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.
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:
https://xkcd.com/1357/