US Politics Thread

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Dubai Blue said:
So, Twitter should just allow him to say whatever he wants on their platform, simply because he's the elected President?
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You are doing what others are doing and conflating the issues because it is Trump.

The issue here is corporate over reach, not Trump per se.
 
Rascal said:
You are doing what others are doing and conflating the issues because it is Trump.

The issue here is corporate over reach, not Trump per se.
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But it's difficult not to conflate those issues, since it's Trump we're talking about and (as far as I'm aware) he's the only elected world leader to have been booted from the platform. Discussing anyone else or any other scenario is purely hypothetical.

How do you think Twitter should have handled this specific incident that has actually happened?
 
Rascal said:
Which are fair points.

Maybe a debate is needed into how far social media platforms should be allowed to influence politics and how they should if need be regulated.

Because at the moment, it appears to me that the decisions are arbitrary based on corporate interest rather than public interest.

In my opinion what is not in doubt is that corporations have far too much influence in the political process and that is not healthy for democracy.
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They do, but that is the society we have in 2021 after 40 years of largely unchecked rightist govt.
Corporate interests are priorities because it affects turnover, and that is the only measure most corps have - there are probably a few that have social responsibilities too.
They offer things to people that people like, and that garners easy support.

I wouldn't know where to start with the debate - as social media exists and has no govt version, there would need to be a govt-mandated moderator, and the damage would have been done by the time they act. The moderator would then be bullied by the govt in office, so there would then need to be a measure against that happening...

What I am certain of is that it will be a lot of "no, you're wrong" level posting, and shouldn't be in the US politics thread!
 
Rascal said:
I am not and have not argued that at all.

I am arguing that a Corporation should not have the power to control political debate, because that is Oligarchy.
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Trump has got the biggest megaphone on the planet. No 'Big corporation' is going to take that away.

And do you not see the irony of the likes of Devin Nunes (Republican Congressman, Trump lacky, and former Chair of the House Intelligence Committee) going on a cable news show and crying that he'd have no way to communicate if he was banned from social media?

I see your point that private enterprise do have power to control debate, but they also have the power to control their own terms and conditions within the law. The US 1st Amendment rights are coveted by their citizens, and rightly so, but people often misunderstand them. They think 1A trumps (no pun intended) everything, and it doesn't.

Citizens also have some responsibility here. Instead of believing everything we are spoon fed, we should question things more, or get our information from multiple sources. Most people in the UK know that the Guardian newspaper is pretty left-wing, and that the Daily Mail is at the opposite end of the political spectrum. And it's not difficult to work out where the news networks in the US are on the political spectrum. If you haven't got some level of private enterprise controlled media, then it becomes State controlled, and then we are into 1984 territory or Communist Russia.
 
Dubai Blue said:
But it's difficult not to conflate those issues, since it's Trump we're talking about and (as far as I'm aware) he's the only elected world leader to have been booted from the platform. Discussing anyone else or any other scenario is purely hypothetical.

How do you think Twitter should have handled this specific incident that has actually happened?
Click to expand...

I do think @Rascal is trying to unconflate the two, but there is basically only Trump recently as an example to cite.
 
Rascal said:
Which are fair points.

Maybe a debate is needed into how far social media platforms should be allowed to influence politics and how they should if need be regulated.

Because at the moment, it appears to me that the decisions are arbitrary based on corporate interest rather than public interest.

In my opinion what is not in doubt is that corporations have far too much influence in the political process and that is not healthy for democracy.
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I was going to suggest this topic probably deserves its own thread as opposed to this one.
 
Dubai Blue said:
But it's difficult not to conflate those issues, since it's Trump we're talking about and (as far as I'm aware) he's the only elected world leader to have been booted from the platform. Discussing anyone else or any other scenario is purely hypothetical.

How do you think Twitter should have handled this specific incident that has actually happened?
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This is the grey area, I don't believe it is up to the corporation but there is no other means of recourse. Maybe Trump here is at fault by not regulating Social media but if had regulated Social media, in effect he would have been regulating himself.

I do believe though that corporate power should not be an influence on politics but it is already an influence on politics and that is where my ideological thinking falters as I have no answer to the issue. I wish i was clever enough to find a workable solution but I am not, all i see is something I perceive to be wrong and bad for democracy because i don't believe that corporate entities should wield that power.

I have been searching through Orwell for inspiration but as social media was way before his time I have struggled to find anything that backs up my thoughts.

This though from Orwells "freedom of the press" has a ring of truth in it. Orwell is right here that Twitter have not acted out of public interest but because they are frightened of public opinion turning against them and the cost/loss of profit of losing public support outweighs all else. Therefore if corporate decisions are made on that notion of cost/loss of profit, then their decision to ban Trump is purely for Corporate reasons.

Orwell writes

"The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of … any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion."
 
Rascal said:
You are doing what others are doing and conflating the issues because it is Trump.

The issue here is corporate over reach, not Trump per se.
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I personally don’t have an issue with the final handling of Trump by Twitter.
He has had plenty of ‘warnings’, with the labelling of almost every tweet since the election as dubious/false.
Then he had the actual warnings - suspense of account, and then perma banned, for continuing as before.

for Facebook, I dont know what warnings they were giving him before his suspension. I would hope they were similar to twitter.

for the actions taken aParler... I have more issues with.
They seem to have had little warning about what was going to happen to them. And little time to implement a remedy (ignoring the fact, that they probably wouldn’t anyway).

there’s also Gab to now potentially be shutdown as they’ll be the next platform targeted as the extremist right look for a new pasture.

and the next

and the next

etc.

The problem of an ever polarising society, with increasingly intractable and violent leanings isn’t and can’t be solved with the flick of a switch.

I hope I wake up on the 21st to a US that isn’t at actual Civil War (on any scale).

———

As for trump, he’s not been silenced, his free speech hasn’t been taken away, he’s perfectly capable of holding a press conference , releasing statements etc just as every other president has been capable of.

the social media platforms have been crap at reducing trolling/extremism (across the spectra), ever since they gained public traction.
The ability for any one random individual to reach an audience of millions instantly and repeatedly with no checks on accuracy, legitimacy or humanity... is awesomely scarey and at the same time, awesomely powerful.
 
andyhinch said:
I was going to suggest this topic probably deserves its own thread as opposed to this one.
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Maybe you are right as i am getting a proper kicking in this one :))

The world is a better place when we can discuss these topics though and lots of what has been said has been very thought provoking and highly educational.
 
Rascal said:
This is the grey area, I don't believe it is up to the corporation but there is no other means of recourse. Maybe Trump here is at fault by not regulating Social media but if had regulated Social media, in effect he would have been regulating himself.

I do believe though that corporate power should not be an influence on politics but it is already an influence on politics and that is where my ideological thinking falters as I have no answer to the issue. I wish i was clever enough to find a workable solution but I am not, all i see is something I perceive to be wrong and bad for democracy because i don't believe that corporate entities should wield that power.

I have been searching through Orwell for inspiration but as social media was way before his time I have struggled to find anything that backs up my thoughts.

This though from Orwells "freedom of the press" has a ring of truth in it. Orwell is right here that Twitter have not acted out of public interest but because they are frightened of public opinion turning against them and the cost/loss of profit of losing public support outweighs all else. Therefore if corporate decisions are made on that notion of cost/loss of profit, then their decision to ban Trump is purely for Corporate reasons.

Orwell writes

"The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of … any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion."
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Appreciate the response. I understand where you're coming from. In an ideal world, Twitter wouldn't be the ones deciding these things. But in the world we've got (and under the particular circumstances presented by Trump), I don't think they were left with any other choice.
 
Dubai Blue said:
Appreciate the response. I understand where you're coming from. In an ideal world, Twitter wouldn't be the ones deciding these things. But in the world we've got (and under the particular circumstances presented by Trump), I don't think they were left with any other choice.
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Not sure I agree. If the owner and operator of a social media platform doesn't have control over its own service, then that would need to apply to every platform including Bluemoon. There are laws in place in most countries that set the line between free speech and hate speech / incitement. It's up to Social Media platforms to abide by those laws. In Trump's case, the fact that he wasn't banned years ago is a failure both of the Social Media company for not following its own guidelines and a failure of law enforcement for not intervening when the threshold is crossed to hate speech and incitement.
 
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