In the case of Donald Trump, supporting at least a temporary ban (I’m on the fence about whether a permanent ban is appropriate) is more optimally moral than continuing to allow him to use Twitter. I see two reasons for this. More explicitly than I stated in the article—first, it’s better for Donald Trump’s mental health
The second, I just re-read the reasoning behind the Twitter decision to ban him on the grounds of their glorification of violence policy, and in the context of where the country was on January 8th, it 50% makes sense (and that 50% is the part that counts in terms of the ban). The 50% good—It reads like a company that’s self-aware of how dangerous their platform can be and is trying to reduce the proximate harm. The 50% bad—it’s taking no responsibility for their hand in creating software that coaxed it to that point and profited from it all along the way.
I realize there’s plenty of other accounts saying awful things on Twitter, but if you know Wikipedia policy that sounds like a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. That would be an argument where the existence of something bad somewhere else is used to justify allowing something else bad to continue.
If you write a typical clickbait buzzfeed-esque article it gets shared, makes some money form ads, and then is likely forgotten… not to mention it has all of these negative externalities (e.g. using fear and outrage to get attention).
A micropayment royalty system would incentivize people to produce content that’s valuable rather than clickbait… sort of like if you write a good journal article, it get’s cited, quoted and has not just a long tail effect but a kind of a stacked cumulative long tail effect from not just the views on the original piece of content but from the views of everything that incorporated it. We want people to make more content like this and to get paid for doing it, but there’s not good mechanisms to pay them for this now, although people are working on it.
Then you can talk about having very cheap transaction fees, which in turn allows you to do whole new kinds of transactions in the world, and so you can talk about a world where maybe instead of playing games and going to websites and watching videos where you’re paying for [00:28:00] by watching ads, you pay for it by paying one hundredth of a penny. Does that matter? Well, guess what comes along with paying for it by watching ads? Whoever is showing you the ad, has a very strong motivation to spy on you, that’s just inherent. People have said, “You know if you’re not paying for this service, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
I realize there’s plenty of other accounts saying awful things on Twitter, but if you know Wikipedia policy that sounds like a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. That would be an argument where the existence of something bad somewhere else is used to justify allowing something else bad to continue.
When it comes to cases where a person has a duty to treat people fairly, other stuff exists is a valid argument. Black people are jailed much more for drug use then white people is a valid argument to be made against a black person being jailed for drug use.
Do you think that Twitter doesn’t have such a duty to treat people with equal standards?
A tweet by the PotUS has large effects, the same tweet by me would have none. Should the tweets be equally judged by just the actual words, or equally judged by the effects they are likely to have?
When it comes to cases where a person has a duty to treat people fairly, other stuff exists is a valid argument. Black people are jailed much more for drug use then white people is a valid argument to be made against a black person being jailed for drug use.
Agree that case is a valid argument. More (but not perfectly) analogous to this situation would be if someone was arrested for drug use and said “hey, I know this other person that’s been using drugs way longer than I have and they haven’t been arrested, why are you arresting me why you should be arresting them for being the more egregious offenders?”
Do you think that Twitter doesn’t have such a duty to treat people with equal standards?
I’m not sure if you mean this in a normative or descriptive sense. In a normative sense, yes, and I would apply this to people and corporations.
In a descriptive sense, what incentives does Twitter have to treat people with equal standards? Being morally good? Will that make their shareholders and advertisers more money? Would the board of directors suggest it? Capitalism doesn’t necessarily optimize for the moral goodness of products.
There are ways to use capitalism to improve capitalism. There’s a lot of “Metcalfe’s law determinists.” Like “there is no alternative to this network because it’s the large network.” But any network is just a spot on a much larger canvas of possible networks, any number of which could make money and make it more morally.
Clubhouse isn’t a perfect example, but it does show that people are willing to use networks operating in different paradigms. Sure, Clubhouse didn’t stick the landing after it’s growth spike, but someone else could.
In the case of Donald Trump, supporting at least a temporary ban (I’m on the fence about whether a permanent ban is appropriate) is more optimally moral than continuing to allow him to use Twitter. I see two reasons for this. More explicitly than I stated in the article—first, it’s better for Donald Trump’s mental health
The second, I just re-read the reasoning behind the Twitter decision to ban him on the grounds of their glorification of violence policy, and in the context of where the country was on January 8th, it 50% makes sense (and that 50% is the part that counts in terms of the ban). The 50% good—It reads like a company that’s self-aware of how dangerous their platform can be and is trying to reduce the proximate harm. The 50% bad—it’s taking no responsibility for their hand in creating software that coaxed it to that point and profited from it all along the way.
I realize there’s plenty of other accounts saying awful things on Twitter, but if you know Wikipedia policy that sounds like a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. That would be an argument where the existence of something bad somewhere else is used to justify allowing something else bad to continue.
In the case of social media at large… I share the view that Ted Nelson is perhaps the worst project manager in the history of software development, but his ideas for building a network that allowed users to generate wealth through micropayment royalties is one of the best yet unimplemented ideas.
If you write a typical clickbait buzzfeed-esque article it gets shared, makes some money form ads, and then is likely forgotten… not to mention it has all of these negative externalities (e.g. using fear and outrage to get attention).
A micropayment royalty system would incentivize people to produce content that’s valuable rather than clickbait… sort of like if you write a good journal article, it get’s cited, quoted and has not just a long tail effect but a kind of a stacked cumulative long tail effect from not just the views on the original piece of content but from the views of everything that incorporated it. We want people to make more content like this and to get paid for doing it, but there’s not good mechanisms to pay them for this now, although people are working on it.
Of people working on this now, Leemon Baird seems to get this.
When it comes to cases where a person has a duty to treat people fairly, other stuff exists is a valid argument. Black people are jailed much more for drug use then white people is a valid argument to be made against a black person being jailed for drug use.
Do you think that Twitter doesn’t have such a duty to treat people with equal standards?
A tweet by the PotUS has large effects, the same tweet by me would have none. Should the tweets be equally judged by just the actual words, or equally judged by the effects they are likely to have?
What has that to do with what I wrote and whether WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS applies here?
It was a response to your final question about treating people with equal standards, drawing attention to the ambiguity of the concept.
Agree that case is a valid argument. More (but not perfectly) analogous to this situation would be if someone was arrested for drug use and said “hey, I know this other person that’s been using drugs way longer than I have and they haven’t been arrested, why are you arresting me why you should be arresting them for being the more egregious offenders?”
I’m not sure if you mean this in a normative or descriptive sense. In a normative sense, yes, and I would apply this to people and corporations.
In a descriptive sense, what incentives does Twitter have to treat people with equal standards? Being morally good? Will that make their shareholders and advertisers more money? Would the board of directors suggest it? Capitalism doesn’t necessarily optimize for the moral goodness of products.
There are ways to use capitalism to improve capitalism. There’s a lot of “Metcalfe’s law determinists.” Like “there is no alternative to this network because it’s the large network.” But any network is just a spot on a much larger canvas of possible networks, any number of which could make money and make it more morally.
Clubhouse isn’t a perfect example, but it does show that people are willing to use networks operating in different paradigms. Sure, Clubhouse didn’t stick the landing after it’s growth spike, but someone else could.