From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries don't know the value of free speech and often take it for granted. Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like).
Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe extremists to spread their ideas. Coming from a country that had made a transition from a (rather messy) democracy to an authoritarian fascist police state in just 15 years, I tell you this: it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.
You are conflating the concept of free speech with "free reach."
At least in the US, you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever you want. That right should never be taken away. However, another privately-run website should never be forced to broadcast anyone's content to hundreds of millions of other people.
The problem with this narrow definition is that in it you don't have the right to create your own website, nobody is forced to sell you the IP, hostname or bandwidth, and to the extent that they are it's because letting private companies dictate public discourse is a bad idea.
There's a fine line between not amplifying someone and silencing them, and when the choices of very few privately run websites affect who gets heard and who not then we should be wary about them amplifying harmful speech and equally wary about them silencing speech harmfully.
I reject the notion that this is a narrow definition. In the US, it's the _standard_ definition that was widely accepted until the recent advent of the "but muh free speech" people on twitter and other social media.
I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large. There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction[0]. And they'll even host it on a subdomain of theirs, if for some reason you have trouble getting a hostname for your hateful or crazy (but legally protected from censorship by the government) blog. And if laws are ever made restricting what those web hosts can do, then we're getting into the realm of the government restricting free speech, which is a different conversation entirely.
Regarding your second paragraph, the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it.
(caveat: I'm in the US, so my opinions are US-centric)
> I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large.
We've already seen the goalposts move when AWS and CDNs were dropping politically unpopular clients.
If it helps, we're already pretty close to the end of the slope. There's a very limited number of last-mile ISPs, so we're only one Twitter mob / protest away from Comcast / Verizon / Cox / AT&T holding press conferences about how they're blocking politically problematic domains and IP addresses. Then it'll only be tech-savvy users with VPNs that can access "free speech," at least until those become the target of the mob, too.
I disagree that we're close to the end of the slope, but I guess if you're right we'll find out soon enough.
I'm not a libertarian by any means but I do have some amount of faith that if what you're describing comes to pass, the free market will provide alternatives, if demand exists. VPNs are one such alternative.
I truly believe that it's harmful to society to guarantee free reach to everyone. It's kind of like the paradox of tolerance, if you've heard of that -- if private entities are barred from moderating content on their systems, the discourse will devolve more than it already has into conspiracy, hate, and other forms of unwanted content.
I don't think that the argument is that no platforms should be able to moderate. Moderation is a high value activity that is hard to do well.
The argument is that moderation should be done by publishing companies and who face liability for their content. It should not be done poorly, en-mass by platform companies who do it at scale using automation and don't face legal liability when they mess up.
The only exception I see to this is to allow community organized and run moderation for noncommercial communities.
> If publishing companies were liable for their content wouldn't they censor more?
They would - and and they are. That's why it's easier to publish fanfic on the internet than with an actual publisher. Tumblr is not on the hook for unauthorized titillating usage of copyrighted Disney characters, but HarperCollins would get sued to bankruptcy if they attempted the same. This is why the calls to repeal section 319 is idiotic - it will lead to more "censorship"
Publishing companies are already liable for their content.
The argument is that, instead, these other, non-publishing, major communication platforms should be treated how we run other major communication platforms in the past, such as the telephone network.
We have existing laws, that could be extend to cover other communication platforms.
Telephone companies have been required to do certain things for decades, and the world hasn't collapsed because of it.
> In the US, it's the _standard_ definition that was widely accepted
citation needed
> There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction
perhaps, but how much pressure do you think they could take, if pressured to take down your content by other private individuals & corporations?
> the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it.
i don't think anyone is claiming that there is or should be a right to be heard. this is an issue of control over who can be heard, and the distinction is important.
for example, in a "free" twitter, i could post some racist tirade, and expect it to gain no traction/retweets from my followers & some random others. people might see it, but it is principally no different to making the same speech in the city center: i'm going to be heard, but no one is going to listen.
we're all talking in extremes here too, which really isn't helping. yes, moderated platforms can remove racism, abusive content, etc., but they can (and do) also remove regular speech: more realistically, above, i would have been more likely tweeting about the lab-leak hypothesis of covid, back in the time where any proposed cause other than the wet-market exposure hypothesis was being labeled as racist. do you think people that have been deplatformed/decried/cancelled for opinions like that were retroactively recognized as being legitimate? if so, where's the profit motivation in that?
Uh, the US constitution and a few centuries of case law?
> perhaps, but how much pressure do you think they could take, if pressured to take down your content by other private individuals & corporations?
The one example host I gave has been around 20 years. I trust that they have a good legal team and have faced mobs of angry people before, and that they'll continue to be around for a while longer.
One problem that I didn't bring up in my original post is that as soon as someone can be heard on twitter, their content is subject to algorithmic manipulation. So someone's fringe opinion could be broadcast to thousands or millions of eyeballs and made to seem like much more of a mainstream opinion like than it actually is.
In a perfect world, where no manipulation is possible, I do agree with you that making sure people can be heard is the correct solution. But until or unless we get there, my opinion is that letting the platform have leeway to moderate content is the best path forward. If people tweeting about covid lab leaks (which I'm still not sure would be considered a non-fringe opinion in 2022) get caught up in that, then that sucks for them, but the alternative is worse. They are still free to set up their own site to discuss their theories.
> Uh, the US constitution and a few centuries of case law?
i'm sorry, i interpreted your point to broadly be "free speech with limits", which i understand to be at-odds with the constitutional definition.
> The one example host I gave has been around 20 years.
no offense intended to them when i say i don't recall ever hearing about them in any setting, controversial or otherwise, which would lead me to believe they haven't experienced significant pressure to remove anything.
> [...] their content is subject to algorithmic manipulation
yes, i agree. "the algorithm" makes astroturfing much easier to perform and be effective.
> In a perfect world [...]
well then there's a bit of a bootstrapping problem here, no? principles like free-speech were idealized and create in order to make the perfect world (for some values of "perfect"). hell, in the "perfect" world, free-speech wouldn't even need protection. i don't think it's sensible to mandate a principle after the fact.
> which I'm still not sure would be considered a non-fringe opinion in 2022
there is no scientific consensus yet - surprise surprise - but we are at least now talking about it[1].
> i'm sorry, i interpreted your point to broadly be "free speech with limits", which i understand to be at-odds with the constitutional definition.
Ugh, my main point is that the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.
You can claim that in the colloquial sense, the phrase is used more liberally to mean any censorship whatsoever, and that may be true. But in my opinion that is conflating two concepts, and those doing so are either 1) confused or 2) being deliberately dishonest by trying to smuggle some sense of constitutional/government mandate into the conversation.
> Ugh, my main point is that the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.
and i'm saying that you appear to treat social media and digital identity as some superfluous luxury that can be revoked without consequence from an individual as punishment (or for more dubious reasons), much like how republicans view health care and social welfare: with the notable exception of the US and one or two others, every country recognizes that private corporations must provide health care (or the means to it - i'm talking about the equipment, education, etc. being provided largely by non-governmental institutions), and citizens must be allowed to access to it regardless of who they are and what they've said, or even done.
yes, you are correct that the constitution does not prevent private corporations from removing content that they do not like, that is the point here. there is no question over the legality of such removals, and i don't think anyone here has tried to raise one.
i'm not trying to smuggle constitutional/government mandate, i'm explicitly trying to discuss the notion of whether or not it should exist.
> the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.
You seem to be confusing "free speech", the concept, with "free speech", the legal right.
Most codifications of the legal right limit themselves to protecting against certain types of government interference.
However, the concept itself is absolutely not limited to contexts where censorship is imposed by a government. To try to impose this limitation is 1984-style thought policing that tries to remove existing language to control what can be said.
I'm not talking about some colloquial meaning, but the core meaning of the concept of "freedom of speech".
I think we are actually saying the same thing, and my language was imprecise, so I apologize.
My point is that in the US, the narrower legal/constitutional concept of free speech is often implied, inadvertently or deliberately, when people are actually only referring to it in the broader sense that you describe. For example, a banned Twitter user might say things like "Twitter is a disgrace to democracy"[0] which confuses others into thinking there is some constitutional or legal harm being done when in fact there is none.
I have no problem with having a debate about whether the core concept of free speech is a universal right that should be guaranteed everywhere (surprise: I don't think it should be a universal right and I think it's downright dangerous to society to force all private entities to respect it). But I see the two meanings get confused so much that I felt a need to call it out.
> and I think it's downright dangerous to society to force all private entities to respect it.
I would whole heartdly agree with that, but only because you added "all".
I think just as there is a balance in placing limitations of corporate freedom of association just like placing limits on free speech.
I do think that free speech is valuable enough that we should carefully consider placing restrictions on how and why large, oligopolistic corporations can exercise their right to freedom of association.
I think a lot of this can be solved with a "user's bill of rights" that protects users from arbitrary and capricious enforcement of nebulous terms by service providers.
I think most of the rest of this would be ideally solved by narrowing or eliminating the types of moderation a corporation can engage in while maintaining liability protection under section 230. Possibly with language giving special exemptions to community run moderation.
> for example, in a "free" twitter, i could post some racist tirade, and expect it to gain no traction/retweets from my followers & some random others.
Nah, you'd get a whole bunch of followers who are happy to see someone say the quiet parts out loud and would retweet.
Without social media, overt racists have to meet in private and the effects are local. With social media, they get a microphone that reaches the world and it spreads worldwide.
Isn't it interesting that many otherwise intelligent people don't seem to understand this? I don't know _how_ we solve this problem, but the sheer amount of people who refuse to see this as _a_ problem (and who should know better) is frankly astonishing and scary.
Just as there are people that think that everything is racist, there are people that think that nothing is racist.
I saw an interview where even infamous neo-Nazi Richard Spencer claimed to not be a racist, he just doesn't think races should intermingle, and that white neighborhoods should stay white.
> for example, in a "free" twitter, i could post some racist tirade, and expect it to gain no traction/retweets from my followers & some random others. people might see it, but it is principally no different to making the same speech in the city center: i'm going to be heard, but no one is going to listen.
This is the biggest misconception many proponents of absolute free speech have. Many movements, both good and bad, have begun in social media (Twitter / Facebook, etc.). Everything from the Arab Spring, to BLM, to Unite the Right in Charlottesville and January 6th, were at least in part organized on social media. Just because _you_ don't think an idea is worth listening to, does NOT mean that there aren't hundreds or thousands of people who disagree and will listen. I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but to assume it's not real is just plain wrong.
I think they're saying that private companies aren't forced to actually rent you out a server, in which they aren't, but that's simply those companies' own free speech at work allowing them to choose who to associate with. The same freedom to not rent out servers to some racist/twitter canceled person gives them the freedom to not associate with people who want to host vile and disgusting porn on their servers.
No, you can not create your own website. Take this Parler debacle: booted off appstores, AWS, DNS providers, Cloudflare, etc.
Go build your own internet, we're in a free country? Not that I have sympathies for Parler folks, but I was horrified when people even here were cheering at Parler's demise. Don't you look somewhat ahead? Don't you see how many centralized gatekeepers are now everywhere? The potential of abuse to quash dissent is immense, and the possibility of all gatekeepers closely allying with the government is not alien to me. I have seen this happen right in front of me. When it will happen in your country, it'll be too late.
The reality is that some companies are so dominant in their respective fields, that it is in the interests of society they should not discriminate anyone if they don't like their views. Google and Apple should not be the ones to decide if the user can install the app on his device, even if this app is made by a militant far-right neo-nazi group. DNS providers should do their technical job and not engage in censoring websites spreading views they don't like.
Yes, in the US, you can. Giving me an example of one site that was booted off a small set of providers does not disprove that.
I do completely agree with you that having e.g. Apple be the sole gatekeeper of what users can install on their platform is problematic, but I view this as somewhat orthogonal to the Twitter censorship question. IMHO Apple should be required to allow users to install apps downloaded from alternative sources, however I still don't feel they should be compelled to host apps in their own store.
I'm not sure there's a great way to map the above opinion to Twitter -- maybe something like forcing twitter to become federated/decentralized would be the closest. But I am not convinced that Twitter is of the same size as Apple where we should mandate that. I don't regularly use twitter and I don't feel that we, as a society, are nearly as dependent on it as we are on phone manufacturers.
Wow, that is an amazing way to describe it. I've never heard that before. That is a great framing of the debate: free speech doesn't mean free reach. I don't know who made it up (kudos to you if you did) but having terms to describe each part of the issue is very helpful. TIL
It's a useful framing to to have, because "reach" is indeed the issue. Analogies to "guy yelling in the town square" aren't valid with Twitter because the town square doesn't have algorithms that moderate how often the town crier is audible to the public. And the town square also never had automated bots that parrot the criers' views (or contrary view) at zero marginal cost.
if Musk takes over Twitter, we'll be able to see how much 'freedom' he tolerates when the topics are things he has personal interests in.
So, what if all the publishers in one country just so happen to decide that Mr. Solzhenitsyn's book "Gulag Archipelago" is politically very uncomfortable to the ruling elite and all decline to publish it? This was Finlandized Finland in the 1970s. (To be clear, government didn't formally ban it. All publishing houses were privately owned companies. Yet somehow the decision was made.)
Maybe nobody is entitled to book publishers providing "free reach" of publishing your book, especially in thousands of copies. Yet something went wrong there. I don't have a catchy slogan for it, but sometimes the decisions to prevent reach are functionally antithetical to the purpose of free press.
it seems that the majority of people grossly underestimate corporation's level of involvement in our every day lives: if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything? isolation will cause more harm than incarceration, yet i am not recognized a right to trial. not that it would matter anyway, the decision would likely be made algorithmically, without any one human knowing why it's happened.
what i'm saying is: corporations have come to own the infrastructure of our modern society. the protections that freedom of speech gave were (and still are) valuable in the context in which they were made. they don't address the reality that communication is fundamentally different to how it was in the 19th century.
> if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything?
I honestly don't understand this argument at all.
To answer your question, you could:
- Use one of the thousands of other available email hosts/search engines/cloud providers/etc besides Google or Apple
- Pick up the phone and talk to people to get things done
- Leave your house to talk to people and do things
- Find something enjoyable to do with all of the free time you've gained now that you're off of social media and HN
But more importantly, you're saying that without those companies you somehow can't live your life? In that case I just flat-out disagree. I believe that most people make social media out to be more important than it is, and this feels like the extreme of that style of argument.
> Use one of the thousands of other available email hosts
when was the last time you sent (or received) an e-mail outside of the context of work, or to interact with a company?
> Pick up the phone
apple and google make the phones! my network provider is also a private company, too, they have no requirement to provide me a phone service.
> Leave your house to talk to people and do things
people no longer go to their friends front doors without calling ahead/planning first. millennials (my generation) aren't great at spontaneity in this regard. gen Z are even worse.
> Find something enjoyable to do with all of the free time you've gained now that you're off of social media and HN
i already don't use most social media. i don't go on facebook, twitter, tik tok, etc. i watch youtube videos and go on hacker news, and even then i rarely interact.
but if apple cut me off of icloud, facebook from whatsapp, etc. my life would be difficult enough. it would only take a couple of other companies to make it a nightmare. how many stories have landed on the HN front page about how a sudden dismissal from google has really screwed up someones online (and often real) life? and these are just the ones we here about..
private social media isn't the problem (although it is a problem). i'm saying that so much of our lives are very tightly embedded with a handful of private companies, and them having control over that isn't a great way to be.
> when was the last time you sent (or received) an e-mail outside of the context of work, or to interact with a company?
This morning, a few hours ago.
> apple and google make the phones! my network provider is also a private company, too, they have no requirement to provide me a phone service.
No, there are plenty of other phone manufacturers besides Apple and Google. Just as there are plenty of phone service providers, both mobile and VoIP. If they are all blocking/refusing you service, that would be quite a story, and I might change my opinion, but I've never heard of that happening.
> millennials (my generation) aren't great at spontaneity in this regard. gen Z are even worse.
I'm a older/early millenial (Xennial to some people). I agree with you but I don't see how you'd ever be completely blocked from using a phone.
> private social media isn't the problem (although it is a problem). i'm saying that so much of our lives are very tightly embedded with a handful of private companies, and them having control over that isn't a great way to be.
I agree with you 100%. The way to regain control is not to use the government to force them to provide a platform to racists, it's to ensure that you disentangle yourself from their systems as much as you can. Make sure you have a plan for what to do if your Whatsapp or iCloud account is banned by an algorithm with no recourse.
Are irreversible algorithmic bans the best way for companies to operate? Clearly not, it sucks. And maybe there's room for legal solutions to mandate open appeals processes, etc. But the alternative of forcing companies to give everyone a platform is way worse, IMHO.
surely you must recognize that you are likely in the minority of e-mail users?
> Just as there are plenty of phone service providers
two or three, really. and many areas in the US are limited to one or two.
> If they are all blocking/refusing you service, that would be quite a story, and I might change my opinion, but I've never heard of that happening.
didn't trump's twitter platform get banned from all the common cloud providers? is it that much more ridiculous to think that they would be unable to colo with anyone?
to be clear, i'm personally happy that it doesn't exist, and this isn't the same thing. but just because i don't agree with it... i know it's not the same thing as what we're talking about, but i don't think you don't need to squint too hard to see the parallel and the precedent.
> but I don't see how you'd ever be completely blocked from using a phone
indeed, i'd still be able to use my nokia 3310, and predictive text my way around social life, but it would be an incomplete existence (these days).
in any case, you don't need to be blocked from using a phone. you need only be blocked from using the various platforms that people use today.
> surely you must recognize that you are likely in the minority of e-mail users?
No, I don't recognize that. Citation needed.
> didn't trump's twitter platform get banned from all the common cloud providers? is it that much more ridiculous to think that they would be unable to colo with anyone?
I don't know, but as to your last question, yes, that's ridiculous, as there are thousands of datacenters out there.
Besides, Trump's twitter platform is not a person. It's a business with many more resources than the the vast majority of individuals have. It's dangerous to start from the principle that this organization should have the same rights as a natural person.
> two or three, really. and many areas in the US are limited to one or two.
You're talking about mobile providers. I specifically mentioned mobile and VoIP and you cut that part out. I'm done here as you don't seem to be willing to have an honest discussion.
fair enough. finding data wasn't easy. the best i could get that is somewhat related was this article from 2015 on teenage communication habits, which states that around 6% of teens use e-mail to communicate daily with their friends[1] (making it the least used form of communication). and this is pre-tiktok, so i'd expect this number to have decreased.
> Besides, Trump's twitter platform is not a person.
indeed, but the people using probably were. not that that's important: constitutionally, corporations have the same protections as people, indeed the US legal fiction of corporate personhood is practically a meme now. from [2]:
> Since the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, upholding the rights of corporations to make unlimited political expenditures under the First Amendment [...]
so it appears the supreme court agrees that free-speech protections apply to corporations.
> yes, that's ridiculous, as there are thousands of datacenters out there.
well then, where is the site now?
> I specifically mentioned mobile and VoIP and you cut that part out.
apologies, i presumed you understood that the IP in VoIP indicates that an internet connection is required for the voice to go over, and that without a mobile service provider, that could be.. logistically challenging :)
> I'm done here as you don't seem to be willing to have an honest discussion.
But would this still extend to 'free reach'? ie. if I go on Twitter, and say horrible things, then everyone blocks me, is my free speech being impeded because Twitter allows these people to block me? What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people?
> is my free speech being impeded because Twitter allows these people to block me?
of course not. if you choose to block me, i am not prevented from communicating with others.
> What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people?
the algorithm is the problem: if you subscribe/follow, you should see all the content (this is how facebook used to be).
TikTok is only as big as it is because of its efficient and useful algorithm/'for you' page. It's a testament to the fact that even the small amount of friction introduced in signing up and managing a friends list is too much for most people.
These companies all spy on you on behalf of the government and have censored legitimate news stories in a coordinated fashion to manipulate an election. Their connections to intelligence agencies alone make them effectively public institutions in my view.
The thing that has historically made a company bound to free speech is whether or not the government requires them to specifically search for certain types of infringing content. Coincidentally, this is the current legal framework that makes reporting images of child abuse legal: companies can voluntarily choose to to either not scan for CSAM, or can choose to scan for CSAM and must report it to NCMEC if they find any, and Apple is a prime example of a company that doesn't scan for it[0].
If the government is asking a company to go searching for specific otherwise legal content, that would be pretty good evidence for a court case to be made.
0: "Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years!" https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NC...
Hunter Biden laptop story was legit & censoring it across all social media simultaneously was absurd. Considering his financial connections to Ukraine & current events it’s even more fucked up that it was censored.
It isn’t obviously, it serves the exact purpose of conducting censorship on behalf of the regime without any hard govt power being employed. The legality isn’t what I’m concerned with — if that were the problem we would be able to solve this through courts.
Well, that's my point - if people are that aligned with an ideology separate from any specific pressure, then their actions are their own and they're not spies nor are they connected with US intelligence agencies.
You claim to support private companies adopting whatever moderation policies you want and yet your examples of "hate/conspiracy bullshit" go against this. If you believe this absolutely then _what_ is being censored would be unimportant.
You are unwilling to confront the idea of Twitter censoring true things that you agree with but by your own principles you'd find this agreeable.
I'm sorry if "hate/conspiracy bullshit" was too inflammatory or specific here. I meant it as a stand in for "any content that most would find objectionable." I've edited my post to remove that language. You are correct that I do believe that what is being censored is unimportant.
Please don't presume what I am or am not willing to do.
I am perfectly willing to confront the idea that Twitter is censoring true things that I agree with: it's fine with me. I'm not sure if they're already doing that, but they have every right to, just as I have every right to use (or create) an alternative platform.
The ability to do this depends on the will of private hosting providers and ISPs. It’s the same problem. It’s infeasible to maintain a site that permits all legal speech. It’s a constant legal battle and you’d better know a great lawyer who believes in the cause enough to work pro bono.
For reference, Compuserve was an ISP that historically didn't moderate ony of its content on its forums, under the legal framework that not moderating anything meant Compuserve wasn't liable for any of its content, while another ISP Prodigy lost a defamation lawsuit because they did moderate their forum's content. This gave rise to the Communications Decency Act which allows these services to moderate some content without being civilly liable for all of the content on their service.
I propose that water companies don't have to promote your ability to speak either by selling you water. You can collect rainwater provided by nature just fine. Same with gas stations and transport: You're not owed free reach, people back in the day just walked where they wanted to get to. Cars, electricity and running water are just modern conveniences.
This is a poor metaphor. Water companies provide something essential for life and are de facto gov't entities. It's unclear if your objective was to change people's minds, or just to mock OP with a shallow dismissal, but either way it's a weak argument unless you establish why these comparisons are valid.
My city has a public square and a privately owned mall. Just short of being violent you are allowed to do and say as you wish in the public square. But most people prefer to go to the much cleaner, privately owned mall. Where our values and polite society are reaffirmed.
We choose moderation constantly in our lives, intentionally.
> My city has a public square and a privately owned mall
Interesting that you bring up that example, because private malls are absolutely required to follow certain public accommodations laws, depending on the jurisdiction.
So, just like private malls are forced to do certain things by the government, people are saying that a similar set of public accommodations, that we already force malls to do, should be extended to other platforms.
This rule is almost certainly applicable to California. Most mall protests that I've seen happen near the mall or in front of the mall, rarely inside the plaza. And usually with the agreement of the owners.
Do you ask the Chamber of Commerce which malls and stores to frequent whenever you want to shop? I think that would be a great way to avoid the bad areas with all the hobos and sketchy businesses that are probably fronts for drug dealers anyway.
You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike.
> You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike.
In that case however I would also like the possibility to turn off any algorithms that recommend stuff to me. I want to see only things i put on my whitelist, otherwise i will have to constantly moderate and it will take up loads of my time.
As long as that doesn't happen I am more than happy to let others do the moderation based on some frameworks that I agreed on (ToS in Twitters case).
If you think a ToS can capture every bigotry, propaganda technique, and misinformation campaign in perpetuity, I am impressed and hope for success in installing it on every centralized internet platform. Otherwise we would need individual humans at a corporation owned by rich men interpreting a vague set of principles about what "hate" and "misinfo" means, which is a different discussion...
Newspapers are an influential platform, but most people aren't reading them. It's not that big of a deal if the government decided to censor them, agreed?
On the contrary, the question I was asking is unclear: if, for a given platform, the only reason the wrong political speech shouldn’t be censored by rich and powerful men is because it’s too populous, what’s the difference if the government’s men decide what is too hateful/misinfo for Twitter and newspapers, versus the owners of those? This isn’t a rhetorical question either, I am curious for an answer!
I guess a common answer would be “you can move off Twitter, but you can’t leave your country” which is odd two ways: first, if you say you want hate and misinfo banned from Twitter (whatever those mean) shouldn’t you want that for all other big platforms? And it’s very possible to move abroad while not spreading hate and fake facts in the meantime, isn’t it?
I don't know why anyone would trust Musk to champion free speech.
He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. He hasn't done work with the ACLU.
Billionaires buying media companies has been great for broadcasting the billionaire perspective, but mixed at best on free speech.
A lot of people currently decrying moderation activities on US social media sites as being against free speech are the same people supporting bills, mostly in state governments, that limit free speech.
The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps.
This is why people tend to roll their eyes at the WSJ opinion section. (The journalism side, to be clear, is top-notch.)
> The WSJ, in that article, calls California's pandemic restrictions "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen", which is just an absurd assertion. Even if you scope it to the US or even California, where Japanese-American civilians, including children, were once relocated into internment camps.
Obviously the internment of Japanese folks during WWII was far more intrusive than the COVID restrictions. But that doesn't contradict the statement--they didn't say "the harshest restrictions" or "the most egregious restrictions", they said "the most sweeping restrictions". The word sweeping is an adjective meaning 'wide in range or effect'. It is simply a matter of fact that the COVID restrictions, which affected ~40 million people and resulted in the closure of 40,000 businesses, were a more sweeping restriction on liberty than the internment of 120,000 Japanese during the War.
If you wanna be that charitable towards the claim, you've still got to contend with the draft, wartime rationing, censorship during WWII, the Sedition Acts, and many others.
> You've still got to contend with the draft, wartime rationing, censorship during WWII, the Sedition Acts, and many others.
The only comparably broad measure you've listed is wartime rationing. But the fact that wartime rationing was as broad in scope as the COVID restrictions hardly renders the WSJ's claim absurd.
The draft permits the government to force any male citizen 17-45 into the military, where they lack significant Constitutional rights, can be sent to die in combat, and be summarily executed.
The Sedition Acts variably restricted the First Amendment rights to criticize the government of anyone in the country.
No. California's restrictions haven't been "The most sweeping restrictions on liberty ever seen" no matter how charitably you approach and scope the claim. I entirely stand by my opinion that it's absurd to state that.
There exists entirely plausible interpretations of "sweeping" that place the california restrictions above the examples you cited. The draft only targeted males of specific ages, the sedition act removes a much "smaller" set of rights...etc
To be clear, I think the WSG claim is hyperbole. However it is a claim that could be reasonably argued to be correct and is thus not literally "absurd". Thus I would class is as hyperbolic and your use of the word as figurative.
This is the weirdest criticism to me. That teenager had a very popular Twitter account shared in a couple major publications, whose sole purpose is to show the world Elon's live location.
This is especially odd coming from the privacy maximalists at HN. How long would it take you to report a Twitter account that Tweeted out your live location daily? Be honest.
And then you use the word 'silence' which is far more ominous than saying that he offered the kid $5000 for what was about 15 minutes of python.
I live in Charlottesville and the ACLU caught a lot of flak for supporting the KKK in a rally earlier that summer before the August 12 Unite the Right rally. When they backed down was the first time I started to pay attention that maybe some of the criticism against the left's assault on speech was legitimate.
(For the record, I am very far left, but from a time when true free speech was a sacred left value.)
That article is a discombobulated conservative rant that accuses all corporate America of being leftist (please), and contains zero verifiable details that support the title, as far as I can tell.
What, exactly, is it saying the ACLU did? What, exactly, is it referring to? The only sentence that even attempts to answer that question is: “an ACLU official said it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.”
That statement is a fact. Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations
Limits on Free Speech is as much a conservative value as a liberal value. Framing this as a leftist takeover of “woke” values is a thinly veiled misinformation FUD campaign designed to confuse you about what U.S. values are and convince you liberals are attacking, while hypocritically doing all the attacking. Don’t let this junk work on you, stay curious and seek verifiable facts, not tribal opinion.
> Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations.
Your own link makes it clear that in the US, hate speech is protected speech.
"Hate speech is also protected by the First Amendment in the United States, as decided in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, (1992) in which the Supreme Court ruled that hate speech is permissible, except in the case of imminent violence"
That is not legally correct. Hate speech is not explicitly exempt from US free speech protections. There is no such law, you're just making things up. Unless it contains an explicit incitement to violence, hate speech is completely legal. The link you cited doesn't support your point.
The internal ACLU policy is apparently now to consider politics when deciding which speech to defend. As a private organization they're free to make those choices but it's disappointing to see them retreat from the values that I and other liberals hold dear.
And I am perfectly well aware of what real US values are. Condescending advice from someone ignorant about basic Constitutional law is not helpful or appreciated.
In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, the ACLU and ACLU of Massachusetts argue that Boston’s denial of Camp Constitution’s request to display its flag violated the group’s free-speech rights
On March 2nd 2022. You made the claim the ACLU is dead , what evidence do you have to support that?
The former head of the ACLU from the 80s who famously defended the Nazis for free speech even though he is Jewish has been rallying against the current ACLU for precisely this reason.
Not in its current iteration, which relies on ground stations in or near those countries. You're not gonna get Starlink service in China or Iran, even if you can get a dish.
Ukraine is currently under martial law and has significant restrictions on speech; it's (justifiably) illegal, for example, to report on troop positions. Starlink isn't changing that; it just provides internet access, filtered through a local ground station subject to any local laws and filtering that are applicable. China has internet access, but not free speech. Same for Russia.
Bill Gates spends his ill-gotten monopoly profits on funding research and wide scale critical public health and education programs across the world and including America.
That's on an order of magnitude difference than the world's richest meme-sharer purchasing the software company that provides the meme-sharing infrastructure.
Mixed reviews. The Gates Foundation pushed an initiative to grade teachers based on student test scores, essentially. That only made problems in the education sector worse. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you what the problems are, and untalented teachers is pretty far down the list.
That wasn't their intention, the Gates Foundation has done massive amounts of good work, just because there are unintended consequences doesn't change the intent
They swooped into a field they were not experts in and caused problems. Intentions are beside the point. They thought they were the smartest ones in the room but they didn't understand the underlying issues.
That’s exactly right. I’ve posted here many times discussing what it was like to grow up under apartheid in South Africa. Elon grew up under that regime too. He’s the same age as me. He went to Pretoria boys high school. I went to Paarl boys high school. Similar tracks. Both highly conservative, pro apartheid and a clear demonstration of how limiting free speech enables awful regimes like the apartheid government. This is one of the strongest reasons he is a free speech absolutist.
It’s incredible how many smart people in the freest country in the world are asking to have their freedoms removed without considering who may inherit those rights.
I'm not really sure what you mean by free speech here.
Do you mean that, if I say "this war is bad!" I may be "arrested" and "tried" and then put in a jail for 15 years (or just vanish, or be dropped from a helicopter over the ocean).
Or do you mean if I tweet "I'll <wink wink> 2nd amendment those Hajis!" my tweet won't be seen by 12 million people rather than "promoted" by some algorithm?
Freedom of speech, as denoted in the United States Constitution, is a set of limits around the government behaviors. U.S. Government behaviors.
100%... I lived and worked in many countries around the world and the amount of free speech we enjoy here is not common. This is why people like my parents escaped their motherland. It's surreal to me, as an immigrant, that we are trying self-limit free speech here. If you don't like what others say, then tune out, you have no right to silence other even if you abhor their ideas.
“Free speech” tends to be used in two ways: free speech the compound phrase, and free speech as two words taken literally.
Certain subsets of population love to hijack discussions by forcing the latter meaning[0]—they break the phrase up into separate words and take them as absolutes. Yet the reality is that free speech in absolute sense doesn’t exist: a bit like free market, in a world where malicious actors exist at all, it has to be subject to limits (moreover, in any culture there are its own taboos defining additional unwritten constraints).
The first meaning is what “free speech” refers to in any meaningful political discussion about free speech. It is fundamentally vital in a democracy, and no sane person would qualify it as absolute.
Fine aspects of what conditional free speech actually implies could be a worthy topic. Off the top of my head, free speech is where you don’t need to censor yourself provided you are of sound mind and do not mean harm, but this is not very precise. How should we define the limits of free speech on a meta level? Is it their vagueness that causes distress? Once the terminological ambiguity is settled, meaningful debate becomes possible.
[0] I believe in most cases such individuals have their own agenda to push, and one would become equally opposed to absolute free speech as soon as their preferred agenda is implemented.
I understand what you’re saying. A problem is we have enemies weaponizing free speech as propaganda through social media. We have fascist wannabe dictators with a speaker in every citizens wallet. We have role models peddeling antiscientific junk to our kids.
This isn’t the free speech of the 1900’s. Social media is a game changer and a possible weapon of mass destruction - imo.
Free speech to me doesn’t mean you get to say everything everywere. Try standing up in a restaurant and shout political propaganda - you’re gonna get thrown out.
This is great evidence that most people know nothing about history. The same arguments have been made about TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, Books, Philosophy and practically any other medium that people have used to convey ideas. This is exactly why you need to protect an individuals rights to free speech and expression from anyone with power because chances are that they'll have a biased streak a mile wide and won't be ashamed to impose their personal view of how the world should be on everyone around them no matter how much human suffering it produces. The only way to have a free society is to realize that everyone, the president, your hairdresser, doctors, factory workers, lawyers, farmers, journalists, grocery store clerks and you and me are all flawed, weak, limited human beings who are mostly trying to be good but are perfectly capable of evil at any turn and so we have to all agree to limit anyone's power over anyone else to the largest extent possible. If we misjudge and allow too much power to collect in any one office then we will inevitably be subjugated by it as it uses that power to accrue more and more influence over time and as we roll the dice with every new person that takes control of it. This has played out throughout all of human history and there's absolutely nothing about our time that guarantees it won't happen again.
And TV, Radio, Books, Magazines, newspapers were time and again weaponised against democracy, up to and including genocides. The Nazis, RTLM, Pravda, Facebook, Murdoch to name just a few examples.
Any tool can be a weapon. Those communication media have also spread democracy and toppled dictatorships as often as they have been perverted by them. Crippling those tools only favors the people in power and those people will be tyrants sooner or later.
Neither you nor the era in which you live are special enough to erode generations of protections for the ability to think freely, speak freely, and to do so without fear of repercussions.
Musk’s involvement in Twitter has absolutely nothing to do with free speech. Like many things he does, it’s a false narrative to push what he wants forwards. He has a clear history of trying to bully and shutdown those that disagree with him in any capacity.
Bingo. This is about Elon's speech if it's about speech at all. Remember the kid who was posting Elon's public jet movements? You think Elon lets him keep Tweeting? Elon is also known for blocking anyone who disagrees with him. So much for free speech absolutism.
Personally, I think he's just a troll with a ton of money. This is 'fun' for him.
It’s just unbelievable to me that people are talking about this free speech thing as if it’s a legitimate thing to actually be talked about. These are Trump and Putin tactics. Get people talking about idiotic claims as if they’re real, while you do what you want behind the noise.
Musk is the person who claimed that the SEC was violating his free speech rights for investigating him over market manipulation. I would argue the SEC was actually very light on Musk, and it’s clear here again Musk is manipulating the market. If Twitter denies his offer, he will sell after pumping the stock, and he already indicated that in his offer letter in order to soften claims of market manipulation. If Twitter accepts his offer, he gets massive control over his “free” speech.
The US is the only country with such weird views on free speech, there are many perfectly free (often with better freedom of speech/press scores actually) first world countries with different definition of free speech.
A member of a far-right nationalist party was condemned to a 800£ fine for teaching his pet to do the Nazi salute when he hears "Sieg Heil" and also react to the phrase "gas the Jews", and post it on YouTube.
The trial seems to have been over less than a month after it was opened, but "hellish" is subjective enough that it might still apply.
There are things that are off limits, and they are widely known. You can't dress up or play as a Nazi and pretend you didn't know there'd be consequences. All Nazi-related stuff bar for historical reasons like research, or art, is off limits. I prefer my country free of Nazis, and if that means they get sent to jail for "jokes", fine by me and pretty much the majority of the population.
The nazis preferred their country free of jews, and many, if not the absolute majority definitely the majority in power, were fine by that.
This is one case where an equivalence argument is actually valid. To be blunt: your view is dangerous and ought to be regarded as reprehensible by anyone who actually values a free society.
Paradox of tolerance, fellow human. If you allow Nazis, who are anti-tolerant, violently so ( and as you said, they'd remove all Jews), to do whatever they want out of tolerance, they won't respond in kind, they'll abuse that tolerance until they're in power and usher in their intolerance. You cannot be tolerant of the intolerant. Even Goebbels himself said it, they were going in the parliament as a wolf in sheep's clothing to destroy democracy from within with democracy's tools.
Furthermore, it's a bullshit false equivalency that a Nazi, who wants to at the very least discriminate people, is somehow equal to a random person who would get discriminated against. Or a racist and any random person. Those are not the same, and don't deserve the same protections.
Yes, yes. Popper always ends up trotted out by the people most interested in framing their censorious impulses as somehow above scrutiny.
Let's call this the paradox of rationalization: those quickest to engage in the behavior tend to be those whose motives for doing so are the least genuine and trustworthy. And anyone with access to the levers of censorship must earn a high degree of trust.
When did anyone suggest allowing Nazis "to do whatever they want"? Suggesting that people ought to be allowed to voice reprehensible opinions without fear of government locking them up isn't the same as suggesting they be allowed to do whatever they want.
It's not a bullshit false equivalency: every nazi is more or less just some random person with an opinion. Just like you and I are random persons expressing an opinion in this forum. At least, right up until they take action to commit violence--but that's a separate matter.
> This is one case where an equivalence argument is actually valid
Yes, absolutely, banning Nazism is 100% equivalent to killing Jews. Freedom of speech definitely depends on letting nazis spread their views. Declaring that nazis are bad for society is a dangerous view.
The constitution (including amendments) is almost unique in that it makes actual guarantees about your right to freely express yourself, even if you views are controversial and out of line with the views of the government. That doesn't make it divine, but it does make it special at the moment. Hopefully the rest of the world wakes up, but I see few signs of that happening (although Dominic Raab in the UK has indicated that freedom of expression will be the top priority when laying out the British Bill of Rights which has been promised since brexit).
American Civil Religion is a powerful drug. Funnily that and their deification of "The Founding Fathers" smell a lot like the absolutist models of Kings and their Divine rights, while being the opposite.
We recognize the Founders for having the courage to throw off the yoke of an oppressor, and succeed. We honor them for then in the same lifetime laying out a blueprint of government that has reasonably withstood the test of time and managed to remain flexible in spite of some serious adversity.
Is it showing it's age? Probably, Is it long overdue for a strong reaffirmation? Probably also. Does it instill in any one particular dude the absolute unquestionable right to rule over anyone else? No. No it doesn't.
The American Experiment, though the institutions of today hedge more on the side of "we'll be the judge of whether you can do that" was fundamentally a novel effort at it's time. It enumerated the Governments specific powers and limits, then dumped the rest of the power in the people to do with as they will.
I mean the first comment literally said "America is the only country with such views" so yes, that makes them special by definition? Or are you saying that the way America sees free speech is common, which would contradict the earlier claim that it isn't
The person in the US can find another job. The person in jail doesn't have such luxuries.
Also, when the woke people take over your government, there's no bright line rule that says, "You can't put people in jail for speech." Now you don't lose your job for disagreeing with the latest woke positions, you go to jail. In the US that bright line rule does exist, so they are limited to just trying to get you fired from your job.
It's obvious to me who has better freedom of speech.
Would you not eject someone from you property if they were harassing your other guests?
It's not an exact analogy, and there are features like mute and block that are less severe than removing someone from a platform, but people generally don't want to individually deal with every person who decides that being miserable to others is the best use for social media.
Moderation, either top-down curation or bottom-up mute/block, is not a solution. Either way, you're going to haphazardly create echo chambers, which aren't great at maintaining free speech.
You can trash talk all you want - though some outlets may not let you because they care about their other users.
In other words. If you get thrown out of hn, you can try reddit, but you may end up enjoing 4chan. If you go to jail, it will be because of something you did, not something you said.
In other words: It is all free speech, and we, the other people, have an equal right not to listen to you.
I think many of the people described aren't taking free speech for granted, they're reevaluating the idea in a new social dynamic. Technology has changed the societal impact on free speech drastically: reach, frequency, noise, targetability. In parallel, populations have grown drastically so the scale for ideas to reach critical mass and spread have changed. The dynamics are simply different now.
I think many understand the consequences of highly restricted speech and how much benefit free speech has, including how censorship and tight control on speech has lead to undesirable government regimes historically. What people are really doing is reevaluating the costs side in the new environment where there's no longer a town square, information has the potential to spread to masses quickly, information is more difficult to separate from noise, and those with harmful intent can speak with more anonymity.
I'm a huge fan of free speech but the increasing potential damaging effects can't be completepy ignored. It's better if we can defend against such issues, in my opinion, and protect free speech, not ignore them and go on as is.
I think you're wrong. The "increasing potential damaging effects" are only damaging to the current regime. The internet is just the latest iteration in a long succession of things that challenge the power of the elite and we're experiencing exactly the same blowback and propaganda that gets trotted out every time this happens. Even the whole "fake news" rhetoric isn't new but hundreds of years old. People with privileged positions, power and money are scrambling to widen their moats and shore up their positions against the rabble as they once again wrench the wool from their eyes.
People were censored for saying the Hunter Biden laptop was real in 2020. People were censored for covid "misinformation" that turned out to be true.
Twitter is very much an anti-free speech platform at the moment. He's a free speech absolutist. How is the purchase of a wildly biased and censorial platform by a free speech absolutist not conducive to free speech?
Well there is wide speculation that Elon could open up the rules of twitter a bit - perhaps allow Trump back on, widen what type of Covid-19 discourse can posted without repercussions, etc.
Fewer people think Elon has any predilection to locking down what can be said on Twitter.
(I don't know what will happen ultimately, but that's how it could be related.)
So we have an unelected multi-hundred-billionaire deciding the rules, which may or may not be less restrictive when it comes to certain types of discourse of his choosing.
I still fail to see where the "freedom" part enters into all this.
> Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe extremists to spread their ideas.
I just don't see the evidence to back this claim up.
Granted, if I really think about it, I am not directly harmed either way. The fact that this is one of our fiercer debates is probably a good sign of our decadence lol
I think a distinction should be made between restrictions (on speech) by government, and restrictions by private entities. The former is dangerous, the latter is necessary.
Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.
We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.
> a distinction should be made between restrictions (on speech) by government, and restrictions by private entities. The former is dangerous, the latter is necessary.
Both are both. There is no country (AFAIK) in the world where there are no restrictions on speech.
I think another distinction needs to be drawn: Moderation of communities that is organized and controlled by the community is structurally different from externally imposed rules and standards.
There are structural power issues with the latter that need to be acknowledged and which should lead to to try to limit it where feasible.
There's been limits on free speech in the US and other first world countries forever. Where we put those limits will always be up for debate, but I don't think it's realistic to ever expect no limits.
Private companies are not the arbiters of free speech, and they should not be compelled by the government or anyone else to distribute views they don't like. This especially goes for businesses whose revenue models are based around advertising, where the financial incentives do not line up with the social benefit of their users.
I believe the proper solution here is social networks that are open, distributed, and federated. It is not for government or advertisers to decide what speech must, or must not, be discussed in the open.
Yes this is why there are very few actual limits on free speech. Twitter isn't going to throw you in jail for saying something wrong on the platform. Your country didn't slide into a fascist state because a private company started limiting which kinds of posts are allowed on the platform it made and owns.
There isn't a black and white answer to this. It should be painfully obvious by now that unrestricted free speech also enables incredibly technologically amplified propagandists of various stripes to drive people's behavior to various extremes including threatening the existence of that same democracy.
Yes, there is certainly a limit on both sides. I think when social media platforms would ban hate speech and the like, most people were perfectly ok with it. Once they started banning political opinions that most people would consider not that inflammatory, or even interesting (think COVID discussion) people starting having a problem. The social media platforms themselves became a political tool rather than a tool to share ideas.
Why is Twitter really important? This is really the crux of it for me. Ever since mass communications, the news was the arbitrator of opinion. It was common for journalists of prominent newspapers (like the NYT) to declare themselves "kingmakers" in elections, even presidential ones. How they portrayed a candidate directly affected his or her outcome in a significant way. If journalists at the NYT thought a candidate wasn't a "serious candidate", they wouldn't get much coverage, or that coverage would be intentionally unflattering. Social media breaks that barrier down because now the politicians can circumvent the news as a middleman of information and we can now have discussions of ideas on a fairly large scale without requiring the news to deliver that information.
Once Twitter becomes just another arbitrator of information, then we've regressed as a society back to the times where all our information was filtered by "kingmakers." Instead of a new world with much more available contact with our political class, we digress to the way it was before, the only difference is we have new arbitrators.
Free speech is never 100% free, there are laws against libel, fraud, conspiracy, copyright, trademark, which create crimes that consist only of speech, or civil liability. Courts and parliaments have rules of procedure so it's not, whoever's loudest wins. And then there are social norms.
Slippery slope arguments are a slippery slope to never doing anything to improve anything.
It's always a balance between letting 20% of hateful crazy troll Nazis hijack all rational conversation, on the one hand, and blocking unpopular opinions on the other hand. Even HN moderates a lot.
Same applies to all the rights enumerated in the US Constitution, you have freedom of religion to the extent it doesn't infringe on the other important rights and provisions of the Constitution. Polygamy is banned. If your religion says servitude of women or Black people is God's will, you don't get to practice it. 2nd Amendment however broadly interpreted doesn't let you build a nuclear weapon in your backyard.
Also true, a lot of people want to block legitimate speech they don't want to hear and should be resisted. The first step toward fascism is indeed people not caring about free speech and thinking their personal discomfort is the most important thing, starting with the most powerful. Protesters get arrested and kettled, Colin Kaepernick loses his contracts. You're not going to stop the powerful from trying. It's never 'cancel culture' when state legislatures cancel women, minorities, gay or trans people, it's only 'cancel culture' when those people call out the powerful.
We need free speech, but letting liars and extremists run the public square and destroy all decency isn't the answer either. You need to protect free speech by having reasonable rules and norms.
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." - George Washington
I'll worry the moment the state makes expression of ideas illegal.
When it comes to private vehicles for speech, the right to amplify or attenuate speech carried on these vehicles is itself a free speech right.
Newspapers can exercise editorial judgment. Forums can create policies. These policies can be regarding how discourse is conducted, they can even be topical. Your Math Professor can shut down your classmate's extemporaneous treatise about the gold standard taking up time in linear algebra class. Time, place, and manner matter.
Everyone has a right and a responsibility to curate conversation in a way that serves the discourse for their sphere of influence -- except the state itself.
Everyone also has the right and responsibility to create a new forum or sphere to discuss ideas they feel aren't being poorly served elsewhere. Or, if they wish, any ideas without limitation at all.
> Uh, we already do that. Fraud, defamation, uttering threats, false advertising, perjury, filing a false report, etc.
Sometimes I think "free speech" is a misnomer, and the common phrase should be "freedom of discourse."
Fraud, defamation, threats, perjury etc aren't really discourse. They don't serve ideas (and in fact, tend to do violence to ideas).
In any case, you're correct that 1st amendment and other free speech rights are not unlimited indulgences that excuse one from certain legal obligations to be truthful, or to not threaten. In spite of this, the US and most industrialized democracies remain remarkably supportive of freedom of discourse from a state perspective.
2) "Climate science is obviously very wrong, the Earth is changing on its own."
3) "Climate change is fake and it's a conspiracy"
4) "Climate change is fake because George Soros is trying to hurt America so his secret Jewish cabal can rule the world"
5) "Climate change is fake because George Soros is trying to hurt America so his secret Jewish cabal can rule the world and here are specific plans for the violence necessary to stop it"
---
We cross the line into "not truthful" at 2. Moderation doesn't take it seriously until 4. Law enforcement doesn't take it seriously until 5, if ever.
Moderation in a private vehicle for speech could take it seriously at any stage they choose (and I'd argue that the freedom to decide where the line is inside private stewardship is in fact part of freedom of discourse).
And there probably should be forums which have content standards based on truth according to the best efforts of those running the place to determine the truth. Perhaps not every forum should be that way, but some could be, and I think that's the standard that things like scientific journals aspire to.
#4/#5 -- I have questions about whether police/executive enforcement should be directly dealing with cases like this, but it certainly seems to me that people would be within their freedom of discourse rights to take someone making those statements to court. And courts are also places where questions of truth/fact are taken seriously along with questions of law, and obligation to be truthful solidly outweighs any freedom some might imagine they have to lie.
The theoretical ability to falsify something (or to prove it) has no bearing on the realities of propaganda, extensive domain knowledge or the lack thereof, and how such positions are ultimately arrived at.
Namely, trust in the institutions.
How many facts that form the bedrock of your worldview have you, personally, verified? Have you, personally, walked down the chain of evidence for certain scientific (i.e. falsifiable) claims and personally attempted to falsify them?
You're gonna get replies basically saying "but free speech is about protection from the government not corporations". This is the stock answer, even though corporations in America are generally considered to be equally if not more powerful than the government (for good reason).
>Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like).
Yeah right, saying me not listening to a screaming preacher on the street is the same as the state locking them away is why I don't listen to free speech absolutists. Me having a blocklist or using an app to construct one is not an impediment to your freedom anymore than me changing the channel on my TV is an impediment to the freedom of a random news anchor editorializing.
If you really want to support free speech then support the right to not listen. They go hand in hand. Stop trying to force people to be captive audiences then we might have a starting point.
Lots of extremists, especially in the authoritarian[0] or right-wing edges of the political compass, practice various forms of censorship. This isn't merely "let's pass a law to make it illegal to say a thing", but would also include things like harassing other people in public forae with sock-puppets, ballot-stuffing online polls to make their side look more publicly favored, flooding websites with expensive HTTP requests (DDoSing), or publishing personal or hidden information in an attempt to scare someone into not speaking (doxxing). All of the above behaviors should be considered just as censorious as vanilla-flavor state-actors censorship.
Furthermore, because these behaviors nominally involve something that resembles an act of speech, people occasionally try to defend said acts on "free speech" grounds and call the curtailment of censorship acts itself a form of censorship. This is a mistake. Fringe extremists are not merely "spreading their ideas", they are chilling other people's speech. This is just as much of a danger to society as the banning of other people's views that you mentioned.
This is a naive view. Twitter does not enable free speech for a single person on this planet. Every el single prison in the world who can access Twitter can also access any number of other ways to speak freely.
> it all started with limits on the freedom of speech
No, it all started with your citizens giving up on democracy. They probably chose safety or convenience or stability (economic, probably) or a mix of them.
That's how all democracies fail (barring ones invaded by other countries). People don't want them anymore.
Where people really want democracy, they fight for it.
It's that simple. Yet unbelievably hard to manage in practice.
So in your model, some other random person can come along and force you to use unlimited amounts of your own resources to broadcast whatever they want to say?
We have freedom of speech in that the government cannot persecute us for what we say.
We do not have the right to commandeer other people’s resources without their permission to rebroadcast what we want to say.
Speech/information needs to be processed/filtered/analyzed. People may not be equipped to deal with certain information - hence we try to manage it externally and internally.
Suppressing from of information starts at early, at childhood. We try not bombard our children with all the information indiscriminately. We curate and provide age appropriate information to ensure optimal development and growth.
Once a person becomes adult they are supposed to gather and process information on their own. However, even as adults we are susceptible to deception. Our judgement can be fooled, feeling can override our logic.
In conclusion, I think there's a need for curation of the information/speech. Not forbidding it outright, but certainly to help humans discern facts from fiction, for example.
I think that's wrong. Speech is sending signals that are converted into information. The difference is, the information can be good or bad depending on what you already have. If we go with the usual Hitler example, Hitler's speech makes people take other people into concentration camps only if they are already inclined into doing it(i.e. if you air the Hitler speech in USA, Americans don't start putting the Jews on trains). Therefore, limiting Hitler's speech is like fighting infection with painkillers when you actually need antibiotics.
It's getting really bad here in Canada. The governments directly funds, and contributes to the media companies. And recently passed laws for all media companies to be licensed. And of course decided to deny said license to one of his strongest critics, Rebel News. Which I don't much care to watch, but I do on occasion do watch RT do get a different perspective. Just yesterday I found out that RT was blocked on youtube and removed from cable. Just crazy to me that a government thinks it has a right to decide which news organizations I'm allowed to view.
This meme about first world countries not valuing freedom and freespeach while people from formerly authoritarian place understand it better if common on HN.
But meanwhile, first world countries are significantly less likely to slip into full on authoritarianism and generally do better in that regards.
> Coming from a country that had made a transition from a (rather messy) democracy to an authoritarian fascist police state in just 15 years, I tell you this: it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.
Was this the government restricting speech, or private enterprise?
free speech as an american concept does not cover private businesses, it's specifically meant to curb government censorship
if private businesses had to uphold the same standards the internet would very quickly devolve into every space becoming 4chan... you'd see people protesting inside of stores, it would be a mess
maybe there's a call to make a platform like twitter a public utility, that would possibly solve it, but what a thorny situation that would be... I imagine the rules would likely be more restrictive than they are now, despite censorship laws. I'd guess they'd want to strip anonymity as well.
> Sometimes even coming to such views as "free speech is dangerous" and that "we should limit free speech" (by blocking the views I don't like).
This is such an oversimplification that it verges on being a straw man argument.
You talk about authoritarian take-overs. Your problem wasn’t limitations on free speech. It was that people who didn’t care about laws got into positions of power, and enough people in that country didn’t care enough when the law was ignored.
Authoritarians don’t care about precedents or laws. If a law is causing them problems they’ll change it. It happens all the time. And an ignorant or misinformed population can be easily distracted with red herrings like xenophobia and homophobia.
There’s been a rise in fringe extremists in the US. Many of them are ardent supporters of Donald Trump, who benefitted tremendously from the megaphone that Twitter provided, a company that isn’t even 20 years old and yet has come to represent freedom of speech somehow and arguably helped him get elected. This is the same man who launched an all out attack on elections, one of the tenets of the democracy; a man who also threatened to cut off access to White House press briefings to any news channel that attacked him; a man who sent the police on peaceful protesters in DC just so he could do a photo-op. All of those are serious attacks on democracy, and he has faced zero consequences, Twitter or no Twitter. Why? Because his zealot supporters are too busy trying to ban books, limiting abortion and bringing back an LGBT rights as a major political topic to care.
Extremism is dangerous too. Electing people who don’t care about the law is dangerous. Once those are allowed to fester and take over, democracy is already in grave danger and laws or precedents won’t provide much help.
We already have limitations on free speech in the "first world".
Ask somebody involved in a merger how "free" their speech is.
Or somebody involved in a court case.
At issue is what we choose to protect from harmful lies.
Wealthy people with good access to lawyers can sue for defamation. A courtroom is protected by perjury laws. Business is protected from fraud.
And yet the tools to fight the COVID pandemic are beneath protection? Minorities are beneath protection?
Look at the Americans -- half the country still thinks the election was stolen, and the only people facing consequences for that are the ones who lied about Dominion Voting Solutions because there a business had standing to show damages.
Free speech online has been tried, the end result is 4chan, which gave way to Qanon. When fascism takes hold in the first world, it will be "free speech" without any protection of truth that ushered it there.
This is quite patronizing to people in "first world" countries.
If there is no limit to free speech is it not possible that lies and falsehoods are so potent that spreading them leads to an authoritarian fascist police state?
There is a line that has to be drawn, for me it is solidly on the free-speech end of the scale, but absolutely not "unlimited".
I hope enough people will recognize when an idea is moving a society from democracy to autocracy and in this case all options to stop the autocrat should be used, including shutting down their ideas.
Trump walked very close to the line with his big lie on the legitimacy of the last US presidential election.
The irony is that Elon Musk is who calls himself a free speech fundamentalist has been quite happy to silence people's speech if it didn't suit him. Similarly all the people calling out twitter for violating free speech never complained that protesters were thrown out of Trump rallies or that he called for beating them up.
I do believe that there need to be limits on free speech and we also need to have means of equalising speech because otherwise we end up in the situation that the person with the loudest voice (the biggest resources) can say whatever they want and nobody else gets heard.
Do you remember why Trump was banned on twitter? He was using his social media presence as part of a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and he was banned from both Twitter and Facebook after the U.S. Capitol building was essentially sacked due to these efforts. That sounds pretty dangerous to me.
He, and others like him, never lost their right to free speech. Nothing stops them from creating their own website (which he has), or saying anything they want on the numerous platforms that do support them. They just lost access to social media platforms which by gamified design make spreading information (and misinformation) to the masses incredibly easy, so easy that a group of people were actually convinced that they had a mandate to attack the capitol to stop a cabal of pedophiles from stealing the 2020 election, a mandate from a president who at any time was going to unleash a flurry of indictments that would expose and jail the leaders of the Democratic Party.
I don't know what the right answer is, but January 6th was an event that proved that something was truly out of control. The 1st amendment is not going anywhere, but I do support efforts to make it at least a little harder, or rather not so ridiculously easy, to spread lies that can ravage a country's democratic processes. I know that sounds anti-free speech, but again, the U.S. Capitol was sacked by a group of people inspired by lies on social media, and I think we need to acknowledge we live in a new world because of that.
> Do you remember why Trump was banned on twitter?
I remember Trump being suppressed for many months on Twitter, his tweets censored, labelled as misinformation, and information damaging to his opponent was suppressed and labelled as 'disinformation'. By now, many of those claims have been proven to be false.
People cheering Trump's ban never ask themselves a question, what if this was a candidate they supported? They somehow magically think that no, they'll never be supporting such a horrible bad person so that the benevolent Twitter overlords would have to suppress. Yeah, that is absolutely impossible. Right. /s
> I remember Trump being suppressed for many months on Twitter, his tweets censored, labelled as misinformation, and information damaging to his opponent was suppressed and labelled as 'disinformation'. By now, many of those claims have been proven to be false.
Can you give a single example of a true statement being suppressed?
In some places it's not the capitol getting sacked but villages of families of a certain ethnicity. All because someone knew which button to push and had that ability to amplify it in social media.
"Free speech absolutism"? Sounds more to me like ignorance that there are literally teams of data science monitoring social coordinated inauthentic behavior to nip mob violence in the bud. No I don't want Elon Musk anywhere near them.
Our entire legal system rests on the (rather obvious) principle of hearing both sides in order to find the truth, but the brain rot has somehow progressed to the point where in the media this is considered some sort of fallacy (“both-sidesism”). Lots of people want to appoint some sort of information gatekeeper, with no anticipation that one day the gatekeepers might turn against you.
We must stop free speech! I am against Musk's actions - he will end up letting people speak. Saying what you want is too dangerous! When guests speak at colleges scream and yell! We must fight for no free speech!!! I beg you our democracy[1] is at stake! Ban all free thinking discussions!
[1] democracy is a system that only works if everyone thinks the same.
Classic situation where "Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes".
In practice, there is a tension. Absolute free speech is not necessarily safe - the Weimar Republic was a time of unprecedented freedom of expression and it ended badly. The freedom paradox is real: too much freedom can result in the death of freedom, by tolerating anti-freedom movements enough for them to snowball.
Also, you shouldn't assume that these "practical limits" on free speech are new, particularly for the US. In the second postwar period, airing leftist views often resulted in people being put under invasive surveillance - or worse.
There is always a tension in practice, and it's about finding an acceptable set of compromises. Germany is free but you can't print Hitler's works there, and that's just fine.
Most of the case, "different views" are not different; simply, they are just wrong ones. When people says "limit free speech", it's intended to limit these. Liberalism is meaningless without under democratic control.
I would guess the parent intended to convey that Russia weaponizes free speech in the US via troll farms/etc for foreign influence, not that they have it domestically?
Seems like my point has gone right over everyone's head who answered...
How well has what Russia done worked? Like how loved is Russia right now in the west? How many people agree with it?
(sidenote: the russia brexit involvement has been 100% disproven. The Trump russia thing has been 100% disproven. The hunter biden laptop was not russian disinformation)
Russia has free speech in that, until very recently, they were allowed to spew their fake news propaganda in Western countries through outlets like RT, Sputnik, Zero Hedge (that one's still on), etc. etc.
Maybe nobody who greenlighted the licenses to those channels could believe that there are enough idiots domestically who would not recognize it as lies and propaganda? As recent history has proven, there are always enough idiots to believe anything.
If you have absolute free speech, you'll have to allow the media of other countries (China, NK, Russia, who have you) to disseminate propaganda to your citizens until something like Jan. 6th happens.
Russia has been using sock puppet accounts to spread manipulative propaganda throughout western democracies for over two decades. They’ve been especially effective in the last ten years. Their goal of fomenting grievances among the factions within democracies, combined with a global refugee crisis they helped create in Syria has resulted in the rise of authoritarian leaders within over a dozen countries.
In other words, the Russian regimes free speech has given rise to authoritarians who would in all likelihood, limit free speech in other countries if or when they rise to power.
Not just the rise of authoritarian leaders, but promoting both extreme left and extreme right political opinions leading to questioning the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders and the destabilization of free societies.
Limits on free speech by government is dangerous. Private companies enforcing rules you have agreed to when you became a member, is something completely different.
There’s a difference between free speech and access to global loudspeaker. You don’t have freedom to get maximum engagement.
Twitter and Facebook are dangerous because they allow anything that gets them money. Political campaigns and foreign influence campaigns wield armies of bots to spew bullshit.
People of more libertarian bent tend to focus on some idealized vision of free speech. When those platforms enable fascists to overthrow democratic governments, you’ve won the battle and lost the war.
I don't agree with Twitter's moderation, but how exactly are we losing the freedom of speech?
Whiners are free to demand companies to boycott Twitter ads when they see a tweet they don't like. The companies are free to stop buying ads from Twitter. Twitter is free to appease these whiners by moderating speech the way they want it, so they don't lose out on revenue. Elon Musk is free to disagree with that business strategy and buy 10% of Twitter.
Twitter and freedom of speech are unrelated topics. You don't understand freedom of speech. I can literally censor you in public and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Also, tell Rwandans spreading propaganda is better than not being able to say what you want (genocide and all).
> Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe extremists to spread their ideas.
Germany has had such a policy regarding holocaust denial for decades, and they don’t appear to be on the verge of tyranny to me. It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be.
This is 100% true - but giving algos & bots the ability to spread disinformation on your network at low-cost and gaming networks to make it seem legit is what is dangerous.
From a Twitter / YouTube / Facebook standpoint - it's easier to just block bad content than fix the above problem.
Russia never had fundaments for democracy, its democracy was a facade and still is, all state controlled media were brain washing society from the 90s, there is no rule of law for you in Russia if you are against someone from the party or local government.
As an independence supporting Scot, I'm not much of a fan of the UK "state media" but even I can recognize that the BBC is no Rossiya. So that's who I name. UK.
From observing various internet forums, including this one, I noticed that people from the "first world" countries think Elon Musk actually cares about freedom of speech and isn’t just a bored billionaire throwing his weight around.
Your personal story might colour your preference here. I still think the Western European model of "Free Speech with consequences" is the best one around.
If you have a huge following and use Twitter to say without evidence "restaurant xyz uses rat meat don't go eat there, or 'Tim Cook has AIDS and will die in 3 months'", then that would be protected by free speech like the right-wingers want it.
But in the Western European model, you could be sued for making those claims and effectively hurting the restaurant, Tim Cook, and the Apple stock price.
I'd rather live in a society where that's not possible without dire consequences for the fraudulent "free speech" abuser.
There need to be equal repercussions for fraudulently claiming abuse, too. Search SLAPP to learn more about the current lack of repercussions against wealthy entities suing journalists.
SLAPP may be too strong but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable position that libel rights be enforceable at reasonable levels of financial risk. Some lawsuits are lost on technicalities and missing a technicality shouldn’t force someone to pay not only their own legal bills but also the journalist’s. There should be a very high bar for having to pay someone else’s legal fees, especially in situations where a publisher can use disproportionate resources in representation. The NYT is likely to spend over 10x on their defence as I spend on my case if they libel me. Do we want the financial bar to being able to defend oneself to raise by an order of magnitude?
Most laws are subjectively applied. That's what happens in societies made of men with opinions and not made of robots, always has been, always will be, the case of free speech isn't an exception
I have no idea how Europe handles libel, but it's interesting how Singapore uses it. The Prime Minister regularly sues people who accuse him of corruption. Most of it is deserved, but the requirements for libel are so low that conviction is more likely than not.
Interestingly, if fined more than $2,000 (most libel fines are in $100,000's), you are no longer able to hold political office in Singapore. That's also true in the UK (no idea the threshold - I think it's a prison term?).
I agree with the sentiment, but only because the government restrictions on speech are tested in courtrooms that have at least some degree of impartiality and transparency.
The problem with "Free Speech with consequences" arises when the consequences are increasingly policed by private corporations. Yes, host your own web server etc etc etc, but in reality, Twitter and Facebook really are the new town square.
> f you have a huge following and use Twitter to say without evidence "restaurant xyz uses rat meat don't go eat there, or 'Tim Cook has AIDS and will die in 3 months'", then that would be protected by free speech like the right-wingers want it.
ridiculous strawman. thats called defamation and you will be sued everywhere for it.
Perhaps "free speech absolutism" isn't quite the right framing here, but more "First Amendment absolutism," with all the known bounds and checks (defamation, libel, incitement to violence). It does give a US-centric bias, but may better convey the meaning and intent.
"Go lynch this man" is speech, but is not protected under the First Amendment. And the First Amendment gives much broader protection than most countries' legal systems do.
I believe you can sue anyone for anything. I don't think anything happened except people wasted time. There were no outright consequences for calling someone "pedo guy". The threat of law suits has certainly not bothered Alex Jones much.
You've got more free speech if you've got more money.
Also understand this: Free Speech Absolutism is as stupid as any other form of absolutism.
Absolutism, almost without exception, is an oversimplification. It's easy and facile to defend, but also wrong, in that absolutism by definition ignores all edge cases.
And some of those edge cases can have extremely severe consequences, effectively crashing the system and killing large numbers of people.
YES — the constraints on the ways in which govt can limit free speech should themselves be extremely constrained, precisely because the dangers of government constraints rapidly escalate.
Yet the dangers of disinformation, algorithmically amplified to maximize 'engagement' are also to the level where the system can be crashed and result in mass killings.
The effects of both can be seen from Russia this week. Their massive disinformation campaigns and combined with effective near-total suppression of free speech has 60% to 80% support and almost total suppression of dissent [0][1]. The result here is hundreds of millions of people supporting a genocide in their neighboring country.
Yet completely free access to all media, and not only speech but amplified media platforms can also bring down democracies. The spread of Russian disinformation specifically to increase polarization in democracies is working. It already converted Hungary to an authoritarian state, and France is now very close to falling to an authoritarian party...
The ability to deliberately manipulate the public conversation with tens of thousands of fake accounts is not free speech, it is freely amplified lies [2].
The real problem is that if free speech is converted to free amplification of whatever disinformation any authoritarian state thinks is in its interest, the result will be not more free speech, but the end of democracy and imposition of a far tighter regime on free speech.
Again, look at Hungary - they had an open democracy, and free speech resulted in divisions, and an authoritarian took over. Now, free speech is severely curtailed in order to keep the authoritarian in power.
Is the solution to curtail free speech at the outset? Maybe a little, something like the old Equal Time requirements for broadcast TV, or on social media, accurate identification of the source.
Probably more important and effective than curtailing free speech is to actively and in real-time counter the disinformation. This actually worked in the Ukraine war, as Russian disinformation efforts were countered and called out as the lies that they were within hours, which denied the Russians the cover they had when such pretexts went unchallenged in 2014 as Crimea was invaded.
So, yes speech must be biased very strongly towards the FREE end, but requiring a private platform to amplify any particular speech is just as un-free. If you want an amplified platform for your views that most consider abhorrent, you are FREE to make your own competing platform.
> The effects of both can be seen from Russia this week. Their massive disinformation campaigns and combined with effective near-total suppression of free speech has 60% to 80%
So your first example that springs to mind to prove the simplistic and facile nature of free speech absolutism is a disinformation campaign that expressly rests on the extensive control of free speech within a certain information venue in order to promote that disinformation? How does this make any sense whatsoever?
> It already converted Hungary to an authoritarian state, and France is now very close to falling to an authoritarian party...
And what, exactly, is the information which is not being censored which has resulted in what you claim are objectionable and dangerous results in Hungary and France?
> The ability to deliberately manipulate the public conversation with tens of thousands of fake accounts is not free speech, it is freely amplified lies [2].
So why equate it with free speech aside from to assemble a strawman which you then proceed to knockdown to make your case after just emphasizing yourself they're two different things.
What?
> requiring a private platform to amplify any particular speech is just as un-free.
Is that actually being proposed? Because I haven't seen anything like that?
> you are FREE to make your own competing platform.
This is observably false based on what happened to Parler and Gab. The truth of the matter is that big tech is very hostile to competition and will to the extent they are able outright forbid it. The only way to actually build competitive platforms that do not push their ideological agenda and circumvent their attempts to stop you is to do what Odysee has done, and even there, they're fighting a case against the SEC as we speak, so it's not like they're being left to simply go about their business.
To put an even finer point on it, you'll never ever see Xi or Putin say "I'm a free speech absolutist" or "let's have less censorship".
That so many people are taking the position of authoritarians, but presenting it as though they are protecting democracy, is truly baffling to behold. Elon removing these authoritarians from twitter's leadership and employee base, and restoring free speech principles, will be the best thing we've seen for democracy in a long time.
You’ll also never see them say “I’m a freedom from property rights absolutist” as in no state or private ownership but that doesn’t mean anything either. Dictators not going to say “xyz” doesn’t really have any bearing on the merits of xyz, and that doesn’t even get into how dictators are loose with the truth and often will lie about “I’m for xyz” while violating the spirit of xyz. So in other words, what a dictator says is pretty irrelevant.
In a way we're fortunate that the descent down the slippery slope happened far faster than we could have imagined. We went from "we'll only use these powers to censor the flat earthers" to country's major social media companies blacking out a damaging story about the former Vice President's son moments before the highest turnout election in American history: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerg....
The basic problem with the notion of "censoring misinformation" and even "fact checking" is that the "flat earth" stuff isn't really what anyone cares about. It's the debatable stuff that people have the desire and incentive to censor. That's always the way it works out.
France bans most election coverage just before the election. It’s to prevent misinformation from coming in at the last moment without an opportunity to verify or properly understand it.
I mean thats a bit different from just blacking out anything that makes the Democrats look bad - which is whats currently happening on US Social Media platforms
Why do you think multi-million dollar tax paying enterprises are acting in a way that guarantees higher taxation, policies more hostile to business, and, more oversight? What do you think they stand to gain from this?
Besides, I suppose, emphatically opposing the alternative? Could this be it? Perhaps the alternative side is somehow bad for their business?
I strongly feel this is would explain what you claim to see, something I do not.
What I actually see is that coercion is at the root of your philosophy. Your arguments, demand that you have freedom of action at the expense of others. Your issue is that you are unable to compel compliance. Unsurprising since that concept is at the root of your ideology. Quite transparently, and distastefully so.
So you're against any limits on speech whatsoever, including the proverbial "shouting Fire! in a crowded theater" and inciting an angry mob to lynch their victim?
I expect that many of the people who used to say private companies can set policies and ban at their pleasure will begin to realize this is a bad policy and only serves to establish an echo chamber rather than a free exchange of ideas.
Of course that whole argument was a ruse and I believe that was hypocrisy that will get naturally exposed.
Amazing that anyone would think that the kinds of things that actually get moderated-out would have somehow enriched discourse — as if humanity doesn't have more productive things about which to amicably disagree.
So discussing the Hunter Biden laptop and whether or not the Steele dossier was a hit job by Hillary and co., whether some Covid policies made sense or not, whether it's fair or not that people who grew up as boys or men and take hormone treatment as they transition to females are fair in competing against biologically female athletes are all outside enriching discourse? The above is not to take sides, but rather allow discussion to find what makes sense. At times any of the above were taboo subjects.
Imagine some ideologue on the other extreme of the political spectrum were to take over (Musk is in my view, mildly libertarian) and suppressed talk about abortion rights, gender equality, police violence, drug liberalization, etc. That's what the extreme left is doing but obviously they have their own, different sacred cows.
I have good news for you: there is still a veritable cornucopia of tweets about Hunter's laptop, and the Steele dossier, and COVID policies, and trans folk as athletes out there. I see them every damned day with my own eyes. While there have been a few people who violated the ToS while pushing those agendas, it's hard to argue that anything of real value was lost during its enforcement.
Yes, yes… Long after it’s useful use by date. Maybe they’ll provide the same courtesy to the other sides too.
What, Boris Johnson attended a party during Covid… hush!!! Trump talked to Putin. No, no, we can’t prove it’s true. Let’s wait till it all boils over and it becomes irrelevant then you can talk.
Like I said, the discussions you're referring to are still out there. They're still happening — right now, as we speak. You're free to go join in on them. Nothing is stopping the vast majority of people who are talking about these things. Most such users, turns out, do not violate the terms of service.
Ok, why were the NYPost articles blocked? Why were articled related to Covid blocked and people deplatformed not for lying, but just opening questions?
If the owners of a web site do something with their own site that I don't agree with, I tend to just not go there. Beyond that, I don't care. It's not "the public square", and they're not the government. Point your browser somewhere else, maybe. Take some personal responsibility over how you vote with your attention instead of trying so hard to make yourself a victim.
I am not a victim, however, news, truthfulness and openness are victims. There are instances where you can't post reasonably certain events, not to mention verifiable facts, if they are counter narrative, but you can post unverified or very suspect information, if it follows a preferred narrative --that should be of concern.
What is the purpose or turning #bidenflation to #inflation on Twitter?
Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe extremists to spread their ideas. Coming from a country that had made a transition from a (rather messy) democracy to an authoritarian fascist police state in just 15 years, I tell you this: it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.