thumb
Think about the adhoc communal living options that are available to people who want to live in intentional community in SF, consider side by side people like conservative Mennonite churchgoers in rural Illinois.
The idea is not that anyone can or should pull an L Ron, the point is that those identity factors are more or less taken to be extraneous of someone's behavior
They are default bad reasons to ban someone, not an exhaustive list, just good rules of thumb
Historically speaking, the exceptions relate to properties which got many people killed. So from that perspective, I'd hope we'll not add more, but maybe can retire some of them. Not super optimistic about that though.
It's simple, they own the platform, they get to make the call who is on it, including Presidents.
You missed the worldwide vote for the company that should hold the only truths in all matters? Twitter won. Google second and FB third.
* Some or all of the content shared in this message is disputed and might be misleading
This whole argument is such bullshit. People are trying to frame it as POTUS suddenly has no way to speak as if presidents before him had no platform to talk to the nation.
POTUS and other officials should be banned for using private platform for official messages.
Agree.
They’re not violating copyright via Twitter. They should have a voice via Twitter, no matter the accusation.
Do accused murderers [as opposed to convicted] get their Twitter suspended?
This is ridiculous.
They’re not violating copyright via Twitter. They should have a voice via Twitter, no matter the accusation.
Do accused murderers [as opposed to convicted] get their Twitter suspended?
This is ridiculous.
For that matter, should convicted murderers get their accounts suspended? I think not solely on the grounds that they’ve committed murder - but maybe if they are using their platform to cause further harm.
> For that matter, should convicted murderers get their accounts suspended? I think not solely on the grounds that they’ve committed murder - but maybe if they are using their platform to cause further harm.
On a related note, Facebook policy bans sex offenders from having accounts at all, regardless of what they do with them:
https://www.facebook.com/help/210081519032737:
> Convicted sex offenders aren't allowed to use Facebook. If you've seen an account that may belong to a convicted sex offender, please report it to us.
Not sure about the other social media networks.
On a related note, Facebook policy bans sex offenders from having accounts at all, regardless of what they do with them:
https://www.facebook.com/help/210081519032737:
> Convicted sex offenders aren't allowed to use Facebook. If you've seen an account that may belong to a convicted sex offender, please report it to us.
Not sure about the other social media networks.
That's pretty messed up. You as a 14 year old send a nude picture to your 15 year old boyfriend and suddenly you're banned from Facebook from life?
Frankly the whole situation in the US is messed up, punishment should be limited to whatever the court decides.
Frankly the whole situation in the US is messed up, punishment should be limited to whatever the court decides.
Even more messed up is the fact that some jurisdictions will criminally prosecute 14 year olds for sending nude pictures of themselves.
(I do think 14 year olds should be discouraged from taking and sending nude pictures of themselves – it is the sort of thing they could easily come to regret in a few more years – but I don't think criminal prosecution is an ethical way of providing that discouragement.)
(I do think 14 year olds should be discouraged from taking and sending nude pictures of themselves – it is the sort of thing they could easily come to regret in a few more years – but I don't think criminal prosecution is an ethical way of providing that discouragement.)
I don't know.
Receiver could delete picture ASAP, and discourage behavior. If they keep, spread, or encourage they're complicit. Of course, there's a difference in severity between 1 nude of 1 person, or a myriad, or being an adult with a myriad.
Sender getting prosecuted for spreading their own nude as minor might be weird, but also makes sense. Its not as if they'd be a registered sex offender as a minor.
Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm? We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law, but we can't treat them like adults either. There's a solid middle ground: hold parents accountable till teenager, then both, and at age 16 the teenager but not with fully implemented adult law. Interestingly, that's approx how countries deal with it, or variants of that at least.
TL;DR if properly nuanced, we can deal with issues like these, though we may disagree on these nuances, I'm quite sure we'll agree on the outliers.
Receiver could delete picture ASAP, and discourage behavior. If they keep, spread, or encourage they're complicit. Of course, there's a difference in severity between 1 nude of 1 person, or a myriad, or being an adult with a myriad.
Sender getting prosecuted for spreading their own nude as minor might be weird, but also makes sense. Its not as if they'd be a registered sex offender as a minor.
Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm? We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law, but we can't treat them like adults either. There's a solid middle ground: hold parents accountable till teenager, then both, and at age 16 the teenager but not with fully implemented adult law. Interestingly, that's approx how countries deal with it, or variants of that at least.
TL;DR if properly nuanced, we can deal with issues like these, though we may disagree on these nuances, I'm quite sure we'll agree on the outliers.
> Sender getting prosecuted for spreading their own nude as minor might be weird, but also makes sense.
I think the Australian state of Victoria gets it more or less right – section 51M of the Crimes Act 1958 [0] makes it explicitly legal for children to produce, possess or distribute images of themselves. Adults (and in some cases other children) can still be prosecuted if they encourage/entice/assist/etc the child to do it, but the child themselves commits no crime.
> Its not as if they'd be a registered sex offender as a minor.
A number of American states do in fact put minors on the sex offender registry. For example, [1] describes how a woman was registered as a sex offender in Michigan after being convicted of "criminal sexual conduct" as a 10 year old
> Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm?
A fifteen year old who takes a picture of themselves naked, the primary risk of harm is to themselves, and the harm they are risking is psychosocial rather than physical. By contrast, a fifteen year old with an illegal firearm easily poses a risk of death or serious physical injury, not just to themselves, but also to others. Hence, criminally prosecuting the later is far easier to morally justify than criminally prosecuting the former. The situations aren't really comparable.
> We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law
Well, like Victoria has done, the law can be changed so that they aren't breaking it.
[0] http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/ca1958...
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-...
I think the Australian state of Victoria gets it more or less right – section 51M of the Crimes Act 1958 [0] makes it explicitly legal for children to produce, possess or distribute images of themselves. Adults (and in some cases other children) can still be prosecuted if they encourage/entice/assist/etc the child to do it, but the child themselves commits no crime.
> Its not as if they'd be a registered sex offender as a minor.
A number of American states do in fact put minors on the sex offender registry. For example, [1] describes how a woman was registered as a sex offender in Michigan after being convicted of "criminal sexual conduct" as a 10 year old
> Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm?
A fifteen year old who takes a picture of themselves naked, the primary risk of harm is to themselves, and the harm they are risking is psychosocial rather than physical. By contrast, a fifteen year old with an illegal firearm easily poses a risk of death or serious physical injury, not just to themselves, but also to others. Hence, criminally prosecuting the later is far easier to morally justify than criminally prosecuting the former. The situations aren't really comparable.
> We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law
Well, like Victoria has done, the law can be changed so that they aren't breaking it.
[0] http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/ca1958...
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-...
>Put this way: what if it was an illegal firearm? We can't just turn a blind eye to youth breaking law, but
I don't think you realize just how common this is. There are very few people managing high school and college machine shops who haven't helped cover up an NFA violation. Even outside that making oil filter silencers for .22 rifles (or other cheap guns high schoolers have access to) is not at all uncommon. Eventually most grow out of it (i.e. they have a real life and the risk reward calculus changes).
Likewise teenagers routinely get exposed to hard drugs and "the system" is the last thing that helps that.
Damn near every adult has a bunch of "I'd be in prison if the caught me" stories from high school.
So yeah, I think we should handle both with a stern talking too about federal prison and not much else. Most kids will mature out of this behavior and it's not worth risking screwing all of them to try and pre-emptively save the few that won't grow out of it.
I don't think you realize just how common this is. There are very few people managing high school and college machine shops who haven't helped cover up an NFA violation. Even outside that making oil filter silencers for .22 rifles (or other cheap guns high schoolers have access to) is not at all uncommon. Eventually most grow out of it (i.e. they have a real life and the risk reward calculus changes).
Likewise teenagers routinely get exposed to hard drugs and "the system" is the last thing that helps that.
Damn near every adult has a bunch of "I'd be in prison if the caught me" stories from high school.
So yeah, I think we should handle both with a stern talking too about federal prison and not much else. Most kids will mature out of this behavior and it's not worth risking screwing all of them to try and pre-emptively save the few that won't grow out of it.
> That's pretty messed up. You as a 14 year old send a nude picture to your 15 year old boyfriend and suddenly you're banned from Facebook from life?
It's worth noting that is far from the typical case of "being a sex offender."
It's worth noting that is far from the typical case of "being a sex offender."
No, more typical is a 22yo taking a pee against an alley wall behind the bar and being arrested for indecent exposure. Calling everyone a sex-offender just makes this a useless morass.
What about the homeless.
That’s gotten out of hand. I understand they want to discourage streakers and guys who flip open their raincoats or whatever, but someone who looks for a dark corner to pee is no where near being a sex offender. That’s a travesty.
That’s gotten out of hand. I understand they want to discourage streakers and guys who flip open their raincoats or whatever, but someone who looks for a dark corner to pee is no where near being a sex offender. That’s a travesty.
Yeah I don’t know the ins and outs of that. I only made a difference because felons lose rights in the penitentiary, but then again most who can are able to commercialize their stories, though sometimes the state steps in and diverts proceeds to victims, etc.
at the end of the day twitter has the right to close whatever account they so choose
Yes, and people have to right to tell random strangers to fuck off and give kids the middle finger.
Doesn't mean we can't try to talk someone out of doing that or discuss how such behavior makes society slightly worse.
Doesn't mean we can't try to talk someone out of doing that or discuss how such behavior makes society slightly worse.
Legally, yes. But given the prominence and importance it has with regards to disseminating news and opinion, I think it’s their responsibility to take their obligation seriously.
The phones at one time we’re not “utilities”. Social media may become the next regulated utility given its importance.
The phones at one time we’re not “utilities”. Social media may become the next regulated utility given its importance.
Phones aren’t a utility merely because of their general importance, but because of the specific importance to the public interest of having a single, universal telephone network.
I don’t think there is a great public interest in a single curated (algorithmically and/or manually) user-generated-content newsfeed system. In fact, insofar as such a category of product is desirable, I think that the public interest is in competition and freedom to differentiate, including in terms of content focus and preferences within the bounds of the law, just as is the case with, say, news outlets that aren’t driven by UGC.
I don’t think there is a great public interest in a single curated (algorithmically and/or manually) user-generated-content newsfeed system. In fact, insofar as such a category of product is desirable, I think that the public interest is in competition and freedom to differentiate, including in terms of content focus and preferences within the bounds of the law, just as is the case with, say, news outlets that aren’t driven by UGC.
They also have the legal right to modify everyone's tweets to be quotes from mein kampf. That they have the right to do something doesn't mean they should do it nor that they should be immune to criticism for doing it.
That would be pretty easily proven as defamation/libel, and thus not legal.
Until we the people choose how the day ends by regulating huge companies that act as social "town squares"
You don't want to get to the point of a court order. Expecting twitter to defend you when you're committing copyright infringement is ridiculous. They don't have to do it only when the platform is used for direct infringement, they remove the account before they can do that and before the legal problems.
This isn't about speech, it's copyright infringement.
This isn't about speech, it's copyright infringement.
> This isn't about speech, it's copyright infringement.
Are they committing copyright infringement on Twitter?
Are they committing copyright infringement on Twitter?
Yes. The featured article notes that they were providing links on their Twitter account. Their quoted defense includes, to paraphrase, the account was /mostly/ discussing open access issues, it wasn’t /primarily/ for sharing pirated materials.
They're an organization who's purpose is to commit copyright infringement. They don't have to be doing the infringement on twitter itself for twitter to reasonably suspend them. Again, they suspend them to prevent the platform being inevitably used for direct infringement or to be used as a guide on where/how to participate in the infringement.
Twitter may not be responsible for user content as per section 230 but it's also not a good idea as a company to step on the toes of intellectual property holders without good reason.
Twitter may not be responsible for user content as per section 230 but it's also not a good idea as a company to step on the toes of intellectual property holders without good reason.
Does Twitter automatically ban everyone using the hashtag #CanHasPDF? That's how scientific papers were spread before SciHub; what Elbakyan did was to move the copyright infringement off Twitter and to a dedicated service.
Why should we FORCE twitter to publish the speech of someone they don't want to publish? Doesn't that itself infringe on free speech?
We probably shouldn't (perhaps with the exception of politicians or key public figures), but we should still recognise this is a move that has net-negative effect for humanity – and a move that Twitter didn't have to make.
We can recognise things as being wrong even if they're not illegal.
We can recognise things as being wrong even if they're not illegal.
It's not about forcing Twitter, it's about how Twitter wants to be framed.
As a platform, it bears no responsibility over what's published on it as long as it complies with any court orders to remove illegal content. But it cannot censor or editorialize content.
If it does, it becomes a media outlet and has responsibility over all content published on Twitter, (which doesn't scale very well).
Jack wants to have the best of both worlds. The power to censor whatever he doesn't like, with 0 responsibility over the content he doesn't care about.
As a platform, it bears no responsibility over what's published on it as long as it complies with any court orders to remove illegal content. But it cannot censor or editorialize content.
If it does, it becomes a media outlet and has responsibility over all content published on Twitter, (which doesn't scale very well).
Jack wants to have the best of both worlds. The power to censor whatever he doesn't like, with 0 responsibility over the content he doesn't care about.
As I've heard so often in the last few months, "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences". If they intend to hide behind legal minimums, that is their right, but society is free to retaliate in other ways.
For instance, their (and all other social network) S230 liability protection could be tied to specific conduct, such as no arbitrary bans.
For instance, their (and all other social network) S230 liability protection could be tied to specific conduct, such as no arbitrary bans.
Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...
Twitter is a private business and thus is free to decline to do business with any particular entity for any reason or without any reason. If sci-hub doesn't like it they can build their own twitter. There, I said it :)
> Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between
@dick said recently in an interview that these are geo-political decisions. That they might've did the calculus of losing advertising money but it's not the predominate reason [1].
[1] - I can't find this source. I find it weird that I can't search my history to find it. It was in an interview with either Bloomberg or WSJ.
P.S. The interview was in relation to Trump being banned but I think his response applies to Sci_Hub because these are intentional decisions, not from an AI/automated system.
@dick said recently in an interview that these are geo-political decisions. That they might've did the calculus of losing advertising money but it's not the predominate reason [1].
[1] - I can't find this source. I find it weird that I can't search my history to find it. It was in an interview with either Bloomberg or WSJ.
P.S. The interview was in relation to Trump being banned but I think his response applies to Sci_Hub because these are intentional decisions, not from an AI/automated system.
Twitter doesn't care about any business dispute, we're simply watching them chip away at the foundations of capitalism to facilitate a move towards communism. In this latest example, they're doing their part to suppress research visibility. History doesn't repeat, but often rhymes:
Per historic Soviet communism playbook: all research, including natural sciences, was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Humanities and social sciences [research] were additionally tested for strict accordance with historical materialism.[1]
In other recent examples, I don't think anyone would argue they aren't actively doing their part to suppress free-speech (a requirement for communism). The most blatant and concerning to me is their amplification of discussion around topics that would facilitate the piece-by-piece dismantlement of America's democratic republic. Most recently, getting rid of the electoral college.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_th...
Per historic Soviet communism playbook: all research, including natural sciences, was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Humanities and social sciences [research] were additionally tested for strict accordance with historical materialism.[1]
In other recent examples, I don't think anyone would argue they aren't actively doing their part to suppress free-speech (a requirement for communism). The most blatant and concerning to me is their amplification of discussion around topics that would facilitate the piece-by-piece dismantlement of America's democratic republic. Most recently, getting rid of the electoral college.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_th...
It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.
> "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. 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."
This from Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
This from Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
Everything the court has done since Marsh v Alabama has walked that decision back, and I think you'll have a hard time finding legal experts to back the interpretation that Twitter owns the obligations of a public square.
We've had threads about it on HN, but it's also (for obvious reasons) come up recently, and here's Ken White citing a recent SCOTUS decision knocking this idea down:
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1141766582382678016
(The whole thread is good).
We've had threads about it on HN, but it's also (for obvious reasons) come up recently, and here's Ken White citing a recent SCOTUS decision knocking this idea down:
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1141766582382678016
(The whole thread is good).
There's another thing that I think is often glossed over in discussions of Marsh v. Alabama (I'm not a lawyer though, and Ken is probably smarter than me anyhow).
But that is that Marsh v. Alabama had the company wanting to use a state law to kick people out (and this was repeated with the California case Pruneyard). "The state doesn't need to actively help you kick people exercising their 1A rights in a place you don't want them to" is very, very different from "The state can prevent you from exercising your own autonomy to prevent someone from re-accessing your property".
If the company town put up a fence and a gate, they wouldn't be forced to let anyone in.
But that is that Marsh v. Alabama had the company wanting to use a state law to kick people out (and this was repeated with the California case Pruneyard). "The state doesn't need to actively help you kick people exercising their 1A rights in a place you don't want them to" is very, very different from "The state can prevent you from exercising your own autonomy to prevent someone from re-accessing your property".
If the company town put up a fence and a gate, they wouldn't be forced to let anyone in.
I wholly agree with you. They do, however, own the obligations of a public forum if that is how they ask to be regulated.
They are playing cute with political speech. They aren't publishing in the traditional sense. But heavy curation of independent content is (at their volume) publishing - without the regulation accorded publishers. They are, by their actions, espousing certain political ideas by only allowing those ideas to exist in their 'public forum'.
For anyone, even a staunch libertarian, to claim that the government should not get in their kitchen on that basis is naive in my opinion.
They are playing cute with political speech. They aren't publishing in the traditional sense. But heavy curation of independent content is (at their volume) publishing - without the regulation accorded publishers. They are, by their actions, espousing certain political ideas by only allowing those ideas to exist in their 'public forum'.
For anyone, even a staunch libertarian, to claim that the government should not get in their kitchen on that basis is naive in my opinion.
I don't think you'll find a lot of lawyers who specialize in speech and 230 that agree with this interpretation either, and it would have extremely wide-ranging consequences for the entire Internet that the fiercest advocates of this position would not like at all.
I expect that you are correct. However, allowing an org to act as a publisher by heavily curating who is allowed to use their 'forum' is having wide-ranging consequences for our society. As they are occupying a spot in the regulatory scheme that they no longer deserve, redressing this with regulation is necessary.
I don't think anyone wants another long thread recapitulating the whole debate about Twitter's obligations to to society; they can just read the thousands of HN comments that have been written in the last week about it.
What I will say is, however you hope to resolve this problem, eliminating the 230 protections is probably not the right way to go about it if you want providers like Twitter to be less intrusive, or for alternative venues to be viable at all. I think the only coherent "free speech" strategy that involves attacking 230 is accelerationism; that maybe by blowing up the US commercial Internet we'll somehow all migrate to a completely free blockchain Internet run out of the Azores or something.
What I will say is, however you hope to resolve this problem, eliminating the 230 protections is probably not the right way to go about it if you want providers like Twitter to be less intrusive, or for alternative venues to be viable at all. I think the only coherent "free speech" strategy that involves attacking 230 is accelerationism; that maybe by blowing up the US commercial Internet we'll somehow all migrate to a completely free blockchain Internet run out of the Azores or something.
What do you think about not nuking 230, but making its protections reliant on specific conduct? We can sidestep the 1A issue altogether since these companies would do anything to avoid being held responsible for the libelous, harassing, defamatory, threatening and sometimes terroristic content that their users post every day. That is nothing short of a gift given by the government, and it can be modified or restricted.
Moderation doesn't scale, so I think this is a case of either do what 230 requires or cease existing as a going concern - either of these would be good outcomes, so this is a powerful lever.
Some ideas in no particular order; a platform owner is only shielded from liability inasmuch as they (choose as many as applicable):
1. Provide a forthright accounting of any negative actions taken against an account (no shadowbans, no silent editing or hiding of content from discovery) at the time the action is taken with a forthright explanation of how the conduct broke the stated rules.
2. Provide an appeals process for bans/negative actions run by a neutral third party, with any ambiguity resolved in favor of the appellant.
3. Do not make or enforce ex-post-facto rule changes
4. Demonstrate no pattern of unfair or unequal application of the stated rules
5. If a ban is issued, a "wind-down" period must be granted to allow the banned user time to move what they can of their social network somewhere else.
6. Upon request, your own account's data must be provided in full.
OR
7. Remain completely hands-off from a content removal standpoint. Content is removed if it is either literally illegal or breaks the service and under no other circumstance.
This last one would still allow for spam filtering and content categorization, which would allow the user experience to change little from today, and puts the most control in the hands of individual users.
Moderation doesn't scale, so I think this is a case of either do what 230 requires or cease existing as a going concern - either of these would be good outcomes, so this is a powerful lever.
Some ideas in no particular order; a platform owner is only shielded from liability inasmuch as they (choose as many as applicable):
1. Provide a forthright accounting of any negative actions taken against an account (no shadowbans, no silent editing or hiding of content from discovery) at the time the action is taken with a forthright explanation of how the conduct broke the stated rules.
2. Provide an appeals process for bans/negative actions run by a neutral third party, with any ambiguity resolved in favor of the appellant.
3. Do not make or enforce ex-post-facto rule changes
4. Demonstrate no pattern of unfair or unequal application of the stated rules
5. If a ban is issued, a "wind-down" period must be granted to allow the banned user time to move what they can of their social network somewhere else.
6. Upon request, your own account's data must be provided in full.
OR
7. Remain completely hands-off from a content removal standpoint. Content is removed if it is either literally illegal or breaks the service and under no other circumstance.
This last one would still allow for spam filtering and content categorization, which would allow the user experience to change little from today, and puts the most control in the hands of individual users.
I think policy intervention that is backstopped by threats to remove provider liability protections is going to backfire, because when you get when providers are liable is radically more intrusive moderation, not less moderation.
As a matter of principle, any regulatory regime that would put HN as Dan moderates it at risk is bad, and what you're proposing would seem to threaten HN. All your bullets here seem like things that will pull providers into litigation.
As a matter of principle, any regulatory regime that would put HN as Dan moderates it at risk is bad, and what you're proposing would seem to threaten HN. All your bullets here seem like things that will pull providers into litigation.
It would make sense to combine these ideas with a circuit breaker that only kicks in once you have a certain MAU count.
Having it apply to every forum everywhere would suck and be unworkable, but once you're at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. levels of exposure, there are a different set of interests and responsibilities to society in play.
Having it apply to every forum everywhere would suck and be unworkable, but once you're at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. levels of exposure, there are a different set of interests and responsibilities to society in play.
You seem to be describing a scheme where Twitter is legally required to be very careful about moderation, but Parler isn't, which seems crazy to me. Also, it doesn't address other vehicles for suppressing toxic speech; for instance, no 230 change you come up with is going to obligate cloud providers to do business with Parler and StormFront.
I should add a point I should have made earlier, which is that 230 is in no way based on a notion of being "publishers" or "platforms". That's a super common misconception about the law.
I should add a point I should have made earlier, which is that 230 is in no way based on a notion of being "publishers" or "platforms". That's a super common misconception about the law.
230 isn’t a gift to Twitter, it’s a gift to us. A world where 230 was restricted in the way you describe wouldn’t see Twitter agree to one of your two modes. They’d opt to instead take a heavy hammer to anything even remotely objectionable, so-as to avoid having to deal with any of the controls on your list.
It’s also not clear to me why we’d expect a private company to have to answer to you or me or anybody else about decisions they make. We can choose to not use their services if we don’t agree with them (and many people on this site have done exactly that), but any rule that attempts to say “once you’re popular enough, your business has to follow somebody else’s rulebook for how you decide what content you must host” isn’t going to make sense to me.
It’s also not clear to me why we’d expect a private company to have to answer to you or me or anybody else about decisions they make. We can choose to not use their services if we don’t agree with them (and many people on this site have done exactly that), but any rule that attempts to say “once you’re popular enough, your business has to follow somebody else’s rulebook for how you decide what content you must host” isn’t going to make sense to me.
They can't even enforce their own existing rules against things that are absolutely banned or illegal already - look at Facebook's controversies.
Put plainly, I do not believe it is possible for a social network to moderate hard or fast enough at Facebook/Twitter scale to reject section 230 immunity. Even if they took the step of pre-moderating all content before it appears on the site, there is simply too much content coming in for that to be a realistic option (and not lose a ton of users due to the delay putting people off).
To give you an idea of the scale we're talking about, Twitter does about 500,000,000 tweets per day.
>It’s also not clear to me why we’d expect a private company to have to answer to you or me or anybody else about decisions they make.
They answer to society at the end of the day, which can express its desires via the legal system. If society tires of social networks acting as unaccountable gatekeepers to the national conversation, society can act.
Put plainly, I do not believe it is possible for a social network to moderate hard or fast enough at Facebook/Twitter scale to reject section 230 immunity. Even if they took the step of pre-moderating all content before it appears on the site, there is simply too much content coming in for that to be a realistic option (and not lose a ton of users due to the delay putting people off).
To give you an idea of the scale we're talking about, Twitter does about 500,000,000 tweets per day.
>It’s also not clear to me why we’d expect a private company to have to answer to you or me or anybody else about decisions they make.
They answer to society at the end of the day, which can express its desires via the legal system. If society tires of social networks acting as unaccountable gatekeepers to the national conversation, society can act.
Laws can, do and need to change as technology changes the political reality. No one elected twitter. Building a pretty website should not give a private entity the power to control political speech.
I was going to rebut this, but thought better of it. My point is just, there's not much you can do with the jurisprudence as it exists, despite what you might think Marsh means.
Isn’t there precedent for people being able to speak in malls as part of freedom of speech in certain state constitutions as a consequence of Pruneyard vs Robbins?
There is, but that case only applies to California (where Twitter is HQ'd, fair enough), and I don't think it's ever been tested for an online service with a ToS.
I don't think many are saying Twitter's decision was illegal. They're just saying they don't think they should have made it.
I'd argue once X amount of users use your service you are sort of public service company already. You can't use "oh we are a business so we can do anything we want" to defend yourself about that.
It's a little more subtle than that - more strength of network effects than mere number of users - but pretty much.
>It's Twitter's own servers
That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.
That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.
> That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.
Twitter as best as we can tell is not offering services below cost to customers.
The free users are not the customers. The paying users purchasing ads are using the services to derive value from the population of free users on the platform.
If you want to reform this, target how companies convince people to give up their data in exchange for functionality rather than for money.
Twitter as best as we can tell is not offering services below cost to customers.
The free users are not the customers. The paying users purchasing ads are using the services to derive value from the population of free users on the platform.
If you want to reform this, target how companies convince people to give up their data in exchange for functionality rather than for money.
Twitter's freedom to boot anyone off their platform doesn't mean they are free from consequences.
Same argument used towards hate speech but this is more serious IMO because big tech is the new Standard Oil or Big Tobacco.
Same argument used towards hate speech but this is more serious IMO because big tech is the new Standard Oil or Big Tobacco.
Yes they can, but they shouldn't.
> Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.
Sure it matters. It matters because a bunch of people want businesses to allow all legal speech on their platform.
And this group of people is growing in support, and they might eventually get enough support to force these business to do so, using legislative changes such as required these major companies to follow common carrier laws.
Sure it matters. It matters because a bunch of people want businesses to allow all legal speech on their platform.
And this group of people is growing in support, and they might eventually get enough support to force these business to do so, using legislative changes such as required these major companies to follow common carrier laws.
It also matters in the sense that one can't avoid certain regulation by claiming to be a public forum rather than a publisher while not being a public forum at all
spoonjim(2)
Twitter is a company. And banning decisions are made by specific people in it. And it's not like after banning Trump they will happily consider their job done and go stock shelves at Walmart for minimum wage. Oh no, they have tasted power and they will continue finding new targets because their cushy job literally depends on it.
Twitter did NOTHING as Trump basically spend the last 4 year inciting a mob on their platform, threatening people, and committing HUNDREDS of violations that would get you and I kicked off.
THEN ... when there is a literal armed insurrection against the capital where TWO police officers died and 5 people total, and they had pipe bombs and hand cuffs to kidnap people, they waited until FRIDAY after the markets closed to ban Trump from the platform.
Twitter's behavior in this entire thing is beyond unacceptable and borders on treasonous.
I really think everyone needs to be calling for @jack to resign.
THEN ... when there is a literal armed insurrection against the capital where TWO police officers died and 5 people total, and they had pipe bombs and hand cuffs to kidnap people, they waited until FRIDAY after the markets closed to ban Trump from the platform.
Twitter's behavior in this entire thing is beyond unacceptable and borders on treasonous.
I really think everyone needs to be calling for @jack to resign.
Twitter is enforcing DMCA.
No, they aren’t. They’re not violating copyright via Twitter
They’re a private company they can do what they want. Are you against private enterprise?
In what world is Twitter a monopoly?
Its market cap is $36B. That's 2X less than Snap and 20X less than Facebook.
Its market cap is $36B. That's 2X less than Snap and 20X less than Facebook.
It's crazy isn't it? This community thinks Apple and Google are monopolies despite being competitors, ditto Twitter and Facebook.
Microsoft isn't though. Not because they don't completely own the Desktop PC market just as they ever did, but because that market is less relevant than it used to be for web devs.
I live in a strange time.
Microsoft isn't though. Not because they don't completely own the Desktop PC market just as they ever did, but because that market is less relevant than it used to be for web devs.
I live in a strange time.
You live in a town with no fresh water, and the only drinks available are sold by the local store. This store does not sell bottled water, wine, orange juice, milk, or tea. The only drinks it sells are Coca-Cola and Pepsi. But if you don't like Coca-Cola, just buy Pepsi - how silly it would be to complain of monopoly when you still have a choice!
Who is Twitter in your analogy?
The store? Then your analogy is flawed because there are other big stores that sell basically the same stuff and even some small shops. Not a monopoly. If all of them choose not to sell that product that doesn't mean anything. They don't have any obligation to carry whatever you want.
Man, people are being absurd about this whole thing.
The store? Then your analogy is flawed because there are other big stores that sell basically the same stuff and even some small shops. Not a monopoly. If all of them choose not to sell that product that doesn't mean anything. They don't have any obligation to carry whatever you want.
Man, people are being absurd about this whole thing.
The analogy is flawed. Saying there are no monopoly issues as long as there are at least two competitors is even more flawed.
If major cinema chains (Twitter, Facebook..) refuse to show a movie, but you can still rent the back of Moe's bar (and thousands bars like it) and use their second-hand projector (an analogy for the small audience of alternative platforms).
How successful will such movies be? Should we be concerned that the cinema chains can decide what sort of movies can be made or have any sort of impact?
If major cinema chains (Twitter, Facebook..) refuse to show a movie, but you can still rent the back of Moe's bar (and thousands bars like it) and use their second-hand projector (an analogy for the small audience of alternative platforms).
How successful will such movies be? Should we be concerned that the cinema chains can decide what sort of movies can be made or have any sort of impact?
> The analogy is flawed. Saying there are no monopoly issues as long as there are at least two competitors is even more flawed.
There are significantly more than two companies that allow mass communication over the internet. In fact, there are a significant number of perfectly free and open ways to communicate over the internet.
Why is Twitter special?
> If major cinema chains (Twitter, Facebook..) refuse to show a movie, but you can still rent the back of Moe's bar (and thousands bars like it) and use their second-hand projector (an analogy for the small audience of alternative platforms). How successful will such movies be?
Sorta my point, because that happens all the time. No one goes around saying theater chains are monopolies and need to show every movie anyone deigns to have projected on a screen.
> Should we be concerned that the cinema chains can decide what sort of movies can be made or have any sort of impact?
Maybe, but that isn't legal standing for doing anything. If you don't like it, boycott theaters, tell your friends not to go to them, promote alternatives that deliver what you want.
Oh, but then the market might disagree with you and keep going to the theaters anyway. Well tough. You're not entitled to force people to care.
Alternatively, push for legislation around online communication platforms and how they are allowed to determine who can and cannot speak on them. But then don't be surprised when those rules apply to your mailing list too.
There are significantly more than two companies that allow mass communication over the internet. In fact, there are a significant number of perfectly free and open ways to communicate over the internet.
Why is Twitter special?
> If major cinema chains (Twitter, Facebook..) refuse to show a movie, but you can still rent the back of Moe's bar (and thousands bars like it) and use their second-hand projector (an analogy for the small audience of alternative platforms). How successful will such movies be?
Sorta my point, because that happens all the time. No one goes around saying theater chains are monopolies and need to show every movie anyone deigns to have projected on a screen.
> Should we be concerned that the cinema chains can decide what sort of movies can be made or have any sort of impact?
Maybe, but that isn't legal standing for doing anything. If you don't like it, boycott theaters, tell your friends not to go to them, promote alternatives that deliver what you want.
Oh, but then the market might disagree with you and keep going to the theaters anyway. Well tough. You're not entitled to force people to care.
Alternatively, push for legislation around online communication platforms and how they are allowed to determine who can and cannot speak on them. But then don't be surprised when those rules apply to your mailing list too.
To extend the analogy so it's more accurate: or you could go to the local stream and drink some water (host your own speech).
To add some spice from the real world, you may find that the local stream has run dry:
Farmers rely on access to groundwater for the cultivation of their crops. but since Coca-Cola's arrival, they have been confronted with a serious decline in water levels. [...] documents from the government's water ministry show that water levels remained stable from 1995 until 2000, when the Coca-Cola plant became operational. Water levels then dropped by almost 10 metres over the following five years.
https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/coca-cola-drinking-world...
The company was blamed for depleting the local supply of water even in communities where it did not have operations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/31/h...
Farmers rely on access to groundwater for the cultivation of their crops. but since Coca-Cola's arrival, they have been confronted with a serious decline in water levels. [...] documents from the government's water ministry show that water levels remained stable from 1995 until 2000, when the Coca-Cola plant became operational. Water levels then dropped by almost 10 metres over the following five years.
https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/coca-cola-drinking-world...
The company was blamed for depleting the local supply of water even in communities where it did not have operations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/31/h...
> You live in a town with no fresh water, and the only drinks available are sold by the local store.
Sounds like the plot of Idiocracy.
Sounds like the plot of Idiocracy.
They are monopolies within a set of respective markets/niches when it comes to speech platforms.
GP's point was that private individuals have the power to arbitrarily deplatform speech they don't like, no court order required. The counter argument is 'go find another speech platform', but it doesn't work, because speech platforms have been monopolised by a single-digit handful of individuals.
GP's point was that private individuals have the power to arbitrarily deplatform speech they don't like, no court order required. The counter argument is 'go find another speech platform', but it doesn't work, because speech platforms have been monopolised by a single-digit handful of individuals.
i think there may be some conflating of "very powerful" (?) with monopoly here.
it does not take much effort to realize that twitter is not a monopoly in the space of speech platforms. it's not clear to me that twitter is particularly unique as a speech platform: blogs minimally could serve this role, as could mastodon. more controversially perhaps: facebook/instagram.
contrast that with a situation where you literally /cannot/ get utilities delivered to your house because the utility company doesn't like you: seems like a fairly stark difference to me.
it does not take much effort to realize that twitter is not a monopoly in the space of speech platforms. it's not clear to me that twitter is particularly unique as a speech platform: blogs minimally could serve this role, as could mastodon. more controversially perhaps: facebook/instagram.
contrast that with a situation where you literally /cannot/ get utilities delivered to your house because the utility company doesn't like you: seems like a fairly stark difference to me.
This is a logical fallacy and the equivalent of saying 'you are welcome to practice free speech, in this here sound-proofed room'.
Twitter is one of a small handful of platforms where an individual can share an idea and have that idea spread - as long as the owners of Twitter don't disagree with that idea. It's not because twitter is special, it's because it was one of the first to achieve a sufficiently large userbase.
Defending arbitrary censorship on these platforms as 'oh well it's a private entity so they can do what they like' misses the forest for the trees. Technology has shifted the power balance for free expression, and applying pre-technology laws and mindsets to it just empowers that small handful of individuals to manipulate public discourse even more. Twitter doesn't quite have a monopoly on speech, but it's damn close in terms of practical outcomes. The fact that the legal definition of `monopoly` hasn't caught up with that, doesn't change the matter.
Twitter is one of a small handful of platforms where an individual can share an idea and have that idea spread - as long as the owners of Twitter don't disagree with that idea. It's not because twitter is special, it's because it was one of the first to achieve a sufficiently large userbase.
Defending arbitrary censorship on these platforms as 'oh well it's a private entity so they can do what they like' misses the forest for the trees. Technology has shifted the power balance for free expression, and applying pre-technology laws and mindsets to it just empowers that small handful of individuals to manipulate public discourse even more. Twitter doesn't quite have a monopoly on speech, but it's damn close in terms of practical outcomes. The fact that the legal definition of `monopoly` hasn't caught up with that, doesn't change the matter.
> This is a logical fallacy and the equivalent of saying 'you are welcome to practice free speech, in this here sound-proofed room'.
No, it's saying you're welcome to practice free speech, you just can't borrow my megaphone to do it.
How hard is this to understand? You are not entitled to use other people's property without their consent.
If twitter was actually the only way to communicate with people on the internet you might have a case, but that is completely, ridiculously, absurdly not true.
No, it's saying you're welcome to practice free speech, you just can't borrow my megaphone to do it.
How hard is this to understand? You are not entitled to use other people's property without their consent.
If twitter was actually the only way to communicate with people on the internet you might have a case, but that is completely, ridiculously, absurdly not true.
Twitter+FB+ a single-digit handful of other platforms are the only mechanisms for a private individual to share an idea and have it spread to a wide audience.
Yes, you can make your own blog and post whatever you like on it (actually these days even that is questionable with cloud vendors deplatforming blogs they don't like), but the chances of your speech reaching a wide audience are millions of times smaller than if you just posted on one of those established platforms and your speech was allowed to spread without censorship.
The problem with your analogy is that your megaphone makes it virtually impossible for anyone else to have one. This was not the case in the early days of the internet prior to these hyper centralised platforms emerging. This is where both the law and just general public mindset hasn't yet caught up with the implications of modern social media. In business, we have anti-trust laws specifically for this scenario. In information and social media, we have nothing.
A cafe owner refusing service to an individual is not comparable to a global-scale speech platform selectively suppressing ideas that the owner doesn't like from reaching a wide audience.
Yes, you can make your own blog and post whatever you like on it (actually these days even that is questionable with cloud vendors deplatforming blogs they don't like), but the chances of your speech reaching a wide audience are millions of times smaller than if you just posted on one of those established platforms and your speech was allowed to spread without censorship.
The problem with your analogy is that your megaphone makes it virtually impossible for anyone else to have one. This was not the case in the early days of the internet prior to these hyper centralised platforms emerging. This is where both the law and just general public mindset hasn't yet caught up with the implications of modern social media. In business, we have anti-trust laws specifically for this scenario. In information and social media, we have nothing.
A cafe owner refusing service to an individual is not comparable to a global-scale speech platform selectively suppressing ideas that the owner doesn't like from reaching a wide audience.
> Twitter+FB+ a single-digit handful of other platforms are the only mechanisms for a private individual to share an idea and have it spread to a wide audience.
Bullshit. They're merely the easiest. People were sharing ideas far and wide long before these companies came into existence. You have a right to free speech, no one is required to help you spread it.
> A cafe owner refusing service to an individual is not comparable to a global-scale speech platform selectively suppressing ideas that the owner doesn't like from reaching a wide audience.
Maybe not, but I've yet to see a good argument for why being a global scale speech platform inherently means that anyone has a right to tell Twitter who they can and cannot ban.
Again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences for Twitter, I'm just saying that those consequences should be social, not legal.
I feel like the people here are arguing that the reason they should face legal consequences isn't that they've done anything illegal or that necessarily should be illegal, only that they don't think social consequences will work and they can't stand the idea that other people might not care as much about it as they do.
Bullshit. They're merely the easiest. People were sharing ideas far and wide long before these companies came into existence. You have a right to free speech, no one is required to help you spread it.
> A cafe owner refusing service to an individual is not comparable to a global-scale speech platform selectively suppressing ideas that the owner doesn't like from reaching a wide audience.
Maybe not, but I've yet to see a good argument for why being a global scale speech platform inherently means that anyone has a right to tell Twitter who they can and cannot ban.
Again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be consequences for Twitter, I'm just saying that those consequences should be social, not legal.
I feel like the people here are arguing that the reason they should face legal consequences isn't that they've done anything illegal or that necessarily should be illegal, only that they don't think social consequences will work and they can't stand the idea that other people might not care as much about it as they do.
It is a communication monopoly.
I can access whitehouse.gov (or sci hub). The former is there explicitly to communicate the to the public the ideas and words of the occupant of the White House. Why do people keep saying monopoly when there are clear alternatives that aren't moderated through a private site/service?
It's a monopoly on social graphs. I don't want to rediscover and invite my friends everytime I start a new account on another service.
I for one am glad that our new moral enforcers are keeping us safe from the possibility of free academic knowledge.
Moral and legal are different.
I think Sci-Hub is ethical. I'm under no illusions that this somehow makes it legal.
Sci-Hub explicitly bills itself as a "pirate website." Twitter's rules explicitly ban both copyright violation and illegal activities. Therefore Sci-Hub is violation of Twitter's rules.
Twitter may well be very selective in their enforcement, but the fact that Sci-Hub is violating Twitter's rules is not in doubt, is it?
I think Sci-Hub is ethical. I'm under no illusions that this somehow makes it legal.
Sci-Hub explicitly bills itself as a "pirate website." Twitter's rules explicitly ban both copyright violation and illegal activities. Therefore Sci-Hub is violation of Twitter's rules.
Twitter may well be very selective in their enforcement, but the fact that Sci-Hub is violating Twitter's rules is not in doubt, is it?
What about The Pirate Bay account? Should it be banned as well?
For that matter, what about the Pirate Party?
And every single person advocating civil disobedience. From legalize pot on.
Which countries' laws? It's kind of illegal in civilized countries to decapitate homosexuals. Will twitter ban this account now: https://twitter.com/ksamofaen?lang=en They're kind of for it.
Anyway as Matt Levine points out everything is securities fraud nowadays so when any of these decisions burn the share price even a bit, they'll get a class action to deal with. Not sure that's the right way to deal with this sort of thing at all but here we are.
Which countries' laws? It's kind of illegal in civilized countries to decapitate homosexuals. Will twitter ban this account now: https://twitter.com/ksamofaen?lang=en They're kind of for it.
Anyway as Matt Levine points out everything is securities fraud nowadays so when any of these decisions burn the share price even a bit, they'll get a class action to deal with. Not sure that's the right way to deal with this sort of thing at all but here we are.
Plenty of derivative creation (ex: meme) probably has the copyright issue. Should twitter ban them all?
Meme falls under fair use usually.
They really don't. e.g. distracted boyfriend meme is definitely copyrighted, just adding text on it does not make it fair use.
To see the tweets:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub
I should donate more to the Internet Archive. I hate how so much history can just disappear at a whim if it weren't for them.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub
I should donate more to the Internet Archive. I hate how so much history can just disappear at a whim if it weren't for them.
How can you see Tweets there? When I try to open some past snapshots, they just render ajaxy "Something went wrong".
(I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap.)
(I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap.)
I see tweets here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201225111818/https://twitter.c...
I use Chromium for this because on Firefox I have the Referer header disabled and that causes the WaybackMachine to return a 498 HTTP status on an internal API call, but otherwise I see no issues.
Images:
https://ibb.co/1mRqyvW
https://ibb.co/F8TbCLv
https://ibb.co/P1xZwZT
> I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place
I'm sure it must have taken some effort by the IA team, but Twitter is a pretty important source to archive, so I'm not as surprised because of that. They simply rock and can be expected of greatness.
The infinite scroll works, but zooming on images doesn't. That's a bit of a shame because Twitter clips them, and they can sometimes contain important content. Loading replies also doesn't work. Still way better than nothing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201225111818/https://twitter.c...
I use Chromium for this because on Firefox I have the Referer header disabled and that causes the WaybackMachine to return a 498 HTTP status on an internal API call, but otherwise I see no issues.
Images:
https://ibb.co/1mRqyvW
https://ibb.co/F8TbCLv
https://ibb.co/P1xZwZT
> I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place
I'm sure it must have taken some effort by the IA team, but Twitter is a pretty important source to archive, so I'm not as surprised because of that. They simply rock and can be expected of greatness.
The infinite scroll works, but zooming on images doesn't. That's a bit of a shame because Twitter clips them, and they can sometimes contain important content. Loading replies also doesn't work. Still way better than nothing.
I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap
Up until a few months ago, you could still get the old UI if you used a suitable UA header, and until more recently, the "plain HTML" mobile.twitter.com version was available.
But with those shutdown, they are definitely trying to make it hard to consume their content in anything other than their "approved" way, which makes one wonder...
Up until a few months ago, you could still get the old UI if you used a suitable UA header, and until more recently, the "plain HTML" mobile.twitter.com version was available.
But with those shutdown, they are definitely trying to make it hard to consume their content in anything other than their "approved" way, which makes one wonder...
It's funny. If a direct popular vote was held on making publicly-funded research freely available, it would pass by a staggering margin. Yet here we are, many easily-solvable issues ignored by government officials later, pretending representative democracy is a valid form of democracy.
If a direct popular vote was held promising voters $100,000, it would also pass by a huge margin. Probably every year.
I doubt that. Giving out (free) money indiscriminately will not immediately pass a direct popular vote.
A good case is the Swiss referendum on universal basic income a few years ago that was voted out. And the Swiss have the money to pull it off if they wish.
A good case is the Swiss referendum on universal basic income a few years ago that was voted out. And the Swiss have the money to pull it off if they wish.
And yet there are still accounts for torrent sites (@tpb is alive and well last I heard) and other sites that allow for the distribution of copyrighted material.
Something is fishy here, and I really really really don't see the motivation for Twitter to have done this by itself. If this were part of a sweeping crackdown on accounts that promote 'piracy' it'd make sense, but it's not.
Feels more like "a board member has a friend who made a phone call" kind of thing.
Something is fishy here, and I really really really don't see the motivation for Twitter to have done this by itself. If this were part of a sweeping crackdown on accounts that promote 'piracy' it'd make sense, but it's not.
Feels more like "a board member has a friend who made a phone call" kind of thing.
Yeah they really pick and choose what they ban based on "personal opinion".
100th reminder to stop using Twitter and to stop acting like it's an acceptable medium of communication.
[deleted]
What’s your alternative method to reach a mass audience?
Produce something of actual intrinsic value and the word usually gets out on its own. Find smaller communities that are more focused on what you actually care about. Targeting the entire internet as your desired audience is the root cause of most of our troubles today.
That's a lot of wishful thinking
Is our collective imagination really so stunted that we cannot conceive of what the world was like before Twitter existed?
The telephone is terrible in many ways too. Not using it or something very much like it is not much of an option even if we can conceive of the world before Alexander Graham Bell stole the idea abusing the patent office to do it.
Why does everyone feel the need to reach a mass audience?
Print a newsletter and mail it.
I'm not very familiar with Sci-Hub, but I doubt they were uploading pirated content to be hosted on Twitter, so what would their violation be? Incitement to commit copyright violation?
Ah yes and torrent sites don't host any content either :P
Not really the same thing unless they were linking to particular copyright works you could find elsewhere, is it?
GoDaddy booted AR15.com, it's becoming clear the FAANG companies are flexing their power. If you're not on the corporate approved list, get across the tracks. I'm appalled at the extremist stuff, such as Parler hosted, but this path is lined with primroses.
Meanwhile they’re still hosting all sorts of accounts of hackers, jail breakers and many people obviously breaking the law.
It’s a slippery slope and they’ve started slipping. Now how do you stop?
It’s a slippery slope and they’ve started slipping. Now how do you stop?
You can't, someone will always be complaining about "X didn't get banned, buy Y did".
The only solution is for Twitter to say "You all are right, our moderation policy isn't fair it leans to the left more than the right, but we think Twitter is a great product that provides a lot of value. If you disagree and want to leave, we understand"
The only solution is for Twitter to say "You all are right, our moderation policy isn't fair it leans to the left more than the right, but we think Twitter is a great product that provides a lot of value. If you disagree and want to leave, we understand"
Which is ironic since it is the right that always wants to shut down things like art/film/music/etc that they object. The gaslighting is ridiculous.
I think the general discourse around high profile account banning raises some interesting questions. I've seen a lot of people in my (generally liberal) social bubble carry the line that Twitter, as a private corporation, has the right to ban accounts for whatever reason they see fit. While technically this is true, should it be? Is there a threshold where a service becomes more of a public good than a private enterprise? I think a lot of us would argue that making ISPs into publicly owned utilities would be beneficial for users.
I think perhaps a legislative approach to monopoly should be nationalizing rather than breaking up. Monopolies can be valuable for consumers if their claws are trimmed.
I think perhaps a legislative approach to monopoly should be nationalizing rather than breaking up. Monopolies can be valuable for consumers if their claws are trimmed.
Monopolies are wonderful if used responsibly. Having 1 standard way to do something across the board can solve entire universes of problems. Interstate highway system, electrical grid, internet, etc. all fall very cleanly into that bucket.
Splitting up a technology company like Amazon or Google would probably just make matters worse over the long haul. Instead of 1 obvious regulatory target you would wind up with several and this creates more shadowy areas for perverse incentives to grow like mold. Just look at how splitting up ATT has played out. It ultimately re-aggregated into more-or-less the same monster but with even more power and influence than in the 80s. If ATT would have been nationalized instead of split up, I'd have a hard time believing we wouldn't have better internet access on average today.
Splitting up a technology company like Amazon or Google would probably just make matters worse over the long haul. Instead of 1 obvious regulatory target you would wind up with several and this creates more shadowy areas for perverse incentives to grow like mold. Just look at how splitting up ATT has played out. It ultimately re-aggregated into more-or-less the same monster but with even more power and influence than in the 80s. If ATT would have been nationalized instead of split up, I'd have a hard time believing we wouldn't have better internet access on average today.
>Interstate highway system, electrical grid, internet, etc. all fall very cleanly into that bucket
Insurance is another highly networked product that benefits from monopoly
The insurance companies of the 19th and 20th centuries were boons to society because their local buckets of money could be invested in local businesses and spent (practically as a donation) on advertising at the minor league baseball diamond or the church bulletin
The sooner we mitigate the loss of those good effects, the sooner We can benefit from the efficiency of insurance monopolies whose risk pools will be as large as is practicable rather than driven by historical accidents
Insurance is another highly networked product that benefits from monopoly
The insurance companies of the 19th and 20th centuries were boons to society because their local buckets of money could be invested in local businesses and spent (practically as a donation) on advertising at the minor league baseball diamond or the church bulletin
The sooner we mitigate the loss of those good effects, the sooner We can benefit from the efficiency of insurance monopolies whose risk pools will be as large as is practicable rather than driven by historical accidents
What would a nationalized, public version of Twitter even look like? Every citizen is granted and guaranteed the right to spew their vitriol publicly where everyone can see it?
I agree with you about ISPs, but I don't see the sense in the argument that I keep seeing about designating social media as a utility or public good. What would that even mean?
Twitter continues to shore up ill will from all sides of the political spectrum. Mastodon, Matrix, and other decentralized, federated communication platforms are increasingly in a good position to put themselves forward as the actual solution to this problem.
I agree with you about ISPs, but I don't see the sense in the argument that I keep seeing about designating social media as a utility or public good. What would that even mean?
Twitter continues to shore up ill will from all sides of the political spectrum. Mastodon, Matrix, and other decentralized, federated communication platforms are increasingly in a good position to put themselves forward as the actual solution to this problem.
[deleted]
They should start with nationalizing the ISPs?
They’re a private company, Sci-Hub has to make their own social media service
Can't host it with Google or Amazon, though, as those companies are also willing to take you down before any injunction.
DNS providers will also take you out if there's social pressure to do so; see the recent GoDaddy action against AR15.com. Not sure how you work around that.
As for Internet connection, there was another recent action by an ISP which blocked access to Twitter. So you're not necessarily safe with your ISP either.
I think the only story I haven't heard yet is a landlord evicting its tenants for hosting objectionable content. But without any of the above services, it doesn't really matter.
All that said, it's still possible to stay accessible even if your content isn't legal. The important point is that legal but broadly unacceptable content is never safe. You can be kicked out by any provider at any layer, and getting kicked out once serves as a signal to all the other providers at that layer that they are expected to do the same.
It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there. They don't need law enforcement on their side, they'll run you out all the same.
DNS providers will also take you out if there's social pressure to do so; see the recent GoDaddy action against AR15.com. Not sure how you work around that.
As for Internet connection, there was another recent action by an ISP which blocked access to Twitter. So you're not necessarily safe with your ISP either.
I think the only story I haven't heard yet is a landlord evicting its tenants for hosting objectionable content. But without any of the above services, it doesn't really matter.
All that said, it's still possible to stay accessible even if your content isn't legal. The important point is that legal but broadly unacceptable content is never safe. You can be kicked out by any provider at any layer, and getting kicked out once serves as a signal to all the other providers at that layer that they are expected to do the same.
It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there. They don't need law enforcement on their side, they'll run you out all the same.
This point is why I believe DNS, network and colo services should only be taken down (for content) by legal order.
Social media is layer 7, I think it needs less regulation in that regard. It's like saying "you can't have your business in the phone book" vs. "you can't have a phone".
Social media is layer 7, I think it needs less regulation in that regard. It's like saying "you can't have your business in the phone book" vs. "you can't have a phone".
>It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there.
And yet an entire town ostracizing someone for a non-protected attribute is actually protected speech and behavior under the first amendment. If you can't participate in polite society, there's very few things the government actually guarantees you.
And yet an entire town ostracizing someone for a non-protected attribute is actually protected speech and behavior under the first amendment. If you can't participate in polite society, there's very few things the government actually guarantees you.
Yes, this is true. I'd also point out that members of "polite society" may ostracize you for many reasons, including perceived sexual deviancy, punk rock music, dancing, any degree of alcohol or drug use, communist leanings, anarchist leanings, and more. We just have to trust that liberal culture will hold people morally accountable for the people they ostracize, and that those who are impacted have the means to migrate to more accepting towns.
Continuing our analogy, I hope that we use our power to ostracize "netizens" very sparingly. And I do mean our power, not that of the tech giants, who merely do what they believe will be best for their image as decided by us. I also hope that there continues to be a competitive landscape of online countries, each more liberal or authoritarian in its own unique ways, from where differing individuals and organizations can connect with the world.
Continuing our analogy, I hope that we use our power to ostracize "netizens" very sparingly. And I do mean our power, not that of the tech giants, who merely do what they believe will be best for their image as decided by us. I also hope that there continues to be a competitive landscape of online countries, each more liberal or authoritarian in its own unique ways, from where differing individuals and organizations can connect with the world.
I like that analogy.
Also read on here recently that it's super hard to knock facebook offline because they own all the pieces, even their own domain registrar. Now I've been wondering how hard it is to set up my own domain registrar.
Also read on here recently that it's super hard to knock facebook offline because they own all the pieces, even their own domain registrar. Now I've been wondering how hard it is to set up my own domain registrar.
Can ICANN or some other body block you if they don't like the kind of domains you are registering?
Yes, that's a legit option. But it does not mean that what twitter has done here is not very, very wrong. So bad in fact that individual humans should reflect on it and decide if they want to continue supporting twitter themselves by using it.
This is the inevitable end of any popular centralized incorporated means of communication.
This is the inevitable end of any popular centralized incorporated means of communication.
And generate their own power for their own homemade servers.
Twitter is a public company, no?
I don't support piracy. So I don't support Sci-hub. But I believe that publishers are bilking the public and that publicly funded research should be made freely available. The real way to fix this is to disrupt the reputational incentives academics (and deans supporting this) have to keep publishing in these journals. For some reason, I think this is an unpopular opinion on HN.
For most academic researchers, publishing is a net cost: they aren't getting royalties when people pay to read their work. "Piracy" of these documents does not deprive the creators of anything. The only entities it hurts are the organizations of questionable social value who exist by gatekeeping this information.
No one is putting the proverbial gun to academic researchers heads to use these publishers.
Yes they absolutely are. Decoupling academia from this horrendous publishing parasites is an ongoing project that has taken a vast amount of effort from a vast number of academics and continues.
You have metrics. You pulish with the parasites, they're bigger than with some open-source journal nobody has heard of. Your career progression relies on getting published by the "most prestigious" journal.
You want your work read. Everybody in your field read parasite journal A, there isn't a good substitute. You're stuffed.
You don't get to decide. You're one author. the head of school had decided for you.
I can go on. The parasitic publishers are /hated/ by everybody. They provide nothing at all of value. They have been a very successful example of rent-seeking through the puchase of prestige titles then jacking up the subscription prices.
You underestimate the level of hatred accross the political spectrum from socialist to libertarian of these parasitic (insert metaphor here).
The gun they have to the head isn't perfect. They will go but they continue to extract a vast amount of rent on the way down.
You have metrics. You pulish with the parasites, they're bigger than with some open-source journal nobody has heard of. Your career progression relies on getting published by the "most prestigious" journal.
You want your work read. Everybody in your field read parasite journal A, there isn't a good substitute. You're stuffed.
You don't get to decide. You're one author. the head of school had decided for you.
I can go on. The parasitic publishers are /hated/ by everybody. They provide nothing at all of value. They have been a very successful example of rent-seeking through the puchase of prestige titles then jacking up the subscription prices.
You underestimate the level of hatred accross the political spectrum from socialist to libertarian of these parasitic (insert metaphor here).
The gun they have to the head isn't perfect. They will go but they continue to extract a vast amount of rent on the way down.
You should support piracy and especially Sci-hub. In bilking the public, the publishers restrict access to scientific knowledge. This restriction delays and limits progress. While any individual hinderance is minor, this is repeated millions of times over. The lost progress is lost to you, as much as to everyone else. How can anyone support parasites who hurt the whole of humanity and don't even have the decency to pay the scientists whose work they profit off? Piracy in this case is not only acceptable, it is a moral imperative.
I'd say it's the publishers who cause the problem and which need to be disrupted. When scientific societies ran most publishing, journal prices were quite reasonable.
BTW, you have to thank Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell and friend of Jeff Epstein for the state of affairs: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
BTW, you have to thank Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell and friend of Jeff Epstein for the state of affairs: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
The only "disruption" required is for funding agencies, especially governments, to mandate immediate open access as a condition of grants. Milder approaches such as the NIH's current policy have been spectacularly successful, because nobody turns down that kind of money. The main problem has been intense lobbying by publishers, including some academic societies. But open access is not an issue where it should be difficult to assemble a large bipartisan coalition in favor, even in the US!
As a scientist I can tell you that Sci-hub is critical to the progress of humankind. I can't even describe how many times we rely on it and how much poorer the world would be without it.
Maybe you should reconsider your position on "piracy" if it would lead to a significant slowdown in solving the serious challenges that face us in the 21st century.
Maybe you should reconsider your position on "piracy" if it would lead to a significant slowdown in solving the serious challenges that face us in the 21st century.
There are legal avenues to do this. We already have Arxiv (admittedly not peer reviewed) and I believe that there are some open Wikipedia-style journals in the works as well.
It's unpopular because that disruption hasn't happened yet, and there's no guarantee that it will happen in the next 50 years. In the mean time, the average American is stuck interacting with cutting edge research--research which is often funded publicly--via:
1. Shitty science journalism with paywalled citations
2. $300/yr textbooks
3. Crime
Intuitively, it's difficult to imagine something less copyrightable than a scientific discovery. The world is upside-down.
1. Shitty science journalism with paywalled citations
2. $300/yr textbooks
3. Crime
Intuitively, it's difficult to imagine something less copyrightable than a scientific discovery. The world is upside-down.
they could sneak it in now because it'll get drowned out by all the other news, and the applause they get for "cracking down on nazis".
but neither are good news for free speech. I'm glad twitter purges alt-right and Q accounts but then why use it as an opportunity to also silence a platform that is the biggest hit since the first time a human rights lawyer uttered "Open Access".
pretty glad I left twitter in 2017. I still read twitter via other people's list (those I used to follow) and via searches on nitter. If you know a great list you still have doom scrolling. But the good thing: when I get too angry (or even too much in agreement with the OP), there is no way to share it with the world. This is both frustrating (in the moment), but literally has no downsides. It has never been once that I woke up the next morning regretting I hadn't already shared whatever my opinion was on literally any subject earlier.
The same platform shapes news today. Literally any subject there are weekly instances where a journo got their story through some "influencer or thought leader". Elon Musk tweeted about Signal and the number of downloads increase within 1 day five-fold. Story is in the NYT and international news. Twitter is a surreal place that shapes way too much the news-cycle in partisan ways. Everyone complains about news being divisive but forgetting where the division comes from - there is simply no way a leftist journalist will have many followers from the right and vice versa. It's been like this forever but twitter (and all of social media) amplified this a million fold. Blame journalism for sure but in the same sentence also damn these individuals requesting features that "drive engagement". How the actual F should an algorithm drive engagement when there is no way of really telling what that engagement will cause. Twitter judged from history has never done the right thing when it could have been up to them. They always waited until enough damage had been done to justify what should be "ongoing housekeeping".
[1] https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592
but neither are good news for free speech. I'm glad twitter purges alt-right and Q accounts but then why use it as an opportunity to also silence a platform that is the biggest hit since the first time a human rights lawyer uttered "Open Access".
pretty glad I left twitter in 2017. I still read twitter via other people's list (those I used to follow) and via searches on nitter. If you know a great list you still have doom scrolling. But the good thing: when I get too angry (or even too much in agreement with the OP), there is no way to share it with the world. This is both frustrating (in the moment), but literally has no downsides. It has never been once that I woke up the next morning regretting I hadn't already shared whatever my opinion was on literally any subject earlier.
The same platform shapes news today. Literally any subject there are weekly instances where a journo got their story through some "influencer or thought leader". Elon Musk tweeted about Signal and the number of downloads increase within 1 day five-fold. Story is in the NYT and international news. Twitter is a surreal place that shapes way too much the news-cycle in partisan ways. Everyone complains about news being divisive but forgetting where the division comes from - there is simply no way a leftist journalist will have many followers from the right and vice versa. It's been like this forever but twitter (and all of social media) amplified this a million fold. Blame journalism for sure but in the same sentence also damn these individuals requesting features that "drive engagement". How the actual F should an algorithm drive engagement when there is no way of really telling what that engagement will cause. Twitter judged from history has never done the right thing when it could have been up to them. They always waited until enough damage had been done to justify what should be "ongoing housekeeping".
[1] https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592
This is absurd. I'd love to see Twitter shutting down Twitter's account because There are lots of Fake News spreading on Twitter!
"Fake news" isn't illegal. Piracy is.
I find the notion of owning scientific knowledge kind of unsettling...
[deleted]
This is because science has yet to prove ownership isn't a real concept.
You mean, sharing is illegal unless done in a controlled way?
In a just world, any organization which tries to prevent the free exchange of scientific information would be dismantled.
Who cares about Twitter anymore? Telegram has more active users than this minor blogspam outlet :)
Twitter is helping the argument that platforms are to be content moderators. This kills 230. This will entrench Twitter as one of the few social media services capable, due to the need to moderate at scale.
It’s funny — I found this link a few days ago and now it seems like it applies here.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
It’s a summary of how section 230 works and is worded. The tone of the piece is overly hash and critical of its readers (prompting me unnecessarily to write this paragraph), but it raises some good points, and I was surprised by more than one of the clarifications it made.
Basically, as it applies here, I don’t think Twitter moderating its content to remove SciHub goes against Section 230. My understanding is that it’s specifically covered by 230.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
It’s a summary of how section 230 works and is worded. The tone of the piece is overly hash and critical of its readers (prompting me unnecessarily to write this paragraph), but it raises some good points, and I was surprised by more than one of the clarifications it made.
Basically, as it applies here, I don’t think Twitter moderating its content to remove SciHub goes against Section 230. My understanding is that it’s specifically covered by 230.
I'm not saying the article is totally wrong, but at least one of the studies they linked to is Internet industry funded (NetChoice: "Described by Politico as tech's most aggressive lobbying presence in Washington D.C."), and authored by one "Michael Masnick" which is the same name as the author of the Techdirt article and also the name of Techdirt's founder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techdirt
So, until something is litigated to the point of SCOTUS precedent, I think most things are at the level of "that's just like, your opinion, man."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techdirt
So, until something is litigated to the point of SCOTUS precedent, I think most things are at the level of "that's just like, your opinion, man."
Creating a giant barrier to entry for competition?
Yes, because of the tooling that will be an upfront requirement and cost.
However, as pointed out elsewhere, much litigation is still needed to really understand the extent of 230 and thus, "this is like my own opinion, man."
However, as pointed out elsewhere, much litigation is still needed to really understand the extent of 230 and thus, "this is like my own opinion, man."
Really, why can't US and/or EU government allocate a modest sum from the budget to establish public journals and solve the problem forever. This system seems so obviously broken.
This is eyebrow raising but hardly the news to lose any sleep over. If for example Google were to unilaterally purge sci-hub from its search results (for “greater good”, not as a result of however questionable but legal-at-this-point takedown request) that would be a serious escalation.
What had Sci-Hub talked about on their feed? Who followed it & can report in?
This seems like the ban may well have been because of who Sci-Hub is, not what they said. Which is an interesting complication to this story of what content/who companies opt to host.
This seems like the ban may well have been because of who Sci-Hub is, not what they said. Which is an interesting complication to this story of what content/who companies opt to host.
According to the linked article, most of the tweets were about open science issue, though a few tweets may have had a link to Sci-Hub’s website. The latter probably used as an excuse to ban them.
I just checked and the pirate bay for example has a perfectly fine twitter account with a great handle (@tpb), and their profile even links to the website. Not sure if they have any tweets linking to their website though.
I just checked and the pirate bay for example has a perfectly fine twitter account with a great handle (@tpb), and their profile even links to the website. Not sure if they have any tweets linking to their website though.
Great, we need more of that!
With politicans it is easy to hide behind partisan idealogy to justify that everything is fine.
The more regular, relatively apolitical accounts are getting banned, the more people realize that something is wrong with the way Twitter acts.
With politicans it is easy to hide behind partisan idealogy to justify that everything is fine.
The more regular, relatively apolitical accounts are getting banned, the more people realize that something is wrong with the way Twitter acts.
[deleted]
It is very surprising to see this happen without an order from a court or law enforcement.
Twitter flexed, everyone flinched. Expecting more flexing is where I am. They say the slippery slope is a fallacy, but I am starting to think of that as a reflex saying when someone gets caught shoving the Overton Window.
Slippery slope is a fallacy when no evidence that the slope is actually slipper is presented. If someone were to, for example, highlight unchecked incentives Twitter has to further censor then that'd be a valid argument.
Well, the incentive can be as tiny as "I don't like them." Recall Cloudflare's CEO waking up "in a bad mood."
[deleted]
This really seems like an overreaction that is overshadowed by weightier events. Hope they reconsider..
Not a fan of "pirated" as the descriptive word for what Sci-Hub does. I'm sure some of it fits that description. On the other hand, a fair amount of these papers are funded with taxpayer dollars, and shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls in the first place.
[deleted]
The chairs at the DMV are also paid with taxpayer dollars. I’d be arrested if I tried to walk out the door with one.
If you took a photo of one of the chairs and looked at it at home you'd be just fine though. You're mixing up theft and copyright infringement.
You wouldn't download a chair from the DMV
Someone should design a a front-end framework for which anachronistic analogies like this make sense.
E.g., if a user selects some text and chooses "Copy," the text gets deleted and a listener sends a message back to the server to signal that the text has been "pirated."
At that point the server not only deletes the associated data, but sends a message to all extant clients to remove the given text.
Kinda like a realtime borrow-checker, but not so much for memory safety as for the sheer stupidity of it.
Edit: clarification
E.g., if a user selects some text and chooses "Copy," the text gets deleted and a listener sends a message back to the server to signal that the text has been "pirated."
At that point the server not only deletes the associated data, but sends a message to all extant clients to remove the given text.
Kinda like a realtime borrow-checker, but not so much for memory safety as for the sheer stupidity of it.
Edit: clarification
That's totally the same thing - because downloading a paper destroys the original copy.
Let's talk about the purpose of these things, chairs & papaers.
The purpose of a chair is to enhance the space it resides in by enabling folks to rest/sit in the chair.
The purpose of a paper is to document science, such that others can see that science, replicate it, learn from it, extend it; the purpose of a paper is to present science such that we can all beget yet more science to happen.
The purpose of a chair is to enhance the space it resides in by enabling folks to rest/sit in the chair.
The purpose of a paper is to document science, such that others can see that science, replicate it, learn from it, extend it; the purpose of a paper is to present science such that we can all beget yet more science to happen.
Intellectual "property" is not property.
Did you enjoy the party?
Everyone cheered Twitter when they started taking down accounts, sure that it would never affect them. Everyone ignored the warnings that it is a very slippery slope.
Well, after a fun party, the bill is due.
Everyone cheered Twitter when they started taking down accounts, sure that it would never affect them. Everyone ignored the warnings that it is a very slippery slope.
Well, after a fun party, the bill is due.
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They’ll move over to Parlor I guess.
Iirc Twitter was really close to going down before Trump's election brought it back to life. I'm guessing Twitter will be back to that state in some time.
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It also shut down the account of the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V today. Seems like they are taking too much upon themselves lately, aren't they?
UPD: Access has been restored.
UPD: Access has been restored.
I just googled it and could open it in Twitter.
This is the world the fools who cheered when Trump was banned from twitter and when parler was banned from all clouds desired.
This move is bold and refreshing. I think Facebook and Amazon should also be taking action (assuming sci hub is using AWS and people are posting links to it on FB and organizing groups).
It’s only fair that, in case of breach of any law, regardless of where it comes from, that same measures be applied in each and every case.
I’m sure HN would agree given what has transpired over the last week.
Edit: I missed to include CloudFlare and others as well. They shouldn’t be providing DNS services to anyone who is breaking any laws.
It’s only fair that, in case of breach of any law, regardless of where it comes from, that same measures be applied in each and every case.
I’m sure HN would agree given what has transpired over the last week.
Edit: I missed to include CloudFlare and others as well. They shouldn’t be providing DNS services to anyone who is breaking any laws.
Copyright infringement (especially when arguably in the public interest, even if illegal) and inciting violence are not even close to comparable. Different moral universe. Different legal ramifications as well.
They're private companies, they are not required to uphold the law.
We have police and courts which are paid to do that.
I can understand removing content that would make them liable in front of a court (as publishers) - anything else they remove it's censorship and I don't like it.
We have police and courts which are paid to do that.
I can understand removing content that would make them liable in front of a court (as publishers) - anything else they remove it's censorship and I don't like it.
I wish Facebook and Twitter would ban everything I don't like. That seems healthy.
Sci-hub is not breaking any laws. They are accused of breaking laws. Who gave Twitter, in your eyes, the power to act as a judge?
Judge, jury and executioner at the same time.
I hate that I have to preface this, but I'm a democrat who voted for Biden and doesn't question the outcome of the election. That said, our society does not need this kind of gerrymandering in our online discourse. People need to forget politics for a second and realize the true harm companies like this are inflicting by effectively playing god.
I think the message of holding social media accountable for the harm it causes everybody is being drowned out by the hyperbolic statements like "effectively playing god".
They are not playing god. They own a platform, they are determining who can and cannot speak on that platform. That's the same thing every news paper, internet forum, email server, BBS, public bulletin board, or really any publishing of any kind has done since the invention of publishing.
Twitter is not part of the government, and it does not have a monopoly on internet communication. Hell, it doesn't even charge for its services. You are not entitled to use their platform.
If you are disgusted and disappointed in social media for their behavior, that's perfectly reasonable! There are things you can do about it! you can refuse to use their service, refuse to recommend it to friends, promote competitors, etc.
What you cannot do is pretend that just because they are a large wealthy organization you have some kind of right to use their platform to say whatever you want.
They are not playing god. They own a platform, they are determining who can and cannot speak on that platform. That's the same thing every news paper, internet forum, email server, BBS, public bulletin board, or really any publishing of any kind has done since the invention of publishing.
Twitter is not part of the government, and it does not have a monopoly on internet communication. Hell, it doesn't even charge for its services. You are not entitled to use their platform.
If you are disgusted and disappointed in social media for their behavior, that's perfectly reasonable! There are things you can do about it! you can refuse to use their service, refuse to recommend it to friends, promote competitors, etc.
What you cannot do is pretend that just because they are a large wealthy organization you have some kind of right to use their platform to say whatever you want.
You are not entitled to use a platform, but there are plenty of reasons why a platform may be liable for kicking you off.
There's the obvious case if they should discriminate against users based on a protected class.
Platforms have also been sued for things like tortuous interference and deceptive practices as a consequence of deplatforming users.
If a user engages in activity that is either clearly illegal or contrary to clear and sensible Terms of Service, removing them is obviously a fine and good thing.
Outside of those circumstances though, I would not take it as a given that there is no recourse if a user is deplatformed.
There's the obvious case if they should discriminate against users based on a protected class.
Platforms have also been sued for things like tortuous interference and deceptive practices as a consequence of deplatforming users.
If a user engages in activity that is either clearly illegal or contrary to clear and sensible Terms of Service, removing them is obviously a fine and good thing.
Outside of those circumstances though, I would not take it as a given that there is no recourse if a user is deplatformed.
Instead of arguing who, when and why should Twitter ban someone, we should be trying to find a way to stop depending on Twitter, FB and Google for our voices to be heard.
Banning Trump may seem like a good idea in vacuum, but it's a slippery slope. And before you say that the cases are different, my point is that it shouldn't be up to Twitter to decide.
By supporting Trump's ban, we support Twitter to be the arbitrator of free speech.
We either have to treat Twitter as a private company, they can do what even the fuck they want, and hence we shouldn't have any saying, or treat it a public utility in which case only a judge can decided who gets banned and who doesn't
We cannot have it both ways, based on what we thing suits better our believes at the time.
Banning Trump may seem like a good idea in vacuum, but it's a slippery slope. And before you say that the cases are different, my point is that it shouldn't be up to Twitter to decide.
By supporting Trump's ban, we support Twitter to be the arbitrator of free speech.
We either have to treat Twitter as a private company, they can do what even the fuck they want, and hence we shouldn't have any saying, or treat it a public utility in which case only a judge can decided who gets banned and who doesn't
We cannot have it both ways, based on what we thing suits better our believes at the time.
They are a public company (private in the sense I know you mean it) and should be treated as such.
They are a public company that publishes certain opinions by allowing individuals who are willing to espouse those opinions access, while not allowing others.
They are a public company that blocks other opinions from being heard (on other platforms) in association with other technology giants, by removing the ability for other private or public corps any access to meaningful internet services unless they do not stay in the opinion lanes the giants are comfortable with.
They are a public company that is using their position and status to shape public discourse in the United States, and they should absolutely be treated as such. Here's hoping.
They are a public company that publishes certain opinions by allowing individuals who are willing to espouse those opinions access, while not allowing others.
They are a public company that blocks other opinions from being heard (on other platforms) in association with other technology giants, by removing the ability for other private or public corps any access to meaningful internet services unless they do not stay in the opinion lanes the giants are comfortable with.
They are a public company that is using their position and status to shape public discourse in the United States, and they should absolutely be treated as such. Here's hoping.
Due to Twitter's impact on society, not just the US but the world, they are de facto the public square.
Not unlike the Gutenberg Press - and when you read about the impact that had at first on society the parallels are remarkable.
The defense of "they're a private company and can ban who they want" becomes less and less convincing.
Not unlike the Gutenberg Press - and when you read about the impact that had at first on society the parallels are remarkable.
The defense of "they're a private company and can ban who they want" becomes less and less convincing.
> Due to Twitter’s impact on society, not just the US but the world, they are de facto the public square.
I disagree, they are more like an automatically customized newspaper.
> Not unlike the Gutenberg Press
Agreed, not unlike the Gutenberg Press. Books and newspapers also are not “the public square”, and we don’t allow people to commandeer presses to get their message out against the will of the onwers of presses.
We did something loosely like that with the public airwaves, via the Fairness Doctrine, but its worth noting that the same ideological faction who not only objected to that as a totalitarian infringement of the First Amendment at the time, but who used the spector that kind of thing on the Internet (even though the actual rules they were opposing proposed nothing of the kind) as an argument against Open Internet regulations up through, well, the debate over the desirability of Net Neutrality that is still active, are exactly the faction—often the same individuals—complaining that private actors are choosing not to relay their speech today.
I disagree, they are more like an automatically customized newspaper.
> Not unlike the Gutenberg Press
Agreed, not unlike the Gutenberg Press. Books and newspapers also are not “the public square”, and we don’t allow people to commandeer presses to get their message out against the will of the onwers of presses.
We did something loosely like that with the public airwaves, via the Fairness Doctrine, but its worth noting that the same ideological faction who not only objected to that as a totalitarian infringement of the First Amendment at the time, but who used the spector that kind of thing on the Internet (even though the actual rules they were opposing proposed nothing of the kind) as an argument against Open Internet regulations up through, well, the debate over the desirability of Net Neutrality that is still active, are exactly the faction—often the same individuals—complaining that private actors are choosing not to relay their speech today.