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Trump Accuses Social Media Firms of 'Silencing Millions' (reuters.com) 570

U.S. President Donald Trump accused social media companies on Friday of silencing "millions of people" in an act of censorship, but without offering evidence to support the claim. From a report: "Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can't do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!" Trump wrote on Twitter, not mentioning any specific companies. Trump also criticized social media outlets last week, saying without providing proof that unidentified companies were "totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices." Mr. President's Friday remarks comes days after he expressed concerns over Twitter and Facebook regulating the content on their own platforms. He found such practice "very dangerous."
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Trump Accuses Social Media Firms of 'Silencing Millions'

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  • by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @01:49PM (#57187946)
    • Yup, pretty much. Mod up please

    • Reveals Titanic desperation

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl... [twimg.com]

      • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @05:39PM (#57189814)
        Trump is quietly dismantling Obamacare and with it protections for pre-existing coverage. He's cut the VA. 83% of his tax cut went to the 1% and it's causing run away inflation which the Fed will combat with rising interest rates making home, car and credit card debt more expensive for consumers. His Trade War has a net negative job effect and is itself a distraction from the effect of automation (we've doubled manufacturing output in 50 years while cutting 2/3rds of the jobs, we've lost more to robots than outsourcing).

        I could go on. The beauty of Trump is that his outrageousness masks a lot of very real and very bad things that will hurt the American working class.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 )

      People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!

      Huge chunks of the US have repeatedly shown that they are incapable of determining what is real and what is not. Evidence of this is the fact that people believe Trump. More evidence is the fact that Snopes needs a page for this [snopes.com].

      Cue the cloud and old man.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24, 2018 @01:50PM (#57187950)

    regardless of your opinions, he is right. of course they have the right to do so, but people are being silenced

    • by DCFusor ( 1763438 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @01:57PM (#57188026) Homepage
      Take away their safe harbor protection, since they are no longer one. If they curate, it's no longer just the comments of the participants, it's now "journalism" and things like libel apply...which would of course, shut down all the people on the "other side" from the ones they're silencing as well, and we could go back to kitty pix and meals and platitudes....in peace.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ganjadude ( 952775 )
        Agreed. I know for a fact my twitter is shaddow banned and ive had numerous posts on FB removed and banned a number of times for innocent posts simply for going against groupthink.

        either everything goes, or they are no longer innocent in what is allowed on their platforms. choice is yours.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by farble1670 ( 803356 )

          ive had numerous posts on FB removed and banned a number of times for innocent posts simply for going against groupthink.

          No, you haven't. No one is naive enough to think that FB removed your posts just because you offered a different opinion.

        • so? leave FB then.

          the more people do that, the better.

          you are annoyed that a SOLELY OWNED private website does what it want? oh, the shock and horror.

          bring back usenet and distributed social networking. then I might give a damn. but websites? who, that has tech understanding of this, even cares?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Dissagree. The people being shadowbanned and deleted are assholes or bots. There's a terms of service that all users agree to abide by, and those being removed are simply failing to abide by what they agreed to.

        It's not the social media sites fault that the people being abusive and racist are far more quantitatively republican/conservative.

        • Except when the government directs them to silence dissent.
    • by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @02:04PM (#57188096) Homepage

      If it was actually people being silenced by the millions instead of just astroturf bots, he would have a point.

    • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @02:08PM (#57188122)

      The real problem is everyone is talking but no one is listening. So to be heard they talk louder and try to be more shocking to get attention. The one who gets attention is listed to. But only the most outrageous arguments are being heard, so for those who oppose those ideas will either go as far in the other direction or just not listen causing such escalation. From Free Speech of idea sharing, to trolling.

      Free Speech has moved from long conversations of opposing ideas, to bumper sticker slogans.
      Not all ideas will have a consensus, not all view points are right. But we have fallen into such tribalism we are seeing the opposite party as these evil goblins who are out to kill our way of lives.

      • the solution is to break up the USA and make it into more state-like entities. skinner had the right idea; smaller city-states, not bigger ones. big ones mean that too many different subsections will NEVER agree. so, give each what they want; those that don't agree should move (we can do that today; we couldn't quite do that 200+ years ago, not quite as well).

        I will never agree with the self-labeled conservatives. nothing they view is important to me and nothing I see as important means a thing to them.

      • I'm listening (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @05:49PM (#57189882)
        I've listened to a lot of what comes out of the Trump Administration. Not Trump himself, his Administration. And it scares me. I'm most worried about how he's letting a challenge to the ACA's protection of pre-existing conditions go through. I've got friends and family who live and die by it. Nobody's talking about it. The lawsuit is quietly proceeding like nothing happened. Meanwhile his Supreme Court nominee will likely strike it down when it passes his desk. And on the off chance Bernie Sanders & the Dems get us Medicare for all ending the farce of our healthcare system once and for all that same nominee will likely kill it. In the process they might kill Medicare & Medicaid too...

        The shouting isn't there because they're not being listened to. It's a distraction from what the ruling class is doing to the working class...
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Not really, unless you think the only way you can express yourself is on Twitter and Facebook. You can still go an alt-right forum or even set one up yourself.

      But you'll find even sites like StormFront have community standards which they enforce, they're just different community standards. What it means is that everybody can find a platform to express their opinions, but nobody -- left or right, paleo-, neo-, or alt- -- gets a platform from which they can address *everybody*, even people who don't want to

    • Or these people could try making a web page.
    • Define "silenced". If you are talking about Alex Jones, yes YouTube banned him for defaming people and inciting violence but he still has his own websites and can make his own videos. Google is under no obligation to allow him to use their video platform when he has repeatedly broken their rules.
  • by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @01:52PM (#57187968) Homepage

    It looks as though you have someone who is completely out of control as president of your country.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @02:14PM (#57188166)

      It looks as though you have someone who is completely out of control as president of your country.

      That seems like accurate description of the situation. Though upon closer inspection, we also have a chickenshit congressional majority who refuses to do their duty to keep the president in check.

      • Though upon closer inspection, we also have a chickenshit congressional majority who refuses to do their duty to keep the president in check.

        They can't. Trump's built a system where going against him equates with going against conservative values in general. Any politician that doesn't agree with him even slightly is "not on the team" and loses. Conservatives are all-in on Trump. Trump is conservatism in America.

        • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @03:42PM (#57189062)

          They can't. Trump's built a system where going against him equates with going against conservative values in general. Any politician that doesn't agree with him even slightly is "not on the team" and loses. Conservatives are all-in on Trump. Trump is conservatism in America.

          You seem to misunderstand what duty means. They swore an oath and now they are failing to uphold it.

          Just because something will destroy you politically doesn't mean you should refuse to execute your responsibilities.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          More accurately, he's changed "conservative values" into the fetid dingos kidneys of his imagination.

          He's started a fight with just about every ally except Israel. He's started a fight with just about every trading partner. He's denigrated two entire continents in Africa and S. America. He's collapsing environmental laws. He helped give away a large pot of money to the right and we're now on track to trillion dollar deficits every year. He's dragged the institution of the Presidency down to the World Wrestl

    • It looks as though you have someone who is completely out of control as president of your country.

      Thankfully, he's not really in control of the country he's ostensibly running, so things are—at least for the most part—running just fine on a day-to-day basis, despite him.

      Truth be told, while I (a Republican) don't like his policies or the direction they're aiming us as a country, nor do I like basically anything he's doing or saying, I can't actually point to anything he's done so far (aside from poisoning political topics to the point that we can't have civil discourse any longer) that's act

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      The idea behind our system of checks and balances and restricted federal powers is that we should be able to coast through the occasional moron in office. A classic case of The Dilbert Principle [wikipedia.org] in action. This goes against the grain for those who expect a nanny state to run their daily lives. Hence all the screaming and hand-wringing.

    • That's what it looks like here, too. At least to those of us who haven't shut off our brains.
  • Hypocrite (Score:5, Insightful)

    by barc0001 ( 173002 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @01:54PM (#57187984)

    Trump: People should be able to say whatever they want on private platforms that have no connection to the government.

    Also Trump: Football players should be fined and fired for daring to take a knee.

    So in one case he wants the First Amendment to apply to private companies, and in the second wants to force silence on non-govermental employees.

    • The problem with making hypocrisy arguments like that is that the converse cases are usually also true. You have people supporting the right of NFL players to kneel during the national anthem, yet hypocritically think it's OK for social media companies to censor certain users. Which probably accurately describes the stance of most Trump opponents.

      The only people who are not hypocrites are those who think it's OK for NFL players to kneel, and that social media companies shouldn't be censoring users. Or
  • ... from the usual "political correctness" complaint, which is somebody with a regular appearance on a major newspaper page, TV or radio show, complaining to an audience of millions that they are being "silenced". ( https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com] )

    On a practical note, if these millions are "unsilenced", how I am supposed to find time to listen to them? I can only listen to each of even one million people every month, if I spend 18 hours a day listening to each for two seconds.

  • Those poor unwashed millions of Russian and Iranian bots waiting to be heard.

    Hey, I have an idea, he could resign and move there and hear from them all the time!

  • Is run by rich socialists.

  • by Zorro ( 15797 )

    Nationalise and give it to the FCC for administration.

  • If Trump is so opposed to this because he knows that the garbage his followers share on social media that is untrue is going to be caught up in this. For example, a few weeks someone I know from high school, who lives in a small town in a very conservative "red state", posted a link to article claiming that California was registering every illegal immigrant that they could find to vote. Now, let's look at this logically. Let's just go wild and claim that they really did register 10 million illegal immi
  • by s_p_oneil ( 795792 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @02:42PM (#57188462) Homepage

    Trump senses a disturbance of the force. It felt as if millions of bots cried out in terror, and then were silenced.

  • Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and others routinely apply double standards to non-Leftists and censor non-Leftists.

    Then they lie about it.

    I get wanting to censor all political competition, but why not just admit that is what you are doing?

    I guess that censorship is not popular, and social media is afraid of losing popularity and going the way of MySpace.

    However, by alienating half of their potential audience, they have guaranteed that they are obsolete anyway...

  • Christ on a pogo stick, are we really back to this bullshit? Nixon trotted this out , his "Silent Majority". He had a secret plan to end an undeclared war backed by a silent majority. No one does bullshit better than republicans and the criminal Trump is following Nixon's playbook except the criminal Trump does not read and he damn sure can't retain anything he has been told. The guy is stupid, senial Nixon.

  • without offering evidence to support the claim

    How long have the vague accusations of "treason" been unsubstantiated by evidence nor even any plausible details? Two years?

    Now, when Trump simply states the obvious — and, indeed, admitted by Facebook themselves [twitter.com] — the Left turn back to the most rigorous standards of evidence.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @03:50PM (#57189122)
    he's still got his website. He was removed from YouTube & Twitter for repeatedly inciting direct violence. It's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. Go on YouTube and look up some videos from "Secular Talk" on Jones. He's been accusing Jewish journalists of blood libel (it's a belief that Jewish people drink the blood of Christians in religious ceremonies if you don't know what that is, I didn't until I saw the Secular Talk videos). That's against both YouTube & Twitter's guidelines.

    The final straw came when he mimed shooting Robert Mueller to an audience he knows is mildly unhinged. It was a Jones supporter who showed up with a rifle at the "PizzaGate" restaurant (google it if you don't know what it is but be prepared to lose a little faith in humanity...).

    Moreover Jones has admitted in sworn deposition during his divorce trial that everything he does is an act. So you can't say he isn't fully aware of the consequences of what he's doing. He's not a true believer or a kool aid drinker. He's manipulating a specific set of people and knows it and he knows the risks involved.
  • by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @04:50PM (#57189514) Homepage

    Who cares? And there's nothing to see here. So a website bans someone? Is this suddenly a problem? Do websites have to give up their rights so someone else can have their speech on this website? No. Websites have the same rights as we do, sorry. They definitely have to right to not be associated with your speech, with or without a reason.

    Case in point, if you head over to ANY technical support forum from any computer manufacturer and start posting about rabbit breeding and showing, you'd be asked to leave, your posts would be removed. That speech is not the focus of the forum, and the forum's operations have no obligation to publish your speech.

    Just stop this nonsense. If Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Granny's Cooking Website doesn't want you there, then you have to leave, you have no rights, period. You are a guest of the website operator and as part of your agreement you clicked on without reading, you relinquish any rights you thought you might have, when you signed up to that site. GTFO with this BS. You wanna speak? Head over to your favorite web hosting company and register a domain, publish whatever you damn well please on YOUR website.

  • by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday August 24, 2018 @05:16PM (#57189654)

    You should be used to this by now. No one wants you around, so you find a community that doesn't understand what you are, take advantage of their hospitality, ruin it for everyone, and no one wants you around again. What's one more trip through the cycle? Or you could end it, by actually making the change and growing the fuck up, but of courseyou don't want to do that.

    Failing that, build your own community. You've got everything you need for that. No one will stop you from leaving, and no one will miss you when you're gone. You may run into some trouble growing your community when no one wants to be around you, but so what? You should be used to this by now.

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