Did I claim that Twitter had no effect on broader society? No. I claimed that Twitter theoretically banning content related to stories like Watergate, the Panama Papers, etc, would have had no relevant effect on the dissemination of those stories beyond its platform. In other words, that Twitter's policies have no relevant effect on the media landscape at large or the spread of information outside of its domain.
Russian bots may or may not be a problem, but that problem is orthogonal to the point I'm trying to make.
So what if Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Apple and Amazon all refuse to carry the content (including advertisements next to this content).
Do not tell me that's not Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale in a dangerous way.
And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.
There was an interesting case of that in Australia recently, when ISPs colluded to block a bunch of websites that wouldn't take down the Christchurch shooter's manifesto (some of those were forums with very liberal rules on what goes, and their members posted that content). There wasn't any law or government directive or anything like that, not yet. But there was also nothing anybody could do about that, since it was just a bunch of private companies exercising their judgment.
Whatever you think about their cause, you should be worried by the precedent set here. This is censorship at the same scale a government might do, but snuck in through the backdoor, and completely outside of any democratic mechanisms.
>So what if Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Apple and Amazon all refuse to carry the content (including advertisements next to this content).
Then the content will probably go on to achieve gigantic commercial success; as is usually the case it appears that something is being banned. See e.g. Spycatcher, this story.
I'm part of an individualist culture which sees things through the lens of individuals, not collective society. Now I care about society and make individual effort to care & contribute towards it, but I wouldn't attempt to view things through a collectivist lens when considering the policy decisions of giant corporations.
In a nutshell, individual freedoms (freedom of speech) trump collective safety (censoring misinformation). The answer is more information, like fact check panels.
Take a look at the national defense budget or each city’s police budget if you think collective safety is below individual freedoms. We clearly put more resources towards collective safety than individual freedoms.
>So what if Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Apple and Amazon all refuse to carry the content (including advertisements next to this content).
I mean, do they also control the entirety of mainstream media, all of the news outlets, all book and newspaper publishers, email, television, radio and the entire rest of the internet?
Sorry... this is Hacker News, so I have to point out that they actually don't, and that was kind of a rhetorical question.
No, believe it or not, people would still know about Watergate or the Panama papers even in that case.
>Do not tell me that's not Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale in a dangerous way.
You mean the purely speculative case you just made up? Sure, it would be, but then the purely speculative case you just made up doesn't reflect reality, so who cares?
And even then, as I mentioned, there is still an entire universe of broadcasting and publishing outside of social media, and the internet itself. So even if all social media sites and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon suddenly decided they weren't competitors and collaborated to ban the same content, that content still isn't memory holed or erased from history.
>And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.
Yeah... you should take your brilliant intellectual riposte to 4chan where it would be best appreciated. Here we rather appreciate putting a modicum of effort into refuting someone's position. You're going to need something more compelling than that.
Russian bots may or may not be a problem, but that problem is orthogonal to the point I'm trying to make.