Trump is scum of the lowest order but I can't disagree here. Facebook, Google, Amazon etc are massive threats to democracy due to their control over information.
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Bill Gates: Permanent Facebook ban of Trump would be 'a shame'
- Thread starter hurlex
- Start date
Sure, he got his cult to try and murder his political opponents to literally overthrow democracy. But, imagine the consequences if we don't just let him hang around trying radicalize more people.
But the reality of platforms like Facebook with their aggressive algorithms is that you end up in an echo chamber sooner or later on that very platform. And people with extremist views just have an incredible amount of pull once people are in there.
Ultimately there's very little actual debate going on on these platforms. So deplatforming extremists is a better way to go. Since the other option is reworking social media from the ground up in a way that it's not dependent on aggressive algorithms to keep people clicking.
There are no good faith debates to be had at this point. Gates is speaking from a privileged position where he won't be affected by anything Trump does or incites
easy for guys with so much money that they basically have zero skin in the game to claim shit doesnt matter
This is the long and short of it. Encapsulated in the first sentence tbh.
I don't know how many more examples we need of letting hate/radicalization with the end goal of killing minorities fester under the guise of DeBaTe. It's always been bad and always leads to avoidable deaths.
I think he's conflating debates of 'reality vs. right wing' and 'left wing vs right wing'. left wing v right wing can happen all day long. Gates needs to acknowledge the distinction between those two.
Yeah, nah.
Even if he's gone, nobody has to worry - there's still plenty of "debate" about his "views" on social media sites. They just don't have their main avatar for them anymore, which is just fine.
If you want to stay on a site, you have to follow a site's rules whether you're a random nobody or the president of the US. Seems pretty straightforward.
Even if he's gone, nobody has to worry - there's still plenty of "debate" about his "views" on social media sites. They just don't have their main avatar for them anymore, which is just fine.
If you want to stay on a site, you have to follow a site's rules whether you're a random nobody or the president of the US. Seems pretty straightforward.
Nah. Part of the alt right and conservative way of acting is pushing their beliefs on to people. They tweet and use Facebook because they want people to know what they feel and act. And they want to rub this in the faces of people who dislike them. They want the Other to feel inferior and wrong. If they all migrate to another site they will just end up eating each other because they always want something to attack and blame.
Why do you think they always think the left is shoving down ideas down their throat? It's all projection. The right is afraid of being that tree that falls in the forest without anyone knowing. Self victimisation and acting like they're being persecuted by the imaginary lefties cease to work if they migrate to other sites.
Yeah Bill. Just like your convincing Oxford to go to AstraZeneca with their vaccine instead of making the rights public. They are utterly failing in production and are price-gouging poorer countries(many of which they used to test the vaccine to begin with!), but at least you protected your investment in the pharmaceutical industry. Real great job on your foresight there. Such philanthropy.
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I don't think he's wrong.
"There are people who want to see debates around [Trump's] views," Gates says. "Splitting the digital world into, OK, here's this site that's for one party or part of one party, and here's another one — that kind of polarization is probably not a good thing."
Besides agreeing with him on this I think long-term solution is to educate people. At the end of the day, the general population should have a critical mind and be able to see if its something is true or not.
Its been proven more often than not, the last few years highlighted this especially, that it doesn't matter how much proof you put in front of some people. They will look the other way around.
Banning Trump will not solve this. In fact, it might prove to have a worse outcome as polarisation continues to drive people further and further from each other.
At the end of the day, people think that if social media acts as the internet police everything will turn out great. Honestly, I don't it will make any difference. Critical thinking should start in each brain, not in one's person decision on what should be shared or not (i.e Facebook).
"There are people who want to see debates around [Trump's] views," Gates says. "Splitting the digital world into, OK, here's this site that's for one party or part of one party, and here's another one — that kind of polarization is probably not a good thing."
Besides agreeing with him on this I think long-term solution is to educate people. At the end of the day, the general population should have a critical mind and be able to see if its something is true or not.
Its been proven more often than not, the last few years highlighted this especially, that it doesn't matter how much proof you put in front of some people. They will look the other way around.
Banning Trump will not solve this. In fact, it might prove to have a worse outcome as polarisation continues to drive people further and further from each other.
At the end of the day, people think that if social media acts as the internet police everything will turn out great. Honestly, I don't it will make any difference. Critical thinking should start in each brain, not in one's person decision on what should be shared or not (i.e Facebook).
He killed any other point, he is trying to make by suggesting these websites should be inviting to this monster.
After the things Trump has manifested through his social media activity what Bill Gates is saying here is completely out of touch and idiotic. This reeks of pandering. He sees all the hate towards him by the alt-right and MAGA chuds so he he says this to gain favor. Pathetic.
So, what's the solution?
People should absolutely be able to have whatever political views they want. But, "the election was stolen" isn't a political view. It's a lie. Our world is burning down around us because of lies spreading through social media like wild fire. People not wearing masks because they don't work, and might actually make things worse. People refusing to get vaccines because they contain tracking devices and are deadly. Terrorists storming our capital to save our country from the deep state. We cannot let this shit just keeping going under the protection of political views.
Yeah, but it turns out that the "conservative" or "Republican" version of things is usually trash and falls apart because it's just an echo chamber.
These people have no new ideas and nothing to talk about, they just want to attack people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. They want to yell at people, insult people, spread disinformation. Segregating them into their own environment works because that environment eventually collapses as there's only so many posts you can make about how Donald Trump is your godking or how much you hate minorities. That kind of adversarial ideology only works if you have an enemy, and there's simply nobody to fight on Parler or thedonald.win or whatever.
He may seem helpful with all the vaccine stuff and probably he is, but his personal engineering project just happens to coincide with what people need. His conflict with Trump is likely a difference in technical vision.
Some of the replies here are wild. "I actually kind of agree"...
There is no room for allowing a fucking fascist to spread his message. Are you people fucking nuts?
I think we can draw the line at a president who consistently attacked the very foundation of American democratic ideals and quite frankly the existence of America itself, and literally attempted a coup and online platforms to spread those messages, Bill.
There is no room for allowing a fucking fascist to spread his message. Are you people fucking nuts?
I think we can draw the line at a president who consistently attacked the very foundation of American democratic ideals and quite frankly the existence of America itself, and literally attempted a coup and online platforms to spread those messages, Bill.
It's funny you bring up misinformation considering Facebook and the rest of big tech are the reasons all the lies and fake news spreads quicker. They're entire business model is built around that. This decision makes them look good. They couldn't give a fuck if anti-vax views spreads if it gets them those advertising dollars. What we need to do is take back control of out personal information so it can't be sold as it currently is. Information needs to democratised.
Basically, if there is a discussion to be made about echo chambers, and censorship, whatever, banning the lowest of the low, isn't the best example to debate.
Far right echo chamber sites have been a thing since the literal dawn of the internet, but the modern alt-right movement only really started to gain traction when the majority of internet communication was consolidated into social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. With everyone in effectively the same place, and those places focused on pushing the growth of membership and engagement above all else, it made it easy for Nazi fucks to spread toxic bullshit, lies and misinformation, all with the purpose of radicalizing folks, bringing them over to their side and generally normalizing their beliefs across the greater cultural landscape. They can't do that if they remain in their own little bubble where the only people who they can communicate with are those who are already on the fringe.
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Typical social media terms of service do not discriminate against political parties. They discriminate against bigotry, terrorism, and sedition. If these rules just so happen to catch an inordinate amount of conservatives, then that's on conservatives' inability to abide by the rules and not be awful people, not on the platforms for being divisive.
At what point can we then ban dangerous people. If Republicans start advocating for genocide should we just let them stay on as to not "polarize" the platform. Shut the fuck up bill. Even through all of the fucking violence and bullshit that Trump inspired it took a literal fucking coup to get him banned and this is what upsets you?
Issue is that it then falls to someone to endlessly moderate them when they have zero desire to play by the rules.
Probably people that think his vaccine is designed to eliminate the less tech savvy
Of course. But, how does that translate to "we shouldn't ban Trump" ? I don't know what solution there is for the problems with social media. But, I know them banning someone spreading dangerous lies isn't a bad thing.
But this is happening or not happening irrespective of the existence of that dude on any particular platform.
Trump is just an avatar for these ideas, not those ideas themselves. People were racists, sexists, bigots, supremacists, advocating for killing politicians, advocating tearing down the government, and posting/discussing all kinds of conspiracies online well before him, and they'll be doing so well after him. There's also been right-wing/conservative webforums, comment pages, social media sites, dating sites and so on before Trump, and there will be after him. So far they just haven't worked out because they're not animated by actually discussing/debating anything.
The primary difference is that those people aren't the president, they're just the average person posting on some site and they get banned or moderate their behavior on their own and nobody cares. It's a false debate to say that banning the president for being an asshat shitposter actively subjugating the country/the world's institutions is the same thing as banning everyone that's a shitposter or holds some combination of those views.
Nobody thinks that social media should act like the internet police; even ignoring the whole dangerous misinformation aspect of things actually, most people think that the president should be held to:
- the standard that being an elected official should raise you do (in short, "you should know better")
- AT LEAST a similar standard to any other person on these sites (in short, you get moderated/banned for being a shitposter on these sites just like anyone else would)
There's a real debate to be made in that private companies shouldn't be the one who have to determine what is hate speech and what is legitimate open discourse.
Our government just doesn't do a good job of defining what is what. People treat the First Amendment like it means you can say anything you want when that's not really the case.
Our government just doesn't do a good job of defining what is what. People treat the First Amendment like it means you can say anything you want when that's not really the case.
Turning the internet into an echo chamber where the majority decides what is and what isn't allowed to be said will, indeed, end very badly.
Bill Gates showing he's more welcoming of the status quo political arrangement than he should be
"If" he's spreading lies? C'mon, Bill. Trump speaking in bad faith is not a hypothetical. He has always and will always spread lies on any platform that enables him.
Siloing users into cozy echo chambers already happens by design on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This sort of polarization is highly profitable and will likely continue unless it's (gasp) regulated in some way. Not that I have much hope of that happening.
That fair enough but that's the bigger picture people are concerned about. It's great when they ban a prick like Trump but what about banning someone else they don't like. Just look at what's happening in Australia. Something should have been done years ago. It is difficult to see how they can be combated now.
Bill Gates is so wrong. First of all, Twitter and other sites started to put labels on his hate speech and lies yet he kept posting them!
Ultimately his bs led to an insurrection which is a big no no so a ban needed to happen.
These privileged people just don't understand the damage someone like Trump caused on a daily basis. The US is better with him getting shunned to sites like Parler. The large population of the country doesn't need to feed of a wanna be fascist lies.
Ultimately his bs led to an insurrection which is a big no no so a ban needed to happen.
These privileged people just don't understand the damage someone like Trump caused on a daily basis. The US is better with him getting shunned to sites like Parler. The large population of the country doesn't need to feed of a wanna be fascist lies.