Re:Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
by jon_akimbo on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @10:52AM
(#21463721)
It sounds like you're saying that what a company calls itself determines which ethical obligations apply to it. I can agree to an extent, but I suspect there's a different point here.
Twitter, per its own website, is "what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now." Is there any way to revise this sentence—or any other aspect of the Twitter brand—such that Twitter would no longer be subject to these complaints of censorship?
Re:Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
by malvosenior on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @12:01PM
(#21464452)
> Twitter, per its own website, is "what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now." Is there any way to revise this sentence—or any other aspect of the Twitter brand—such that Twitter would no longer be subject to these complaints of censorship?
I would say no. It's a service designed from the ground up to allow people to speak their mind. When they start editorializing who is allowed to speak their mind, people will rightfully complain of censorship.
I suppose they could change the tagline to:
"what’s happening in the world (that we approve of) and what people (we like) are talking about right now."
I don't think many people would be excited to use that service though.
That being said, social media is just that: something users can post to. Twitter users were not hired to promote a particular point of view, they were invited to share their own point of view. To then go through and cull the people you invited to share based on ideology while still calling yourself a social media platform is where a lot of the complaints (rightfully) come from.