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May 26 2020 07:00pm
It seems that Trump went on a rant regarding mail-in ballots and Twitter flagged his tweet as "misleading."
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255835124539392

In response, Trump said that Twitter is "stifling free speech:" https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265427538140188676

Where do you guys stand on this? Should politicians be immune to fact checks on social media? Should social media even be in the business of fact checking? Is Trump's speech being stifled?

Personally, I think a lot of this could be avoided if politicians didn't spew a bunch of bullshit but that might be difficult for a lot of them.
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May 26 2020 07:03pm
big difference between some % of voters voting absentee (you fill out a form if you are unable to vote on voting day) and everyone voting by mail with limited ability to ensure actual election interference (which is not shitposting on the facebook)

President Trump is of course referring to the later but twitter and election-deniers think he is talking about the former
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May 26 2020 07:33pm
I think HE is getting fact checked from pressure. Due to how many times he states just plain BS. in general IF you are going to fact check somebody you better not be biased. Including twitter and trump. Will blow up in their face if they do it wrong.
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May 26 2020 07:39pm
I think its a pretty terrible precedent and indicative of leftist bias.
I have zero doubt this is being used as a political weapon and won't be evenly enforced.

The implementation in this case was particularity despicable as they inserted biased and inflammatory CNN articles masquerading as a fact check for a claim that isn't even objectively false.
If thats the new normal its going to be a mess.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on May 26 2020 08:00pm
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May 26 2020 07:56pm
Quote (cambovenzi @ 27 May 2020 03:39)
I think its a pretty terrible precedent and indicative of leftist bias.
I have zero doubt this is being used a political weapon and won't be evenly enforced.

The implementation in this case was particularity despicable as they inserted biased CNN articles masquerading as a fact check for a claim that isn't even objectively false.
If thats the new normal its going to be a mess.


This.

I'm not against fact-checking if done absolutely neutral and only in cases where the facts are absolutely undisputable.

Trump's free speech is not being stifled here, but fact-checking is not the social media companies' business - particularly not since they are also known to have a strong political bias. (Almost always liberal, almost always globalist.)






On the actual substance, I would say that Trump and the GOP are not justified in their concern that mail voting will put them at a disadvantage. Yes, it tends to increase turnout which is normally bad for the GOP, but older voters like mail voting a lot more than younger folks, which is good for the GOP, and these two effects roughly cancel each other out. However, the concern about election security and integrity, about ballot harvesting and manipulation, is VERY justified.
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May 26 2020 08:02pm
I think people should be able to spew as much false nonsense on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook as they want. It should be up to the people to decipher the information. If they wanna believe fake shit, that's their problem and society's problem. The problem is at the root of our society and poor education/critical thinking.

There is an argument that these are private companies and therefore they should be allowed to regulate their platforms as they see fit. I get it. But I also think this will inevitably lead to censorship. And there's no doubt these platforms are largely liberal-biased.
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May 26 2020 08:30pm
Corporations are people, so to attack Twitter for this is to interfere with Twitter's free speech.

Quote (ThatAlex @ May 26 2020 09:02pm)
I think people should be able to spew as much false nonsense on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook as they want. It should be up to the people to decipher the information. If they wanna believe fake shit, that's their problem and society's problem. The problem is at the root of our society and poor education/critical thinking.

There is an argument that these are private companies and therefore they should be allowed to regulate their platforms as they see fit. I get it. But I also think this will inevitably lead to censorship. And there's no doubt these platforms are largely liberal-biased.


Censorship has always existed, will always exist, and should always exist. It's just a matter of who is doing the censoring. Non-government entities can censor all they want. We all do it, if somebody comes in my house and says something unpleasant I'm gonna kick them out. Similarly if I host a platform and what is said is against the terms of service I lay out, I get to censor them as well. We have like a dozen platforms for spewing shit now. If you don't like how one platforms censors you spewing move to a different one.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 26 2020 08:56pm)
This.

I'm not against fact-checking if done absolutely neutral and only in cases where the facts are absolutely undisputable.

Trump's free speech is not being stifled here, but fact-checking is not the social media companies' business - particularly not since they are also known to have a strong political bias. (Almost always liberal, almost always globalist.)

On the actual substance, I would say that Trump and the GOP are not justified in their concern that mail voting will put them at a disadvantage. Yes, it tends to increase turnout which is normally bad for the GOP, but older voters like mail voting a lot more than younger folks, which is good for the GOP, and these two effects roughly cancel each other out. However, the concern about election security and integrity, about ballot harvesting and manipulation, is VERY justified.


Neutral fact checking is garbage fact checking. No facts will ever be entirely out of dispute. That's just not how reality works. What you want is objective fact checking. Neutral fact checking is "X says this, Y says this". Objective fact checking is "X said this which is not backed up by evidence and was likely made up on the spot and Y said this which is backed up by numerous studies and the opinions of experts in the field. As a result it's clear that X is probably not true." Media should not be neutral, media should be objective.

I know not all conservatives think this, but I spent 8 years under Obama being told by conservatives on the forum that you aren't owed internet access or access to any of the platforms, so they can do what they want.

Quote (cambovenzi @ May 26 2020 08:39pm)
I think its a pretty terrible precedent and indicative of leftist bias.
I have zero doubt this is being used as a political weapon and won't be evenly enforced.
The implementation in this case was particularity despicable as they inserted biased and inflammatory CNN articles masquerading as a fact check for a claim that isn't even objectively false.
If thats the new normal its going to be a mess.


Why should a business not cave in to leftist bias if it makes money? Why shouldn't a private company use whatever means necessary to generate revenue? Isn't that the purpose of their entire existence?
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May 26 2020 08:30pm
I'm really confused how a fact check can be applied to a future event. He very clearly used the words 'will be'

Quote
Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.


All it would take is one case of the above to happen and his tweet wouldn't be factually wrong.
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May 26 2020 08:46pm
Quote (Thor123422 @ 27 May 2020 04:30)
Censorship has always existed, will always exist, and should always exist. It's just a matter of who is doing the censoring. Non-government entities can censor all they want. We all do it, if somebody comes in my house and says something unpleasant I'm gonna kick them out. Similarly if I host a platform and what is said is against the terms of service I lay out, I get to censor them as well. We have like a dozen platforms for spewing shit now. If you don't like how one platforms censors you spewing move to a different one.


We've had this discussion on PaRD over and over again: due to the network effect, social media has a built-in tendency toward monopoly. There will be exactly one company occupying 90+ percent of the traffic for each different type of social media.
Coupled with the large influence social media has these days over people's opinion building process, it is highly problematic if these companies exploit their position of power and their inherent insulation from upstart competitors to influence public opinion.

In particular, it is highly objectionable when these platforms resort to entities with a well-known and strong bias like the WaPo or CNN for their fact-checking, which means that the social media company is using its own leverage to amplify these entities' biased viewpoint.



Quote
Neutral fact checking is garbage fact checking. No facts will ever be entirely out of dispute. That's just not how reality works. What you want is objective fact checking. Neutral fact checking is "X says this, Y says this". Objective fact checking is "X said this which is not backed up by evidence and was likely made up on the spot and Y said this which is backed up by numerous studies and the opinions of experts in the field. As a result it's clear that X is probably not true." Media should not be neutral, media should be objective.


You're right, I meant objective fact checking. ;)

Quote
I know not all conservatives think this, but I spent 8 years under Obama being told by conservatives on the forum that you aren't owed internet access or access to any of the platforms, so they can do what they want.


I only became a regular on PaRD in 2017, so dont blame me for this. ;)
If this is really what their argument was (and not just an abridged and twisted version you're putting in their mouth), then they were wrong, for the reasons I outlined above.



Quote
Why should a business not cave in to leftist bias if it makes money? Why shouldn't a private company use whatever means necessary to generate revenue? Isn't that the purpose of their entire existence?


With great power comes great responsibility. A monopolist with huge influence on public opinion and social peace should be subject to stronger scrutiny and regulation than your local bakery or book store.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 26 2020 08:47pm
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May 26 2020 09:05pm
Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 26 2020 09:46pm)
We've had this discussion on PaRD over and over again: due to the network effect, social media has a built-in tendency toward monopoly. There will be exactly one company occupying 90+ percent of the traffic for each different type of social media.
Coupled with the large influence social media has these days over people's opinion building process, it is highly problematic if these companies exploit their position of power and their inherent insulation from upstart competitors to influence public opinion.

In particular, it is highly objectionable when these platforms resort to entities with a well-known and strong bias like the WaPo or CNN for their fact-checking, which means that the social media company is using its own leverage to amplify these entities' biased viewpoint.


and I wholly reject that these companies have a monopoly on one "type" of social media. That's splitting things too fine to be meaningful. There's a ton of social media websites that can get opinions out. You can podcast on YouTube, SoundCloud, Apple ITunes, and upload them to any number of websites. While YouTube is the largest, there's other video hosting websites like Vimeo. If you want to make short posts you can do that on Twitter, Facebook, or even the community tab on your youtube channel. Even better, you can literally do all of them at once in a combined web presence where you tweet, talk about tweets on youtube, tweet your youtube uploads, and etc. etc.

To say social media companies have a monopoly is like saying that Coke has a monopoly because it's the only one that can sell Coke. These are flavors, not different products.
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