The slippery slope fallacy isn't really a fallacy.
History shows that in the context of policy, especially that of a non-democratic authority, it isn't always a fallacy.
It seems absolutely absurd to me that YouTube should ban gun assembly videos. If the idea is to prevent "mass shooting"-type events (e.g. lone gunman, nonspecific victims targeted by social group), why would a website want to drive these videos further into the underground? It strikes me as sort of "selfish" - avoid responsibility, so a news anchor can't say "so-and-so learned how to assemble his AR-15 by watching videos on YouTube", much to the horror of the liberal retirees who still watch the news (/s).
I hope it doesn't become a trend.
When I buy a new stock/trigger/bolt carrier group I sure as hell appreciate a video showing me how to properly install it.
Hiding this information is the gun control equivalent of "abstinence only sex education".
There’s a little problem in the fact that those video promote the ownership of guns, and makes them socially acceptable, which could be stated as one of the reasons shootings happen.
But that's just the DMCA. Most laws don't contain provisions like that.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-...
FOSTA does, however, amend & weaken the safe harbour provisions of the Communications Decency Act. But those protections were never subject to the idea that monitoring users makes you more liable.
It's disruptive.
So, not really.
During the period that they were banned, they formed a shell party, the National Socialist Freedom Movement, which won a stunning 6%, followed by 3% of the vote (In the two 1924 elections). After the ban was lifted, the next election was in 1928, where they won 2.8% of the vote. Much good that ban did them, eh?
I'm not sure how your point follows from the facts.
I'm going to be just a little pedantic here and point out that the Slippery Slope fallacy is indeed always a fallacy, it's just that not every argument based on a so-called slippery slope is a fallacy.
The fallacy is in the failure to demonstrate that the "first step" leads inexorably to the "final step" which is, of course, portrayed as a step people generally wish to avoid.
If one can demonstrate a plausible line of reasoning connecting the first step to the last step, no Slippery Slope fallacy has been committed.
> In a non-fallacious sense, including use as a legal principle, a middle-ground possibility is acknowledged, and reasoning is provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome.
Howevery, I think their overall point is that there should be a standard principle regarding content. There should not be "levels" of content where content that advocates a particular view, or comes from a particular group of people is deprioritized, unless that view is heinous or the content itself is dangerous. YouTube wants to be treated a public forum, so should not hold some views over others unless it is actively harmful.
It's a list of limits for the government.
> "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/
Then the Bill of Rights enumerates them
edit: (not all of them, but important ones which are subject to abuse from the government).
>A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
Given the context of militia and state, I read it more as a right of local governments to keep the means of self defense, not necessarily a "human right."
Compare to the language in the UN Declaration on human rights:
>Everyone is entitled to ...
>All human beings...
>Everyone has the right to...
The difference being the second amendment is only viable within the context as an enumerated US law, whereas the UN Declaration of human rights enumerates rights that are inherent to existing as a human.
>Rep. Tenche Coxe of Pennsylvania: “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” – Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
>Thomas Jefferson:“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”, Proposal for a Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed. 1950)
> George Mason: “I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.” (Elliott, Debates, 425-426)
https://www.quora.com/What-do-the-terms-%E2%80%98arms%E2%80%...
I believe it is a human right which comes necessarily from your right to self defense.
If the police have no fear and don't hesitate enough to prioritize what they enforce, they will stretch a tyrannical law to its conclusion.
I see it like this: If your state passes a law allowing ICE agents to come into schools and take kids with little to no justification, and having armed teachers can make them hesitate enough to only invade 3 schools instead of 4, that's a minor success. Just enough of a brake to spare one immigrant family long enough for Trump to be ousted.
The second amendment is predicated both on the concept of a universal militia and (as is obliquely referenced in it's preamble) the concept that large standing armed military and/or internal security forces are institutions of tyranny: it is based on the idea that only by relying on the mass of the citizenry as the instrument of armed force can a state be free.
Given the context of militia and state, I read it more as
a right of local governments to keep the means of self
defense, not necessarily a "human right."
It taught me many fascinating things - like that before the 1960s the second amendment was interpreted differently; the right was was seen as only relating to militias, and the NRA was an organisation of sports enthusiasts, and their limited political activity was mostly pro-gun-control.
And one of the first groups to advance the ignore-the-bit-about-the-militia-its-just-an-example interpretation were the Black Panthers, who sought to reduce police brutality by having police patrols followed by armed groups of their activists.
[1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/radiolab-presents-more-per...
Its a two part statement i.e. a well regulated militia is a good thing therefore ...
Before the Bill of Rights was ratified, the most convincing argument against them - to the people of the time - was the worry that the act of writing down the rights and putting them in the Constitution might give us (in the future) the mistaken impression that they were up for debate, that they were the only human rights, or that they weren't inherent to human nature.
From a legal sense, the human rights captured in the Bill of Rights are only enforced in the context of the US government because the constitution only applies to the US government. At the foundation of the country, there were a set of principles that applied across all of society, but the people designing the government were very worried about scope creep.
If, perhaps, owners of guns were concerned about gun assembly videos being taken down, they could help the general public with efforts to reduce incidents of mass gun violence.
Imagine if we continued to say that the only way to stop teen pregnancy or the spread of hiv is a ban on sexual activity for teenagers and homosexuals.
Gun owners want to solve the problem as well, they simply dont agree with the assertion that the only way there is to violate our rights, plunge gun ownership into a dark corner, and paint it as a sin.
Where is this illegal? This most certainly isn't illegal in the United States of America. Showing vs inciting.
> If, perhaps, owners of guns were concerned about gun assembly videos being taken down, they could help the general public with efforts to reduce incidents of mass gun violence.
Abstinence-only sex education and marijuana prohibition have both worked so well! Let's increase accidental death during gun assembly by purposefully hiding information! That will stop em!
In reality: you just do not like guns. That's okay! But hiding perfectly-legal, informative, educational information? You've now violated the First as means to spite the Second.
Those videos are illegal? I use to build them for fun (homemade fireworks). As long as you aren't trying to harm someone or someone's property, you are allowed to do such (well at least in my state). Fireworks are basically very pretty bombs (and anyone who plays with fireworks would do well to remember they are explosives and they can harm you if you aren't careful).
Other rights in the US Bill of Rights are more globally accepted as inalienable human rights in all/most jurisdictions.
And why would banning assembly videos on a private platform considered going against the 2nd amendment?
But you may have a different view of what counts as fundamental human rights. And a representative of the Chinese Government would have an even different view.
One might even ask if fundamental human rights even exist, since they are constructs of societies and are relative between different societies.
It's definitely "against the Second Amendment" but it isn't a _violation_ of it - only the government can do that.
Hopefully we can enact legislation to prevent companies who take these stances from receiving any kind of government monies.
It's not even against the First Amendment, because that's only about the government suppressing political speech. Besides, the First Amendment only guarantees your right to speak; it doesn't guarantee that you'll have a platform to spread your speech, or that anyone will listen to you.
It fits as part of an international website including many countries that don't see things that way. That's the conundrum the post you're replying to is addressing.
Should we, in the United States of America, censor content for our own just because they don't like it?
For example, the majority of people in Saudi Arabia believe that gay people should be stoned to death.
I personally don't give any legitimatecy to majoritarianism. There are things that are right and things that are wrong, and this doesn't change because a majority of people don't think the same way.
E.g. A ban on google cloud from any government tenders.
It's also reasonable to start enforcing our monopoly laws.
oh but they aren't "hurting consumers.
Google learned from Microsoft. They pay their bribes.
and you don't have a right to put up videos on youtube.
Of course they are. And I bet a lot of judges would rule against them under our existing laws.
Even just what we could find in discovery would almost surely provide enough information to get the EU with its stronger monopoly laws to make a case.
> and you don't have a right to put up videos on youtube.
Of course - but we can ensure YouTube is broken off from Google and has to compete in the free market.
I've been thinking this for awhile now. There are certain systems which are somewhat hazy or flubbery by nature. Legal and political systems fit into this category. Systems of logic and mathematics have more sharply delimited values for truth or falsity. Science is more sharply delimited, but even here, you see some of the haziness creep in. Is this particular grain of sand Ediacaran or Cambrian? There may be no way of saying, one way or another. However, that also isn't of particular import, one way or another.
Legal and political systems are particularly bad, since they tend to have very fuzzy distinctions combined with very significant consequences.
If you can prove why x > y means y > z, then it isn't a fallacy.
"If you start blocking one thing that doesn't fit your buisness values, you will likely block this other thing because it doesn't fit your buisness values." might not be fallacious. The issue is proving that link (kind of like induction).
...let x=2,y=1,z=1. Gotta be more specific on those quantifiers ;-)
More seriously, the issue is that "transitive causality", or whatever we want to call it, is sometimes not universally a good model of reality.
It's not really a fallacy. It's just a method of reasoning for which there exist errant applications, and therefore you should "use with caution".
Laws and morality are nest not conflated. But the former is meant to be an approximation and safeguard to the latter.
As you can see owning a gun does not fit that description. Otherwise, is owning a car a human right as well? A computer?
Self defense, self determination, and access to knowledge count as human rights to me. I wouldn't necessarily think that the government should be handing out guns and computers. But if the government starts telling people they can't have the tools for self defense, self determination, and access to knowledge, then I get suspicious.
Even parts of the US can descend into being without rule of law.
a computer or a car to live.
What if the government was a lot more active in deciding who got to use a computer and a car? What if that government was dominated by a party that you didn't like, whose members largely didn't like you? So for example, if you're a never-Trumper, would you like it if someone you considered a "Trump lackey" had the power to take away your computer and your car?
Back in the days of Hammurabi, there was no such thing as "Freedom of the Press" but it's now taken as something vital to society. If you don't have access to computers and computer networks in 2018, then a person is at such a disadvantage, that it's politically significant at a fundamental level. This was the same logic that was applied to firearms in the late 18th century. (And even today, there are those who depend on firearms proficiency to eat.)
So fix that instead of introducing even more unstable elements by allowing ‘everyone’ to own guns? I mean, even in West European cities there are less nice neighborhoods and yet the people there manage without guns
> What if the government was a lot more active in deciding who got to use a computer and a car?
That would depend on the reasons. Imagine a world where cybercrime got so bad power plants went down every few days, hospitals are constantly brought down by ransomware, banks have terrible downtime because of all the malware infections.. I’d be okay with it if the government severely restricted computer usage or imposed stringent limits on the computers themselves in such a case. Similar case for cars, once automated cars are a fixed problem I have no qualms with the government severely restricting car ownership or having strict regulations in terms of human driving, if it means safer roads.
Also, yes, computers are very essential to modern living. Owning a computer is not per sé. Very destitute people often make do with library computers and Internet cafes. I don’t say that’s a good thing, I’m merely pointing out that the ownership of a computer is not an inalienable human right, much like guns.
The solution to this kind of problem is to harden and isolate critical infrastructure, not impose a bunch of restrictions that mostly impact non-criminals in the hope that criminals will actually obey them.
Doesn't seem to be working for london:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/london-murder-rate-higher-new-y...
Fact: In 2017, the murder rate in London was 1.2 per 100,000 people, and in New York it was 3.4[1]
Fact: For two months in 2018 (February and March) the murder rate in London overtook New York[2]
Fact: The city with the lowest murder rate in the US (San Diego) had a murder rate of 2.2 per 100,000 in 2017.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43628494
[2] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5963434/london-murder-rate-201...
[3] http://time.com/5266759/donald-trump-london-knife-crime-murd...
The Constitution says very little about property rights, much less things like car ownership (and driving on public roads is more of a privilege)
I think the word we are looking for is “majority”. if the majority of the world thinks that gun ownership like the US has is dangerous (for those of you insulated from said rest of the world, this is the case), and the appropriate way to deal with it is to sensor the content, then you’re damn right a global site that provides that content should sensor it! i honestly don’t give a damn about your constitution; it doesn’t protect the majority of people in the world.
You tube markets to a global audience. You can always start your own video site free from censorship.
Of course it does. The fundamental and inalienable individual right is self defence.
Like all rights it is not limitless.
However, if you have no effective way to exercise the right then clearly it has been infringed.
In the same way that your free speech rights have been infringed if you are only allowed to exercise free speech in your own home.
Oh, easy. Even if owning a gun were actually a "human right", it wouldn't mean that everyone must be forced to allow you to speak your mind about this.
The 2nd amendment isn't "right to bear arms and post videos on YT about it", and "talking about weapons" isn't a protected class.
xkcd "showing the door" strip applies:
Self defense and self determination are human rights.
xkcd "showing the door" strip applies
That strip is one of the stupidest things Randall Monroe has ever done. For a society to work well, the letter of the law should be a minimum safety net. Someone assiduously supporting free speech only to the letter of the law is like someone assiduously being non-racist only to the letter of the law. As someone who grew up in a "hypo-minority" situation, let me tell you that people being non-racist only to the letter of the law can be pretty darned obnoxious.
The future belongs to societies which can support a real marketplace of ideas. It's substantive testing of ideas which brings progress and creates wealth. If a society has to resort to oppression/force/intimidation to enforce its ideas, then it is effectively admitting it has lost to everyone but itself. The history of the 20th century shows this very clearly.
It's repression and intellectual dishonesty which is the problem, and which creates the distrust that fuels the worst toxic extremists. It's this kind of extra-legal social repression that people once tried to use to keep homosexuals closeted and Jewish people out of the halls of power and influence. The future doesn't belong to merely those who can muster more force. It belongs to those who can muster the best principles.
But the right to show people the door is the letter of the law on free speech, free press, and free association; that is, it is part of what you recognize as the minimal guarantee that must be preserved.
Right, and if you are declaring to the world, that this minimum is as far as you're going to go, then thanks very much! That's useful information on what kind of person you really are, and I didn't have to pay anything!
On the other hand, if a person is able and willing to go further, and engage and show that their ideas really are better, then this impresses me much more! WWII and the cold war wasn't won by the side that engaged in totalitarian enforcement. It wasn't won by the side that knew a-priori what all the right answers were and forced their citizens to only do and think the approved things. The 20th century was won by the side that let the truth have legs. This was to the benefit of the long arc of justice. I think that it will be so again with the culture war.
Power corrupts. It doesn't just corrupt the right or just the left. Power corrupts whoever is "on top." This is precisely why Freedom of Speech is fundamental. You know how to find the good leaders? The good leaders let others speak truth to power, and the bad leaders oppress dissent. Power corrupts.
I'm more concerned that you seem to declare the importance of preserving the minimum guarantee but seem to be willing to not provide even that: that is, while protecting the right of those who do not wish to be associated with particular content the right to not be compelled to relay it, and the right not to associate with it's originator is the minimum those people are entitled to under freedom of speech, press, and association, you seem willing to abandon that.
To give one side of this more than the minimum they are entitled to, you need to give the other side less.
> WWII and the cold war wasn't won by the side that engaged in totalitarian enforcement.
WWII certainly was, because both sides did that. The Cold War was largely a production/spending competition, and it was, unsurprisingly, won by the side that had a massive production capacity lead at the outset.
> It wasn't won by the side that knew a-priori what all the right answers were and forced their citizens to only do and think the approved things.
You mean, it wasn't won by a side that actively surpress the ideology embraced by the opposing side and hounded people out of government and industry in their own country by agents of the state on mere suspicion of having some association with it, and murdered people, including democratically elected leadership, abroad for the same association? A side that shot down it's own people for protesting the way that Co dlict was being fought? I think you need to review your history a bit. And, even ignoring all that, had the side you refer to lived up to its own propaganda, it would merely have been providing all sides exactly the minimum guarantee you claim is inadequate.
What would you think if a major hotel chain decided to refuse to allow groups of black people to hold meetings at their facilities?
To give one side of this more than the minimum they are entitled to, you need to give the other side less.
This conceit that giving some people a platform is giving other people less is one of the worst half-lies which goes around nowadays. This would be like saying that a hotel chain that let black people hold meetings there was somehow diminishing the hotel for white people.
WWII certainly was, because both sides did that.
There is a stark difference of degree. German soldiers went out of their way to be captured by the side that valued human rights. Soviet soldiers killed German soldiers.
and murdered people, including democratically elected leadership, abroad for the same association?
It's true that both sides of the cold war, and even WWII had bad actors on both sides. But then to make a false equivalence of both sides is simply the height of intellectual dishonesty. There is no honest comparison between the Soviet and Western sides where the Soviets come out the human rights winners. There is no honest comparison between the Axis and Allies sides where the west doesn't come out the clear human rights winners. There is also no honest way to decouple Postmodernist, Marxist, and far left socialist thinking from totalitarianism and the degradation of individual human rights.
Both sides have bad actors, just as there are Far Left activist bad actors in the US today. Only one side says it's okay to trample on individual human rights. It's only one side where the common people can hope to hold the leadership to account for their rights.
I don't see "owning a gun" there, which just makes this just your interpretation, nothing more.
Are you defensively viable without a gun, against someone with a gun, and are you likely to run into that situation? That's a question that you should be free to decide. Furthermore, I don't see why that's a decision you can morally impose upon another person. If a society can say that the life-and-death decisions around abortion should be the domain of individual choice, then how can this be different for the the life-and-death decisions around personal defense? Both are fundamentally about the right of self-determination with regards to the integrity of one's own life and one's own body.
No, of course not. Preemptive violence simply makes one a violent criminal. Merely possessing the capability does not. The people who do hold to that interpretation are Antifa and the crowd that incites people to violence. In the US and the industrialized west, that would be the Far Left.
It's consistently misapplied.
In the US we believe certain rights are inalienable and we should protect those rights.
Every time that xkcd strip gets posted people treat it like it's a conversation ender - but all it is saying is people don't have to roll over for assholes.
Here the clear assholes are Google and Facebook.
And the obvious problem for some people is that think they need their services and so there's no door to show them.
Really? The way I see it used most often, I see it as a call to have a soft totalitarianism of social media mediated social approval. That's not the kind of society I want, and it's not a free society. When the mainstream of society was homophobic, a soft totalitarianism of social approval was one of the major forms that oppression took.
Don't confuse, "don't have to roll over for assholes," with, "it's my duty to be an asshole." No, either way, it's just being an asshole. In a free society, we should have the right to be an asshole, but in a great society, the majority of people should be convinced that being excellent to one and all is where it's at. Likewise, no country should roll over to military aggressors, but that shouldn't be conflated with some notion that it's then one country's duty to preempt all other military aggression by conquering everyone.
It's the live and let live society which is the best.
Not the way I'm using, and it doesn't even have to do with social media. A TV station doesn't have to show "all content", and a local Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't have to accept someone who keeps telling others to drink alcohol.
A "vegan discussion" community doesn't have to allow speech of someone advocating for meat consumption, and a "holocaust survivors" community doesn't have to accept speech from a denier.
Private communities and forums are free to set their content policies. Saying "no discussions about how to make guns" is a content policy as any other.
> In a free society, we should have the right to be an asshole
Oh, you have the right to be an asshole, and I defend that. But that right doesn't mean that people can't show you the door from their private space.
I could see an argument saying that social networks and YT are equivalent to a public square or any other public space. I don't agree with that, but that would be a reasonable argument.
But even then, public spaces still have rules and ordinances on what you can and can't do.
What if the top TV manufacturer started to use their position to interfere with the viewing of "liberal" content? What if there were other TV manufacturers, but the others only accounted for less than 10% of the supply, and due to network effects and exclusivity deals, it was impossible for anyone to make a living making content for the other 10% of TVs? Monopolies are bad, and what constitutes a monopoly changes with technology.
But that right doesn't mean that people can't show you the door from their private space.
Sure. But how far should "showing you the door" go? It seems to me that the ethos of many of us in Bay Area companies would be to segregate those they would classify as wrong-thinkers to less desirable neighborhoods, kick them out of the choicest avenues for commerce and networking, and to deny them the best that society can provide. That's basically the same kind of behavior that "mainstream" people used to apply towards homosexuals, black people, people of my own ethnic group, the polyamorous, pagans, Jewish people, etc. The left rightfully points out the injustice of marginalizing people from public life based on inherent characteristics. The left also used to call out marginalizing people based on their private life choices that affect no-one. But when it comes to politics, all of a sudden, they are right and empowered to basically do the same thing, regarding politics, "for justice?" No, that stinks to high heaven like the corruption that power brings.
So yes, private parties are allowed to do that with their own property. But the long arc of history shows, that it's the magnanimous people who are the harbingers of the future and a better world. It's the people who get power then decide it's time to wreak revenge who turn out to be the villains. In the end, it's the better way of doing things which wins out over coercion. In the end, truth will come out, and the better way will sell itself.
I could see an argument saying that social networks and YT are equivalent to a public square or any other public space.
Also note that what constitutes "private" has changed, based on technology. It used to be that the sky over your property belonged to you for infinite distance. Then a farmer tried to get a court to make all of the airplane operators pay him a toll, and the law changed to accommodate progress. What if, in the early days of telephone, the operators decided that people of your sexual orientation should be "shown the door," and they started to make it harder for you to call or for people to call you based on how you used their private network? What if they gave a special ring only to those with orientations they approved of, and a different ring to people they didn't approve of? None of that would strike me as at all fair and just, but prior to wiretap laws, your argument would have justified all of that. Wiretaps are now illegal, but wire-based communications existed before the wiretap laws were written. The phone network is now something somewhat public that all parties have legal access to. Technology changes the social landscape, which necessitates changes in the law.
In the end, it's the live and let live society that most quickly finds the truth, makes the most money, and generates the most human happiness and progress.
- TV makers?
- Telephone companies?
- Public squares?
- Private forums?
Where people have reach, and you actively degrade that reach after the fact, the action is immorally censorious. Where an audience seeks a particular message, and where another party seeks to deny their access, particularly through underhanded and non-transparent means, the action is immorally censorious. I suspect you just find those actions desirable because they are (for now) aimed at your ideological opponents.
You're basing your arguments on your own private morals. Your argument is essentially "this is wrong, because I think it is wrong".
Do you think we should pass a law forcing every online community to not have content guidelines?
If no, leave your morals out of it.
> I suspect you just find those actions desirable because they are (for now) aimed at your ideological opponents.
Wrong, but funny that you're trying to discuss my reasons, and not my arguments.
No. Nefarious motivations, such as a desire to exert power by controlling discourse, can be judged by actions, and they should be considered in terms of the kind of future they can bring about. It's well and good to judge someone's credibility with regards to talking about human rights, by observing what they would do with human rights.
Your argument is essentially "this is wrong, because I think it is wrong".
No. Squashing free speech in effect is dangerous, because it's through speech and discourse that a society such as the present one can avoid bloodshed. It is wrong because it is dangerous. It is wrong because it is against a human right, which under-girds all other human rights. Those who are motivated by power, for which rights can be sacrificed, have a very bad historical record.
Sure, but limiting speech in your private forum isn't squashing free speech.
Unless your definition of free speech is being able to say whatever you want whenever and wherever you want with absolutely no consequences from anyone.
Not inviting a friend for lunch because of their annoying Taylor Swift obsession is, by that definition, squashing free speech.
Unless you have effective monopoly control over what constitutes the only viable platform for a particular medium. It's entirely disingenuous to claim that YouTube is now simply a "private forum." What if Amazon declared that black people couldn't sell on their "private" infrastructure. Would that really seem fair?
Not inviting a friend for lunch because of their annoying Taylor Swift obsession is, by that definition, squashing free speech.
No, the proper analogy would be the de-platforming and demonetization of Taylor Swift and her fandom through underhanded and non-transparent means.
Why?
Effective monopolies should not be able to shut down free speech.
You avoided my question, but one of those companies are effective monopolies anyway.
But again: Do you think we should pass a law forcing every online community to not have content guidelines?
Content guidelines are fine. But the way they are currently used -- where they can be so vague as to mean anything, and where things can change so dramatically after the fact -- isn't acceptable for any platform that basically constitutes a broad reach medium. It basically just devolves into a pretext for censorship in a broad reach medium. Get to a certain level of reach, and your content guideline means something very different than some little web forum tucked away somewhere.
So my answer would be this: It's disingenuous for someone to invoke "show you the door" if you're the only shop in town. If you're the only bakery in town, it's pretty crappy if you're not going to bake someone a wedding cake.
It's all contingent on reach. Buy one radio station, and only play fundamentalist Christian content? I think that's fine. But if you've bought 90% of all radio stations in the country? Yeah, I think the government might be doing us a favor if they called shenanigans on that.
Did you not understand that? If you don't see the irony and danger here, it's only because you agree with the censors, but that only lasts as long as it lasts.
Let's say you run a discussion group in your home for recovering alcoholics, but open it to anyone who's passing by. A person enters and starts to try to convince everyone to drink more alcohol.
Do you have the right to invite this person to leave? Are you censoring this person if you did so?
To continue playing the analogy game, let's say you run a bible study group in your home. Somebody comes in and advocates for free (homosexual) love - do you have the right to ask this person to leave? Obviously. But what does that say about YouTube's rights? Or more importantly, half leaving aside the question of rights, about what they really should do in a robust free society?
You can't have it both ways, or pick the definition that you prefer each time. It has to be one or the other.
The notion of semi-public space (shopping malls, sidewalks, right of way) has been around for a long time and is continuing to evolve. The laws and precedent on this are not fixed in place, nor should they be, especially as more of our public participation moves online.
What are you proposing? It seems that everyone comes shy of actually proposing something.
Are you saying that online communities/forums should not be allowed to have and enforce a content/behavior policy?
If someone incorrectly titles their video to mislead people of the opposite view to view their content, I imagine that censoring that video is not problematic to anyone.
Finally, it is probably a good thing that if you search a particular topic on YouTube, you will presumably get videos both in the 'pro' column and the 'con' column so you do not fall into an ideological bubble.
But you didn't answer my question: if you create a private forum which is open to the public, can you keep out people who don't abide by the community guidelines?
What if I'm willing to accept that the government suddenly turn into a dystopian authoritarian nightmare that tortures and murders my family in front of me, if we get rid of the right to own guns. I'm totally willing to accept that.
-Ben Franklin
If you're going to use that quote to make some sort of anti-statist, pro revolutionary argument, fair enough, it's a good quote... that's just not at all what the person you're quoting was actually saying.
[0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be...
For California where these tech companies are based it looks like there was a ruling in favor of your argument: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/baker-can-refuse-mak...
Yes, and that's why I talked about the protected categories in my post!
Sure it would, because free speech/press is a human right.
OTOH, it doesn't mean that anyone else (including online services) must expend their resources relaying your speech, or that anyone else must listen to your speech, or that people must associate with you despite disliking your speech, because, again, freedom of speech, press, and association are all human rights.
I think it's understood that Youtube is legally allowed to silence gun videos, but of course other communities are legally allowed to complain about Youtube's decision. Just like said community might legally gray out your post complaining about their complaints.
So I really don't think pointing to that XKCD strip again really brings anything more than a touch of irony to the discussion.
So fine YouTube can censor content if it likes, and in exchange every single time any one of its users posts anything illegal on the website, then police should go to the YouTube office and arrest someone.
You either get the legal immunity by being content neutral or you don't get it at all, and now you are subject to arrest for your user's content.
Legally false; CDA Section 230 not only does not require neutrality for its “shall not be considered the publisher” safe harbor, it explicitly protects provider good faith actions to remove content that either the provider or a user finds “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected” as the “Good Samaritan” provision of the safe harbor.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 ; see (c)(1) and (c)(2)
But it absolutely does not protect against viewpoint or political discrimination. Which is what everyone who uses the XKCD comic is referring to.
The whole idea that a company can just censor certain viewpoints is false. They will lose their legal immunity if they do that.
It is only very specific things, like lewd content, that they are explicitly allowed to censor.
Or—and all these are in the view of the provider or a user—“otherwise objectionable”.
> But it absolutely does not protect against viewpoint or political discrimination.
Since political content could quite easily make either the provider or a user view content as objectionable, this claim does not seem to be grounded in the text. If you are prepared to cite case law or some other basis for accepting your claim that the definition of “otherwise objectionable” is limited in the way you suggest, I'd sure like to see that citation.
Furthermore, even if it was outside the scope of the Good Samaritan protection as you claim, the “shall not be considered the publisher” safe harbor is nowhere made contingent on not taking actions that are outside of Good Samaritan protection with regard to removing content.
> The whole idea that a company can just censor certain viewpoints is false. They will lose their legal immunity if they do that.
This is an interesting contention about the law, but while you keep repeating it, you haven't supported it.
Sources, please? Can you show me a court decision ruling that such companies can't have content policy?
So, no, they don't have to be content neutral.
That's why the general internet ideal was no censorship until fairly recently. Pretty much the "hacker/tech/EFF" was the standard "you have the right to be offended".
> Example - If anyone shares gun videos on social network from a place where carrying guns is a normal practice it may not get censored that quickly or may not even get reported.
What we used to say on the internet was that if you don't like it, then don't consume it. If you don't like porn, guns, marijuana, etc, you don't have to visit the sites or click the video. But there is a small vocal contingent who wants to decide what everyone wants to consume.
> While on other end someone who maybe coming from an entirely different place or culture may find this offensive or a safety issue.
It's why one should take a principled stance. As a liberal, it's what we learned in civics/philosophy 101 class.
I'm genuinely surprised that the media, elites and their liberal allies have been pushing so hard for censorship. It feels like a betrayal of the core principles of the US in particular and the hopes we had for the internet in general.
I disagree.
To point out the obvious, the Santa Clara Principles are being published now. Not 20 years ago.
Going all the way back to BBSs, it was common for there to exist many forums with varying levels of moderator involvement. I never, ever saw the EFF complain about BBSs or web forums that moderated user content. Can you provide one example of EFF complaining about censorship on a private discussion website from the pre-Google/Facebook era? They were much more focused on the freedom to host one's own forum/BBS, and preventing the government from compelling a BBS/forum to go offline. They never took explicit issue with a forum owner's choice to censor.
So, actually, I think it's the other way around. Network effects in the eternal September have caused EFF et al. to adopt a new stance on censorship in very large communities. Actually, this is kind of obvious; otherwise, why weren't the Santa Clara Principles published 20 years ago and applied to BBS/forums/newgroups?
> It feels like a betrayal of the core principles of the US in particular and the hopes we had for the internet in general.
Again, I disagree. It was the eternal September that killed many hopes for the internet in general. Many were hopelessly optimistic about what it would mean to have "everyone" online. Everything else is just the natural progression from that initial disappointment.
Alternatively, "offense is in the mind of the beholder."
The other notable quote is "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Example - If anyone shares gun videos on social network from a place where carrying guns is a normal practice it may not get censored that quickly or may not even get reported. This is because people feel it is very normal or part of their location specific culture. While on other end someone who maybe coming from an entirely different place or culture may find this offensive or a safety issue.