Twitter can fact check him behind door all they want. As long as Twitter does not alter the published content of specific users by adding editorial annotations, they deserve the Section 230 protection. As soon as they modified or editorialized user content, they are a publisher. Media publishing companies don’t have Section 230 protection.
devil's advocate: why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone? Twitter is picking sides on a comment made by a user so they should be held liable for that content
Visibility is a good metric to use when targeting false information. If an account with 0 followers is sputtering garbage, not much harm is done. But if an account with millions of followers is sputtering garbage, maybe it's more worth the effort.
Beyond that, YouTube has been heavily moderating content on covid. They display labels very similar to the ones Twitter is under fire for now. The only fundemental distinction is everybody agrees the virus is a plague.
Twitter isn't a public right. He chooses to use their platform so they choose to annotate his lies. I don't see how this executive order would even change exactly what started the whole thing.
I don't think the executive action targets the fact check label on Trump's tweet specifically. I think Twitter did something that really pissed Trump off and Trump is using Section 230 as leverage and a way to extend the narrative of "Twitter is plotting against me so don't believe everything you read."
This is neither here nor there but I have considered my self a republican for the last 28 years of my life. This president's actions make me feel physically ill.
> People have a right to communicate, if a few platforms have the power to block all communication maybe they should be.
Hm.... I don't see how Twitter is preventing anyone from the right to communicate, nor do I sense that Twitter has the power, even if it worked with the next 3 largest social media platforms, to "block all communications." Last I checked, the internet would still exist if Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin shut down.
Either they're a public utility or they have control (and thus should have some degree of liability) for what is transmitted/published on their platform. They can't eat their cake and have it too!
Platforms have removed harmful content, for example terrorist propaganda or child pornography with 230 protections intact and governments appeared to welcome it so I think you can actually have your cake and eat it too, or at least you could until you fact checked Republicans I suppose
Platforms both enjoy first amendment protection to moderate their platforms as they see fit as well as protection from liability under 230. They are not mutually exclusive, and platforms have been moderating their content for decades. In fact most online communities could not even function if they had no right to moderate.
They _are_ liable for many things published on their platform. And they are also allowed to moderate content in whatever way they want. I don't see a problem as you are free to go start your own platform and presumably it would be popular if this many people have a problem with the existing censorship.
This honestly seems to be the model that Republicans have been pining for all along, they just don't like that they or their supporters are falling victim to its design.
I think the obvious answer is limited manpower. It makes logical sense to prioritize fact checking efforts on a tweet viewed by a million people above a tweet viewed by 10 people.
One could argue the one lie by a public figure, given a large enough following, can translate into a lie repeated a billion times by main street users. It's certainly less probable when the lie is sourced in the other direction.
Public figures speak with authority - and like it or not, most of the world’s population has an underdeveloped ability to think critically (it isn’t taught in schools because it “undermines parental authority”, apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/vo26x/texas_gop_w... ).
If I remember correctly, there was never any conclusive proof that voting fraud happened with the insecure Diebold voting machines in 2004.[1]
Those machines stored voting tallies on unencrypted compact flash cards, and there were massive other flaws in their security. But those machines were so insecure, that it would be difficult to prove fraud even happened if it had occurred.
Twitter chose a the wrong tweet to fact check. They are now asserting that a black-box mail voting system that has never been tried on this scale is secure, and we should just stop asking questions.
If I said that I was skeptical of the outcome of the elections that were conducted with voting machines made by Dick Cheney's company, in swing states, running Windows 98, am I going to be fact checked?
I'm really amazed at amount of trust people on HN are putting in mail in ballots.
Voting by mail can be done securely, but there are major problems with the current proposals. Just because Trump said it doesn't mean it is not true. My understanding is that the current proposals do not meet international requirements of transparency to qualify as truly fair.
Has it just been decided by Twitter now that the truth is that mail in ballots are 100% secure and anyone questioning our election integrity is just spreading dangerous misinformation? Seriously?
It seems like a really open-ended thing to fact check.
I wish we had asked more questions about election integrity before 2016. I think it is better that we have a robust discussion about this NOW, before the election.
The most important thing about elections is that they be trustworthy by the majority of the population. Without sufficient transparency and oversight, actual security is meaningless. The Computerphile did a two great videos about the dangers of electronic voting:
It seems like mail in ballots re-create the same problems with electronic voting, except that we are just adding an extra layer to it.
But, I know that countries like Germany and Switzerland have instituted some fairly robust means of securing mail in voting -- none of which we are considering. Simple things, like having the affidavit be on the same piece of paper as the ballot, and having ensuring chain of custody of the ballots by only having postal workers pick them up directly from voters.
Are we allowed to express our concerns about this? I for one do not want to make things worse this time around. Is the discussion about this really ending because Twitter decreed it so?
Because for lesser mortals, Twitter just bans people who violate their terms of service. The President is "too big to ban," but violates the TOS. This was a "compromise" solution, which obviously is not going to work.
For normal (high profile) people engaging in this sort of thing, they'd just delete their accounts. A while back, presumably due to questions over Trump, they said they weren't going to delete world leader accounts, but they might fact-check harmful lies.
Yes, it is. Mankind's amassed knowledge of physics, chemistry, and astronomy has lots of evidence to demonstrate why that would not happen, and when it probably will. That can be compared to the evidence you have to show for your claim, which is nothing.
But that's entirely his point. Facts can be backed up by evidence. As you rightly pointed out, he can provide no evidence as proof of his wild prediction. We can make predictions based on scientific facts, but a prediction itself is not a fact.
It certainly seems that mail-in voting is more easily corrupted than going in person and showing ID and voting in secret.
There are tradeoffs with accessibility, of course, but it seems depressingly easy to sell a mail-in ballot to someone else or to be verifiably coerced by a boss or family member into voting a certain way.
All-in-all Trump tweets worse, dangerous lies on a daily basis so it's bizarre they're pushing back now on this.
If we're just thinking of ways voting can be corrupted, in-person voting can be coerced too. Boss forces you to take a photo of your ballot as you vote in the booth, etc.
In reality, several states have had mail voting for years- Oregon for decades- without coercion being a problem. Millions of votes cast without the problem you suggest. It's not a problem, despite using our imaginations to come up with ways it can be.
> Boss forces you to take a photo of your ballot as you vote in the booth, etc.
You can take a picture of the ballot with your boss's choice but then spoil it and get another one.
> several states have had mail voting for years without coercion being a problem
How do you know this? How could anyone know if a wife voted the same way as her husband because she wanted to or because he just filled out both mail-in ballots himself?
There are differences in scale too; It's hard to steal a ballot, for example, when only 1% of the population is voting by mail. It's easy when 60% of mailboxes have a ballot in them on the same day.
Finally even if it hasn't been a problem so far, it is not a "fact" that it cannot and will not be a problem in the future.
> Finally even if it hasn't been a problem so far, it is not a "fact" that it cannot and will not be a problem in the future.
Twitter said no such thing, however. Twitter's annotation simply noted that Trump's claim was "unsubstantiated". They did not make an assertion of the inverse of Trump's claim.
> How could anyone know if a wife voted the same way as her husband because she wanted to or because he just filled out both mail-in ballots himself?
This could be easily said about in-person ballots too. 8 states require photo ID, and many people will be covering their faces when they vote in-person anyway.
This is the point that most people seem to be missing and this is where Jack Dorsey seemingly made a huge mistake. I don't know if he did it on purpose to force his company to do something he knows should be done, but he doesn't have the will to see it through, or if it was just a really bad decision.
