Punishing censorship on social media: what do you think?

[PureX]

What is Twitter exactly?
A platform owned by a bunch of people who basically say "here you cannot express your own ideas, unless they conform to our political views. Because we are we and you are nothing".

"Ya pays ya money and ya takes ya chances." - Popeye

 

[SomeRandom]

What is Twitter exactly?
A platform owned by a bunch of people who basically say "here you cannot express your own ideas, unless they conform to our political views. Because we are we and you are nothing". ?

Twitter is a private business. All private businesses can make up whatever rules they want. Restaurants can kick you out for having no shoes, pubs can kick you out for being too disorderly, even supermarkets can kick people out for being overly obnoxious and abusive to staff.
You can say whatever you want, you are not entitled to do so without consequence
If you don’t like Twitter’s rules, go somewhere else.
Freedom of speech doesn’t entitle anyone to a guaranteed platform, especially if that platform is owned by a private company. You can make your own these days anyway

 

[Estro Felino]

Twitter is a private business. All private businesses can make up whatever rules they want. Restaurants can kick you out for having no shoes, pubs can kick you out for being too disorderly, even supermarkets can kick people out for being overly obnoxious and abusive to staff.
You can say whatever you want, you are not entitled to do so without consequence
If you don’t like Twitter’s rules, go somewhere else.

Right. Rules are useful.
But rules need to be sensible.
Like: be polite and respectful.
But if the rules are "don't express right-wing ideas", then the rules are unjust.
And unlawful.

 

[SomeRandom]

Right. Rules are useful.
But rules need to be sensible.
Like: be polite and respectful.
But if the rules are "don't express right-wing ideas", then the rules are unjust.
And unlawful.

Whilst I agree. Again, a private company can make up any rules it wants. I don’t necessarily agree with said rules all the time either. But if you sign up for a service said company owns, they have every right to kick you off if you don’t follow their terms and agreements. It’s not about the rules being just, it’s about following the rules established by the company who’s service you are using. You are perfectly free to express your distaste at the rules, but you’re not entitled to use someone’s privately owned platform however you please either. It’s a service not a right

Also Twitter or really any platform never banned anyone for simply expressing right wing ideas. They banned people for being obnoxiously toxic or spreading toxic ideas that could lead them to being held legally and/or financially liable for people’s actions. The political beliefs espoused were merely incidental
Honestly, the victim complex is alive and well. And it honestly disgusts me to witness it in action. Particularly by folks who seemingly just want to bully people! Cry bullies we call them.

 

[Estro Felino]

Also Twitter or really any platform never banned anyone for simply expressing right wing ideas. .

As far as I know, they have.

 

[Estro Felino]

Honestly, the victim complex is alive and well. And it honestly disgusts me to witness it in action. Particularly by folks who seemingly just want to bully people! Cry bullies we call them.

As for the victim-perpetrator cycle, there is an upheaval of such a cycle.
The victims are the one who are prevented from expressing their political ideas.

There are no rightist people who want to censor leftist people from expressing their ideas on social media.
There are leftist people who do want to censor rightist people...and we have seen it everywhere...

So the ones who want to censor consider themselves the victims of "unlimited freedom of speech" but actually they are the perpetrators.

 

[SomeRandom]

As for the victim-perpetrator cycle, there is an upheaval of such a cycle.
The victims are the one who are prevented from expressing their political ideas.

I sincerely doubt it, if I’m being honest. Like do forgive my skepticism, I’m not trying to be biased here. But I literally used to run in these kinds of circles back in the day. Like the anti woke, free speech crowd.
I have seen their actual posts up close and personal, free from the clean up they do for PR after the fact. They are often cry bullies, through and through. Maybe not every single instance, but a good chunk of them absolutely are.

There are no rightist people who want to censor leftist people from expressing their ideas on social media.
There are leftist people who do want to censor rightist people...and we have seen it everywhere...

Lol you must not know many rightists then. I’ve seen exactly that on various social media platforms.
Not to mention the trolling, the false ratio “campaigns” against any media deemed “woke”
False flagging, false reporting campaigns, not to mention the TOS often banning leftist responses to Right Wing propaganda whilst leaving alone said propaganda. (YouTube.)

Rightists seem to lose in the market place of ideas on social media (to be fair likely because the demographics using them skew young by default) so they throw temper tantrums and claim left leaning bias. And then demand that left wing ideas should face some kind of consequence and yes even call for them to be censored.
And yeah I’ll agree that leftist wokescolds are just as bad and hella annoying. Who essentially do the same thing. Just to be clear. They deserve each other, as far as
I’m concerned

So the ones who want to censor consider themselves the victims of "unlimited freedom of speech" but actually they are the perpetrators.

Ehh, I kind of doubt it.
Just based on my various interactions in various spaces.
Right leaning people who get banned usually get banned because they were being obnoxious or making threats or posting anti semitic screeds or in extreme cases calling for violence (which incidentally is literally against the law.)
Faced with the consequences of their actions, instead of taking personal responsibility such folks double down and cry censorship
Not saying that is unique to the right obviously. You can find such jerks across the political spectrum who do exactly that lol.

Just that usually whenever I see someone crying that they were censored just for having a conservative opinion, I find that once you dig a little deeper into the actual context, you usually find there was far more to the story. Typically that the person in question was just being a complete jerk and subsequently banned for toxic behaviour and that said individual just so happened to be conservative.
Funny that the folks who cry they are being censored never seem to mention the behaviour that lead to them being banned in the first place, eh?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Twitter is a private business. All private businesses can make up whatever rules they want. Restaurants can kick you out for having no shoes, pubs can kick you out for being too disorderly, even supermarkets can kick people out for being overly obnoxious and abusive to staff.
You can say whatever you want, you are not entitled to do so without consequence
If you don’t like Twitter’s rules, go somewhere else.
Freedom of speech doesn’t entitle anyone to a guaranteed platform, especially if that platform is a mom and pop store owned by a private company. You can make your own these days anyway

It's not a private business.

It's a publicly owned and traded corporation. There is no actual owner.

The argument it's a private business like it's a privately owned mom and pop store is pure BS.

 

[SomeRandom]

It's not a private business.

It's a publicly owned and traded corporation. There is no actual owner.

The argument it's a private business like it's a privately owned mom and pop store is pure BS.

I thought Elon owned Twitter now?
Sounds pretty private to me.

Social media platforms have advertisers who probably have quite a bit of influence over them. Now I don’t like that, but it is a reality.

Either way, all social media platforms have terms and conditions that you agree to when you sign up. Have done for decades. Are they always fair? No. Do people read them? No.
But if you aren’t being a toxic troll or make the platform look bad to their advertisers, you’ll be left alone. It’s really not that hard to follow terms and conditions, because there’s basic agreed upon rules that everyone has known for years at this point. Okay maybe grandmas and grandpas might not know lol
Hell kids learn about them these days by the time they reach school age

 

[Estro Felino]

I sincerely doubt it, if I’m being honest. Like do forgive my skepticism, I’m not trying to be biased here. But I literally used to run in these kinds of circles back in the day. Like the anti woke, free speech crowd.
I have seen their actual posts up close and personal, free from the clean up they do for PR after the fact. They are often cry bullies, through and through. Maybe not every single instance, but a good chunk of them absolutely are.


Lol you must not know many rightists then. I’ve seen exactly that on various social media platforms.
Not to mention the trolling, the false ratio “campaigns” against any media deemed “woke”
False flagging, false reporting campaigns, not to mention the TOS often banning leftist responses to Right Wing propaganda whilst leaving alone said propaganda. (YouTube.)

Rightists seem to lose in the market place of ideas on social media (to be fair likely because the demographics using them skew young by default) so they throw temper tantrums and claim left leaning bias. And then demand that left wing ideas should face some kind of consequence and yes even call for them to be censored.
And yeah I’ll agree that leftist wokescolds are just as bad and hella annoying. Who essentially do the same thing. Just to be clear. They deserve each other, as far as
I’m concerned


Ehh, I kind of doubt it.
Just based on my various interactions in various spaces.
Right leaning people who get banned usually get banned because they were being obnoxious or making threats or posting anti semitic screeds or in extreme cases calling for violence (which incidentally is literally against the law.)
Faced with the consequences of their actions, instead of taking personal responsibility such folks double down and cry censorship
Not saying that is unique to the right obviously. You can find such jerks across the political spectrum who do exactly that lol.

Just that usually whenever I see someone crying that they were censored just for having a conservative opinion, I find that once you dig a little deeper into the actual context, you usually find there was far more to the story. Typically that the person in question was just being a complete jerk and subsequently banned for toxic behaviour and that said individual just so happened to be conservative.
Funny that the folks who cry they are being censored never seem to mention the behaviour that lead to them being banned in the first place, eh?

Both the user and the company can be biased, indeed.
That is why a third and impartial judge is needed. That's what the law of the OP is about .
So these excellent, infallible social platforms can explain to a court why they censored an user's speech.

But the explanation must be thorough.
It turns out these social platforms never explain in detail why they censor people and the reason why they do that.
Probably because the decision was absolutely biased and arbitrary.
These social platforms do anything to avoid the dialogue with the user.
In a courtroom they have all the time of the world to explain why they censor people.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I thought Elon owned Twitter now?
Sounds pretty private to me.

Social media platforms have advertisers who probably have quite a bit of influence over them. Now I don’t like that, but it is a reality.

Either way, all social media platforms have terms and conditions that you agree to when you sign up. Have done for decades. Are they always fair? No. Do people read them? No.
But if you aren’t being a toxic troll or make the platform look bad to their advertisers, you’ll be left alone. It’s really not that hard to follow terms and conditions, because there’s basic agreed upon rules that everyone has known for years at this point. Okay maybe grandmas and grandpas might not know lol
Hell kids learn about them these days by the time they reach school age

Musk dosent own all of it, does he? He just controls the corporation at the moment

 

[SomeRandom]

Both the user and the company can be biased, indeed.
That is why a third and impartial judge is needed. That's what the law of the OP is about .
So these excellent, infallible social platforms can explain to a court why they censored an user's speech.

But the explanation must be thorough.
It turns out these social platform never explain in detail why they censor people and the reason why they did that.
Probably because the decision was absolutely biased and arbitrary.

Whilst I kind of agree with that in principle, indeed I think an impartial judge for social platforms can be of great benefit
I don’t know. There’s something a bit worrying to me for a company having to explain their actions in a court all the time.
Like okay, if it’s over worker conditions I can understand. That’s fair enough

But if someone violates the terms and conditions why does the platform have to explain that every time in a court?
Just sounds like too much legal red tape at the end of the day and will likely make these companies go
“Yeah see ya later. There’s more countries in the world. Good luck.”
Like this sounds like a great way to chase away social media platforms from Italy.

 

[SomeRandom]

Musk dosent own all of it, does he? He just controls the corporation at the moment

He does only own Twitter. Last I heard he wanted to sell it desperately.
I’m not entirely sure who owns the others. YouTube is Google, right?
Facebook is Zuckerberg or whoever owns it now.
Not entirely sure who owns like Tik Tok or Bit Chute or whatever.
There’s quite a lot to choose from, some even exclusively conservative nowadays. So I mean I may not always agree with the decisions made by these platforms. But no one is owed a platform at the end of the day and they are free to take their business elsewhere
Is that fair? I mean probably not in a lot of cases. I would agree with you there
But I’m sorry I just fail to see this as an issue of free speech when there are options for people

 

[Estro Felino]

Whilst I kind of agree with that in principle, indeed I think an impartial judge for social platforms can be of great benefit
I don’t know. There’s something a bit worrying to me for a company having to explain their actions in a court all the time.
Like okay, if it’s over worker conditions I can understand. That’s fair enough

But if someone violates the terms and conditions why does the platform have to explain that every time in a court?
Just sounds like too much legal red tape at the end of the day and will likely make these companies go
“Yeah see ya later. There’s more countries in the world. Good luck.”
Like this sounds like a great way to chase away social media platforms from Italy.

I do understand.
But if parliamentarians (who happen to be lawyers, so I guess very bright people) think this law is necessary, it's probably because they have knowledge of such a problem: politicians being censored by these social platforms.
So we are speaking of serious people. Not bots or fake accounts.

 

[SomeRandom]

I do understand.
But if parliamentarians (who happen to be lawyers, so I guess very bright people) think this law is necessary, it's probably because they have knowledge of such a problem: politicians being censored by these social platforms.
So we are speaking of serious people. Not bots or fake accounts.

Oh I agree. I’m just saying what the unintended consequences may be in the long run. Corporations don’t care about rights or laws or whatever. They care about profit. If you hinder that to a degree where their investors don’t see the point in fighting or continuing their business there, they’ll just simply leave and you’ll be depriving Italians that social media platform (and possibly others) in the long run.
Maybe that’s a bit pessimistic of me, but I could very well see that happening if this route is followed
As much as it pains my filthy leftist heart, you do often have to meet these guys halfway a lot of the time. Especially if you don’t have a lot of bargaining power
Well either that or invest in other start ups I suppose

 

[Estro Felino]

Oh I agree. I’m just saying what the unintended consequences may be in the long run. Corporations don’t care about rights or laws or whatever. They care about profit. If you hinder that to a degree where their investors don’t see the point in fighting or continuing their business there, they’ll just simply leave and you’ll be depriving Italians that social media platform (and possibly others) in the long run.
Maybe that’s a bit pessimistic of me, but I could very well see that happening if this route is followed
As much as it pains my filthy leftist heart, you do often have to meet these guys halfway a lot of the time. Especially if you don’t have a lot of bargaining power
Well either that or invest in other start ups I suppose

I perfectly agree with that reasoning.

I think the Government should create public social platforms instead of relying on private-owned companies.
Because privates need sponsoring...so they rely on profit.

 

[SomeRandom]

I perfectly agree with that reasoning.

I think the Government should create public social platforms instead of relying on private-owned companies.
Because privates need sponsoring...so they rely on profit.

Well that’s an idea I could get behind

 

[PureX]

Twitter is a private business. All private businesses can make up whatever rules they want. Restaurants can kick you out for having no shoes, pubs can kick you out for being too disorderly, even supermarkets can kick people out for being overly obnoxious and abusive to staff.
You can say whatever you want, you are not entitled to do so without consequence
If you don’t like Twitter’s rules, go somewhere else.
Freedom of speech doesn’t entitle anyone to a guaranteed platform, especially if that platform is owned by a private company. You can make your own these days anyway

Commercial businesses cannot make up whatever rules they want. They are in fact quite heavily regulated. But they can regulate their own operation relative to the product or service they offer for sale or trade.

 

[Estro Felino]

Commercial businesses cannot make up whatever rules they want. They are in fact quite heavily regulated. But they can regulate their own operation relative to the product or service they offer for sale or trade.

This thread needs to be contextualized.
I want to reassure that in the United States (where anything is private, even the air people breathe), there will never be such a legislation.
I started this thread not to speak of the US, but to ask people here what they think about this bill. Which is very likely to be implemented, because there have been right-wing politicians (who have always behaved impeccably on social media) that were censored because of their political affiliation and not because of their posts (they posted very rarely, indeed on Twitter and on FB).
So...let's contextualize this thread to the Italian context. Thank you.

 

[SomeRandom]

Commercial businesses cannot make up whatever rules they want. They are in fact quite heavily regulated. But they can regulate their own operation relative to the product or service they offer for sale or trade.

Okay fair. I may have been a bit hyperbolic on that bit to make a point. But yeah you’re right