Poll: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms shit can InfoWars

posted by j_crazy

something like 45% of people get some or all of their news from some combination of these sites. They need to be governed as a utility. As asinine as what this man says is, he needs the right to say it and put it out there. 

I mean, if Elton John got kicked off of these platforms for soliciting donations to fund a wedding for the newly gay frogs that Alex Jones is always talking about, we'd be hearing a different rhetoric about this decision.

Classic product/service cycle that our society is fooled into every damn time.  

-Product/service is commercialized.

-Private sector makes product/service cheaper, more accessible, and more desirable every year.

-People cry for more regulations and lobbyists push for more regulations to try and create a monopoly.

-The "good intention" regulations end up creating a oligopoly/duopoly/monopoly for said product/service.

-People cry more and ask for the Government to take over.

-Government takes over and it is a trash product.  Not to mention the party in charge gets to make the decisions on said product/service.  This is something a lot of people tend to leave out. What makes you think the party you don't support will have your best interests in mind?  You would have to think that your party will never relinquish control, which is idiotic.  A lot of people are already learning their lesson from that type of hubris (see dems and the nuclear option). 

I just can't get behind the idea that a product/service was made so good that eventually it needs to be turned into a public utility.  You're punishing an entire industry for thriving. 

posted by j_crazy

something like 45% of people get some or all of their news from some combination of these sites. They need to be governed as a utility. As asinine as what this man says is, he needs the right to say it and put it out there.

If that's the case, then those 45% of people are lazy, apathetic about the accuracy of what they ingest as news, or both.  Why does that require the regulation of what they choose to use?

Keep in mind, he DOES have "the right to say [what he says] and put it out there."  And he still is.  He has his site.  His app is one of the hottest ones on the Google Play Store since Facebook's and YouTube's decision.  His message isn't being silenced.  His former providers are just severing ties with him.
 

posted by j_crazy

I mean, if Elton John got kicked off of these platforms for soliciting donations to fund a wedding for the newly gay frogs that Alex Jones is always talking about, we'd be hearing a different rhetoric about this decision.

You're not wrong.  The partisan spoonfed (largely those 45% you referenced above, I'd wager) would get all worked up over it.  They'd just be on opposite sides.

O-Trap

If that's the case, then those 45% of people are lazy, apathetic about the accuracy of what they ingest as news, or both.  Why does that require the regulation of what they choose to use?

I thought we already knew this. People are lazy as shit, just yesterday 17 people shared with me stories about a bull shark in the Ohio River at Shadyside. If any of them did any cursory checking on that story, they'd be able to debunk it. As it stands, what constitutes news nowadays is a provocative headline with a cool thumbnail. 90% of people don't make it past that.

That's how you end up with such a divided political system. People on the right only read the right generated headlines, people on the left only read the left headlines, and the true story is always closer to the middle than what the headlines are saying. This Manafort story is a prime example. The right headlines only talk about the charges not being related to the Trump Campaign, the left only mention that he's being charged as part of the investigation into the Trump Campaign. Both headlines are right, but the story isn't that clear.

posted by O-Trap

 

Keep in mind, he DOES have "the right to say [what he says] and put it out there."  And he still is.  He has his site.  His app is one of the hottest ones on the Google Play Store since Facebook's and YouTube's decision.  His message isn't being silenced.  His former providers are just severing ties with him.

 

Understood, but when he's generating a lion's share of his views from Youtube and Twitter and Facebook and you cut that off, it's not as simple as just using a new platform to get those views back. He has to invest some serious coin to get infrastructure close to what they were giving him access to.

Think of it like this, if you have cable through Comcast, then they decide they don't like the message that FOX News is putting out there and they pull them from their channel line up. Furthermore, they blacklist their IP, so you can't even go to foxnews.com through your wifi or internet, because Comcast supplies that too. You could switch suppliers, but not everyone can. I'm currently in an apartment that only has Xfinity, no other cable or internet options. I'm also not allowed to hang a satellite dish per my lease, so I'd be shit out of luck.

I'm not trying to say I agree with this idiot, I'm just saying what is happening is bordering on a violation of his 1st ammendment rights.

posted by j_crazy

I thought we already knew this. People are lazy as shit, just yesterday 17 people shared with me stories about a bull shark in the Ohio River at Shadyside. If any of them did any cursory checking on that story, they'd be able to debunk it. As it stands, what constitutes news nowadays is a provocative headline with a cool thumbnail. 90% of people don't make it past that.

This is actually in my neck of the woods. The first time I ever heard the story was about 2 or 3 years ago. There was even a segment on the evening news saying that this wasn't true, yet people still believed it. "I can't take my kids fishing there anymore!"

hah!

posted by j_crazy

I thought we already knew this. People are lazy as shit, just yesterday 17 people shared with me stories about a bull shark in the Ohio River at Shadyside. If any of them did any cursory checking on that story, they'd be able to debunk it. As it stands, what constitutes news nowadays is a provocative headline with a cool thumbnail. 90% of people don't make it past that.

Oh, we do already know it, and it's why it ultimately wouldn't matter who is on there.  People will still filter more by what's relevant to their wants than they do by what is accurate.  I had the same thing happen yesterday with regard to Army football players kneeling during the anthem (a cursory search would show they were kneeling at an away game for a pre-game prayer).
 

posted by j_crazy

That's how you end up with such a divided political system. People on the right only read the right generated headlines, people on the left only read the left headlines, and the true story is always closer to the middle than what the headlines are saying. This Manafort story is a prime example. The right headlines only talk about the charges not being related to the Trump Campaign, the left only mention that he's being charged as part of the investigation into the Trump Campaign. Both headlines are right, but the story isn't that clear.

That's how persuasive writing works.  Headlines and stories will be technically accurate (or subjective to a degree, allowing for some leeway on what is and isn't fact), but they'll be incomplete at best.
 

posted by j_crazy

Understood, but when he's generating a lion's share of his views from Youtube and Twitter and Facebook and you cut that off, it's not as simple as just using a new platform to get those views back. He has to invest some serious coin to get infrastructure close to what they were giving him access to.

Believe me, I know this.  I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread that I lost the ability to communicate with over a quarter million subscribers of my own because of something similar.

Granted, his scale is many, many times more than that, but the parallel still works.

I was communicating with my subscribers through a service ... a platform ... that was privately owned.  There was a standard agreement to use that platform, but they had the right to cancel access at any time, just as I had the right to cease my use of it at any time.  Eventually, they did cancel my access, despite the fact that I hadn't violated the ToU&S.  They deemed model to place too much risk onto one of their shared mailing servers, so while I didn't break any rules, they determined that it was not in their best interest to continue allowing me to use their platform.

What happened here is the same.  Whether or not it was his primary means of communicating doesn't make it any more or less a right, so long as it was a matter of choice to build his brand and audience that way, and it was.  Whether he broke the rules is also not relevant, because the arrangement was voluntary under a standard agreement.

He, as so many do, placed a large portion of his eggs in those baskets, and that's on him (and if it happens to anyone else, it's on them as well).  It still doesn't place the burden of fixing his problem at the social media networks' collective feet.
 

posted by j_crazy

Think of it like this, if you have cable through Comcast, then they decide they don't like the message that FOX News is putting out there and they pull them from their channel line up. Furthermore, they blacklist their IP, so you can't even go to foxnews.com through your wifi or internet, because Comcast supplies that too. You could switch suppliers, but not everyone can. I'm currently in an apartment that only has Xfinity, no other cable or internet options. I'm also not allowed to hang a satellite dish per my lease, so I'd be shit out of luck.

There are still a few ways around that, so you wouldn't be completely out of luck, but you'd probably have to do some digging.

I've seen similar examples floating around, so I get the frustration.  However, it's still the prerogative of the service provider to do that.  If you live in said apartment building, and that happens, voice a complaint with the building manager or ownership.  Encourage neighbors to do the same.  Urge management to drop that provider and go with a different cable provider, or allow for satellite service, or provide another alternative.

Moreover, do you suggest that we draw an arbitrary line around those things which the cable companies are not allowed to curate, but still allow them to curate the rest of the content they might make accessible through their service?  Or do we effectively force the cable companies to be nothing but a pass-through and withhold their right to curate the content that exists on their own property?
 

posted by j_crazy

I'm not trying to say I agree with this idiot, I'm just saying what is happening is bordering on a violation of his 1st ammendment rights.

Make no mistake, I wasn't suggesting you agreed with him.  Whether we like or dislike what is said, performed, sung, etc. really doesn't even matter.  If this were either from a public property platform or if it were enforced by public agencies, then I'd agree with you.

As it stands, though, this boils down to just a couple companies, large though they might be, doing what they think is in their company's best interest.

Make no mistake, I wasn't suggesting you agreed with him.  Whether we like or dislike what is said, performed, sung, etc. really doesn't even matter.  If this were either from a public property platform or if it were enforced by public agencies, then I'd agree with you.

As it stands, though, this boils down to just a couple companies, large though they might be, doing what they think is in their company's best interest.

This is the heart of where we disagree, I think they are big enough that they need to be treated as a public agency (as much as it pains me to say that). I agree it's in their company's best interest to do what they are doing, I'm just arguing that because of their company sizes, they are able to do things like this that impede this guy's rights. Therefore they need to be treated as such.

My argument is that everytime the next facebook, or the next youtube pops up, they get taken over before they really get off the ground. It's done under the guise of facebook or google trying to incorporate new and emerging tech that these startups are able to use to get started, but they really don't want to risk an upstart eating into their market share which currently sits at 90+%. Hence my argument. 

Also this is one of the more civil debates i've been in on this site. Way to go OC/Politics!!

posted by j_crazy

This is the heart of where we disagree, I think they are big enough that they need to be treated as a public agency (as much as it pains me to say that). I agree it's in their company's best interest to do what they are doing, I'm just arguing that because of their company sizes, they are able to do things like this that impede this guy's rights. Therefore they need to be treated as such.

My argument is that everytime the next facebook, or the next youtube pops up, they get taken over before they really get off the ground. It's done under the guise of facebook or google trying to incorporate new and emerging tech that these startups are able to use to get started, but they really don't want to risk an upstart eating into their market share which currently sits at 90+%. Hence my argument. 

 

Also this is one of the more civil debates i've been in on this site. Way to go OC/Politics!!

Oh, that's absolutely why they do it.  However, it's worth noting that one of the two in question actually did grow from being the small fish in the big pond.

YouTube is owned by Google.  I'm sure you can remember, just as I can, the time when Google was an itty-bitty player in the search world.  Dogpile, Yahoo, and Ask.com were all much bigger.  You don't HAVE to sell.

Also, your numbers might be a skosh outdated.  Here's what I found as of July 2018:



So it still does appear to be 63% between the two of them, which is hardly small, in your defense.

However, neither one accounts for a majority, and since either one is making its decisions independently of the other (at least from an autonomy perspective ... the decision of one might influence the decision-making of the other, of course), there's no justification under the auspices of a monopoly.  You *might* have a better case in that regard if there was evidence of collusion, but to my knowledge, there hasn't been any uncovered.

Social media itself isn't a right, never mind a specific social media platform.  I'm assuming we can agree on that.

As such, the use of one, and the prevention of use of one, cannot be considered an infringement of rights.

My comment was more on the Youtube, less on the Google side of that. I'm also more looking into the aspect of video/media hosting sites not necessarily overall traffic. I'm just saying that if you are going to hose a live video or audio session on the internet, the chances of you getting access to over 1 million unique users are limited to Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit (and I feel like Reddit might not be a real options but I'll give their video player a chance for this argument, I just don't know if they can do a live feed). 2 of those 5 are the same company, and all but 1 have banned him. So my point is they are limiting the ability he has to reach his viewership. 

posted by j_crazy

My comment was more on the Youtube, less on the Google side of that. I'm also more looking into the aspect of video/media hosting sites not necessarily overall traffic. I'm just saying that if you are going to hose a live video or audio session on the internet, the chances of you getting access to over 1 million unique users are limited to Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit (and I feel like Reddit might not be a real options but I'll give their video player a chance for this argument, I just don't know if they can do a live feed). 2 of those 5 are the same company, and all but 1 have banned him. So my point is they are limiting the ability he has to reach his viewership. 

Each one is limiting his ability to use their own platform(s), yes.  Collectively, it hampers him significantly, but it's not being done collectively.

If a single man walks into a bar, hits on ten women, and nine turn him down, it doesn't prove collusion.  Each one made the choice to turn him down.

The same idea applies here, unless there is evidence of collusion found at some point, which I doubt, as I doubt they'd do this unless they think it's good for their bottom line, and I doubt they're going to collude with a rival company to help them do what is best for their bottom line as well.

I know you were referring specifically to YouTube, and not necessarily to Google at large, but my point is that Google is relevant because ownership is relevant.  Google owns YouTube, which means YouTube doesn't get to make this decision without Google's blessing at the very least and insistence at most.

To decide that a company has become too successful to be privately owned and controlled only stifles any motivation to further advance the technologies, tools, processes, services, etc. that such a company can provide.  This is particularly troubling when put on a timeline.  Social Media Company A, whatever it is, may start in someone's basement/dorm/car/etc.  It's obviously not too big at that point.  But by implementing a policy whereby a company that gets too large is seized and controlled by political bodies effectively tells the person who begins building it out of his basement/car/dorm/etc. that if his little dream works too well, it will be taken from him, if not entirely, at least in control.  Then, the person who had the aspirations for what his platform is supposed to be no longer gets to decide what it is allowed to be.

This is, of course, all aside from the fact that any attempt to draw a "line" at the point where something becomes too big to be private would be entirely subjective, since there's no empirical evidence to determine that line ... or even to determine that a line is necessary.

To bring it back to the abstract principle at play, one man's right to free speech stops at another man's property line.  I cannot stop you from saying whatever you wish, but I do not owe you my platform to say it.  A notion to the contrary is, in function if not in form, a pretty blatant example of entitlement, and I don't throw that word around a lot.

Will be quite the sight when all of the liberal media companies have a effectively banished libertarian thought to obscure forums like this one and libertarians will still be going on and on about aggression from the state and praying to their God the free market to solve their problem of censorship...

Meanwhile they can't get their message out in newspapers that don't exist or have been bought up by liberals who are against "hate-speech", the privatized Amazon Post won't mail content with their "hate speech" in it, Google won't allow searches for "hate speech", law firms won't do securities offerings for new start-ups that will promote "hate speech", exchanges won't list securities of firms that promote or allow "hate speech", etc. 

posted by BoatShoes

Will be quite the sight when all of the liberal media companies have a effectively banished libertarian thought to obscure forums like this one and libertarians will still be going on and on about aggression from the state and praying to their God the free market to solve their problem of censorship...

Don't plan on seeing too much from libertarians painting that as state aggression.  They'll likely argue that it's wrong ethically (I can get on board with this notion, even with InfoWars), and I'm sure there will be a few that call it state-sanctioned censorship (I have, after all, seen plenty of them calling what's happening to InfoWars censorship and painting it as a conspiracy between big government and big social medai), but I doubt you'll see the kind of bitching you're imagining.

Also, I doubt it happens, since libertarians agree with liberals and/or conservatives on too much policy for me to believe that would happen.  It's beside the point, of course, but I don't think it happens, regardless.

posted by O-Trap

Don't plan on seeing too much from libertarians painting that as state aggression.  They'll likely argue that it's wrong ethically (I can get on board with this notion, even with InfoWars), and I'm sure there will be a few that call it state-sanctioned censorship (I have, after all, seen plenty of them calling what's happening to InfoWars censorship and painting it as a conspiracy between big government and big social medai), but I doubt you'll see the kind of bitching you're imagining.

Also, I doubt it happens, since libertarians agree with liberals and/or conservatives on too much policy for me to believe that would happen.  It's beside the point, of course, but I don't think it happens, regardless.

My apologies for not being clear O-Trap. I realize you don't think it's "the state" being authoritarian when social media bans libertarian thought to the bowels of the internet. My point is that libertarians will still be going on in the bowels of the internet about the dangers of the state long after liberal sjw authoritarianism outsourced to private for-profit capitalism has done the banishing. 

Today it was mastercard wielding the sjw authoritarianism against the wicked. And hence lies the real problem with libertarianism...the libertarian shackled in chains getting whipped and coerced into silence by the sjw mob looks to the nightwatchman and says "don't stop them as that would require coercion violating the NAP!"

posted by BoatShoes

My apologies for not being clear O-Trap. I realize you don't think it's "the state" being authoritarian when social media bans libertarian thought to the bowels of the internet. My point is that libertarians will still be going on in the bowels of the internet about the dangers of the state long after liberal sjw authoritarianism outsourced to private for-profit capitalism has done the banishing.

Well, at that point, it would indeed be done by "the state."  Corporatism, whereby government is so outsourced, is still state sanctioned.  Private institutions (which don't necessarily have to be for-profit, but certain can be) are merely prosthetic arm.  Doesn't make it any less problematic.

Were it discovered that that is what happened here, I would be changing my tune.
 

posted by BoatShoes

Today it was mastercard wielding the sjw authoritarianism against the wicked. And hence lies the real problem with libertarianism...the libertarian shackled in chains getting whipped and coerced into silence by the sjw mob looks to the nightwatchman and says "don't stop them as that would require coercion violating the NAP!"

You're equating violation of the NAP with wicked.  I delineate between them, at least in theory.  The fact that people so often treat them as equitable with regard to law creation is part of the reason I would prefer to keep morality out of criminal law entirely and focus on acts directly committed against another person or property without their consent (dentention, theft, assault, etc.).

Moreover, what you've attributed to libertarianism looks far more like anarchocapitalism, and even then, it's not because restraining those who are already violating the NAP would subsequently violate the NAP (most libertarians would, in fact, agree that it doesn't), but because there wouldn't be a night watchman to which one might appeal either way.

It's also why, despite the appeal of anarchocapitalism, I can't bring myself to adopt it.  I maintain that there does have to be a night watchman who prevents actual violation of the NAP, whether from private or public entities, into which your example falls for more reasons than one.