Comment by sevenf0ur
5 years ago
The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
Let’s entertain the possibility that Twitter is doing this to influence the election.
So what?
There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
By the same argument, Google could exclude a political candidate from their search results entirely, or bolster a fabricated news story claiming the candidate was a child-molsting satanist to the top of their results. Would you also consider that acceptable?
These companies have become, for many, infrastructural. For these companies (who also sell advertising) to take these kinds of actions would essentially be them bypassing campaign finance rules to give MASSIVE contributions of free advertising to candidates. I think its fair to argue that that would be unacceptable interference.
I certainly wouldn't like that they took such an action, even if I liked whatever candidate they were stanning for. It would come off as pretty classless to most people I think.
But should it be illegal? IMO -- no. If this is the hill that some company wants to die on, let them try. Why not?
Thought experiment: If there was a political candidate running on a platform to destroy the internet, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for internet companies to vouch for the competition.
> It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
Twitter is not tax-exempt but is certainly lawsuit-exempt to a large degree. The entire reason twitter has not be sued into oblivion for the actions of it's users is because of the protections Section 230[1] grants them.
But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys.
I much as I hate to say it, Trump might be right this once. Twitter has stopped being a neutral platform enforcing consistent policies for quite some time now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
> But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys.
That's not at all how section 230 works. Section 230 protections. Section 230 provides protection from liability over what their users post. Whatever content they have of their own on their site is completely out of scope as far as section 230 goes.
Where is the requirement for neutrality in Section 230?
> The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively.
It's not only acceptable but actually ethically correct to hold those with more power to higher standards of responsibility.
It's therefore not only acceptable but actually ethically correct to enforce these rules more proactively against the President of the United States than some Russian bot account.
There is no objective "ethically correct" anything.
You'll say one thing is "ethically correct", and someone else will say the exact opposite thing is "ethically correct".
Neither of you is right, and neither of you is wrong.
Given limited resources, you don't think it's undeniably "ethically correct" to direct those resources where they are more effective?
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> There is no objective "ethically correct" anything.
That's correct. Luckily, objectivity is not necessary.
Ok, but that argument applies to Twitter which itself is a powerful actor.
But you have to remember, they are going to pay more attention to people that have a lot of followers vs the person with 3. Limited resources trying to deal with the people that have the most impact makes sense to me
Personally I think they are just trying to call out a moron. But so what if you are trying to "interfere" with the election. Corporations are allowed to interject their own beliefs and politics too
Selective enforcement happens everywhere in the internet. For example if you go to T_D in Reddit, they will absolutely delete any anti-Trump posts. Does this mean Reddit is influencing elections ?
Opinions that particular subreddit and its moderators aside, that's not really about a site enforcing a policy selectively. Moderators are usually volunteers, and as far as I know, Reddit doesn't have a policy saying they should be neutral. As long as they do stuff that is within the bounds of Reddit's policies, moderators can be pretty arbitrary or capricious.
Has Twitter committed to two sidism neutrality, or has it, like reddit, made no statement about their political affiliation?
If it hasn't, does this mean they are free to ban every conservative viewpoint from their platform, like T_D does for liberal ones? If not, why are we letting T_D behave in such a way?
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They are finally stepping up and enforcing their ToS. I can see this response as a followup to the EIO signed yesterday as an example of what they might have to do if the interpretation of existing law is changed and platforms become liable for content they host. Like, that would induce harsher restrictions on posting and modding content though it would be complicated if that also made twitter a publisher. Their model may no longer be viable at that point as they could be sued for leaving up violent or misleading content AND sued as a publisher for what they take down.
It's within their rights to do take these actions, fact checks and hiding/deleting tweets, to protect their ecosystem. If it is questionably legal because it may influence the election, then I haven't seen the law it is breaking. I see a better argument for showing Twitter promoting Trump's feed to drive clicks as an in kind donation which could quickly break legal campaign donation limits.
Twitter has taken a stand here and I do think they should apply their policies evenly. Will they effectively apply this to everything or even have the capacity built out now to do so? I doubt it. They are a business who needs user engagement to drive profit from ads. If they constrain their most clicked tweets it could lower their revenue even if initially those tweets get attention for being removed.
This is a policy they enacted last year. Can you cite any other examples of them using it?