News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by fooey on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @08:20PM (#24783355)
There won't be legislative blow back, the GOP is days away from being wholesale evicted from controlling anything at all in DC.

As a legislative move, this is changing their bet to the horse that's about to win. The social media companies are clearly more afraid longterm of what happens if they let this kind of stunt spread than they are afraid of the lame duck.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by Karunamon on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @08:25PM (#24783389)
What makes you think that the Dems wouldn't like to make social media companies liable for misinfo?

That's what I'm trying to say, here. Either way you slice it, 230 is in the crosshairs, it's just a matter of who's holding the gun and for what purpose.

I also wouldn't bet a cent of my own money on the GOP being "wholesale evicted". I heard very similar, equally confident talk in 2016.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by travmatt on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @08:57PM (#24783583)
Democrats haven’t been raising 230 regulation though, that’s been republicans disgruntled that their ads had been fact-checked (by partisan conservatives, it turns out). The proposed regulations coming out of the house have been more about competition and anti-monopoly.

It’s hard to see this as anything more than an attempt to change their bet on a losing horse in this race, as the commenter you replied to pointed out.

And I’m not sure if we’re remembering the same 2016 election. We’re both talking about the same election, that resulted in the largest win for an American political party in history, right? 2016 was absolutely horrendous for conservatives and their saving grace was the senate cycle was particularly bad for democrats. If there’s a similar performance this election there’s a good chance that they take both branches.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by logicchains on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:58PM (#24784782)
>Democrats haven’t been raising 230 regulation though, that’s been republicans disgruntled that their ads had been fact-checked

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21274812/joe-biden-donald... : "Joe Biden doesn’t like Trump’s Twitter order, but still wants to revoke Section 230"

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by stale2002 on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:35PM (#24784654)
> Democrats haven’t been raising 230 regulation though

They may not be raising specifically 230 concerns. But democrats are absolutely bringing up anti-trust concerns regarding major tech company.

Arguably, anti-trust breakup of major tech companies would be much more destructive to those tech companies, than merely removing some tech companies ability to moderate content.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by travmatt on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:52PM (#24784743)
> They may not be raising specifically 230 concerns. But democrats are absolutely bringing up anti-trust concerns regarding major tech company.

My comment that you replied to says that democrats in the house have been bringing up anti-trust concerns. Anti-trust and 230 regulation are two separate things done for different reasons. They are not equivalent actions nor do are they being pursued out of the same concerns. Trying to conflate them is wrong.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by stale2002 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @04:54AM (#24786360)
> Trying to conflate

I think that from a higher level principle, they can be conflated.

The way that they can be conflated is that many of these tech companies, just don't have many friends left.

Even if the exact reason as for why they don't have many friends left may be different, the end result is still the same.

The left and the right may be going after them from different angles, but that is still pretty bad, because nobody is there to defend them.

People who may have stuck their neck out to defend them in the past, just aren't going to do so anymore.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by travmatt on Thursday October 15, 2020 @12:02PM (#24790050)
Is it really your opinion that the richest and most powerful industry in the world has no ability to defend itself? And that we need to fight back and encourage monopoly and stifle competition?

And sorry, they are still not conflatable - you’re still trying to create a false equivalence. They are not the same thing, the desire here to misrepresent facts to fit into a narrative is intellectually dishonest.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by stale2002 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @02:13PM (#24791767)
> has no ability to defend itself?

Well, in the legislative bodies, they have much less ability to defend itself, than in the past, due to both parties having significant, albeit different, problems with these companies.

> trying to create a false equivalence.

They are equivalent in the specific aspect of them having less allies in congress, and that this makes them more vulnerable than in the past.

IE, less people in our legislative bodies will be willing to stick their neck out to defend them.

> to fit into a narrative

It is absolutely accurate to say that these companies have less allies in congress, than in the past, and that being hit, from both sides, on these 2 issues, hurts these companies.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by travmatt on Thursday October 15, 2020 @04:20PM (#24793344)
I can promise you that the major tech companies have no shortage of people in Washington preaching the benefits their companies provide. I wouldn’t say they have less allies than I would say that people don’t use the same rose-tinted glasses when it comes to these companies and their effects on the markets they participate in. It’d be perverse to have a congress that allows what it sees as monopolistic behavior just because their friends are the ones profiting from it.
Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by stale2002 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @04:25PM (#24793402)
> I would say that people don’t use the same rose-tinted glasses

You can use different words to describe having less allies, or allies that are less likely to support them, if you want.

But my point still stands. They either have less allies, or those allies are less likely to look at these tech companies through "rose-tinted glasses"

Glad you agree that their former "allies" are no longer looking at these companies so favorable, using " rose-tinted glasses".

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by travmatt on Thursday October 15, 2020 @05:29PM (#24794256)
The only people who expected democrats to defend monopolies because they were ‘friends’ has either a very cynical or naive view of the influence of business on the Democratic Party, and very little historical perspective.

Arguments that would essentially allow monopolistic behavior has pretty much always been firmly inside republican laissez-faire circles, and those allies are still very much there. Railing against tech elites may play great for tv, but let’s be honest - Peter Thiel, strong advocate of monopoly, still spoke at the Republican national convention. There’s a good reason they overruled fact-checkers when conservatives violated their prescribed rules, they know where their bread is buttered.

https://www.engadget.com/facebook-overruled-fact-checkers-to...

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by pfarrell on Thursday October 15, 2020 @01:07AM (#24785129)
I think you are referring to the 2018 election, when the Democratic Party regained majority in the House and there were not many Republican held Senate seats being elected.
Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by rayiner on Thursday October 15, 2020 @12:17AM (#24784888)
Democrats’ victory will be built on purple House seats, COVID blowback, and suburban women and seniors getting cold on Trump. That’s not going to last forever. The “demographic destiny” thing is looking increasingly dubious as Trump continues to outperform expectations among Latinos, even after, well, four years of Trump and COVID and everything. Meanwhile, there is no bench of strong moderates behind Biden. Republicans will be back in office sooner than folks think.
Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by ls612 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @12:29AM (#24784941)
Nonwhite Democrats are culturally far more conservative than white progressives on every issue except for racial issues. This will come to bite Democrats in a big way probably, as I’m almost sure the republicans will sooner or later nominate a nonwhite candidate (Nikki Haley??) and Democrats won’t get the ‘demographic’ vote they were hoping for.
Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by tptacek on Thursday October 15, 2020 @02:07PM (#24791691)
There's research suggesting it's not this simple, and that Black voting is highly coordinated and communitarian. Already, we have strong indicators that most voting is about personal identification and not about fitting candidates to a personal ideological profile (Achen and Bartels). Combine that with White And Laird's observations about the dynamics of Black voting (heavily identified with the Democratic party, and with an awareness of the influence in the party their bloc voting gets them), and I don't think you can just run a Black Republican and peel off that cohort of Democratic voters.

What's more likely to happen is that the progressive dream of celebrity politicians in places like NYC will run aground of what the party is actually game for, because, as you observe, huge portions of the Democratic coalition are far more conservative than the Take Factory gives them credit for.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by ntsplnkv2 on Thursday October 15, 2020 @09:09AM (#24788195)
The republicans have gone too far right for this to work and have left many moderate republicans in no-mans land.

Nikki Haley is not as popular as republicans think she is - she's largely irrelevant right now.

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting by rayiner on Thursday October 15, 2020 @12:42AM (#24785017)
White progressives have become more liberal on race issues recently as well: https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white...

> In the past five years, white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typical black voter.

Trump has plumbed the bottom of the non-white vote. The protests rankled many Latinos. In recent YouGov polling, a narrow majority of Latinos rated “the breakdown of law and order” as a “bigger problem” then “systemic racism.”

Meanwhile, Millenial Black voters are twice as likely to have favorable or somewhat favorable views of Trump than older Black voters: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/ucla-study...

> The data collected from April 2-May 13 by the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project, an initiative that conducted weekly surveys of thousands of potential voters for nearly a year, found that 29% of percent of black voters ages 30-44 and 21% ages 18-29 have a "very favorable" or "somewhat favorable" view of President Trump. This compares to just 14% of black voters 45-64 and 9% of those 65 and older.

It’s not going to be Mitt Romney’s Republican Party. But Democrats shouldn’t be popping champagne corks assuming that the opposing party will never be in power again.