Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. I think it’s fair to consider Facebook a publisher when their algorithms take content and distribute it to the world better than any newspaper could have.
That is fundamentally very different from self-hosting one’s own website, or giving a speech in the town square.
No. Free speech is speech which is (at least largely) free of consequence. Not just free of legal consequences either, but social consequences as well (such as getting fired from your job for having certain political opinions). Free speech =/= first amendment.
> The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”
Which was used as justification to punish anti-war protesters.
> Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information.
Which is part of a set of well known, long-standing exceptions to the first amendment.
Only useless speech comes with no consequences. It's pretty much a tautology. I don't see how your definition of "free speech" is useful. In what world would it ever exist?
- being fired from a job
- blacklisted by an industry
- canceled by a payment processor
- being kicked out of a university
Imposing financial consequences for having a difference of opinion is a very insidious way of manipulating public speech. It doesn't actually change people's minds, and is a great way to get preference falsification (like what was seen in the 2016 U.S. presidential election).
If you have the belief that the best possible outcomes can be achieved by open discussion of ideas, then any sort of consequences for speech, be it social opprobrium, being blacklisted from jobs, having social media accounts closed, being blacklisted from web-hosting, etc., are all suppressing the open discussion of ideas, and thus bad.
There is a continuum; it is possible to have a viewpoint that certain kinds of speech are identifiably negative and it's worth banning them; hence, e.g., laws against slander (or, in the past, indecency).
The kinds of restrictions that are now becoming in vogue, however, go far beyond that, and are basically trying to squash politically undesirable viewpoints. I think at that point you've passed anywhere on the continuum that could reasonably be described as "free".
First, I _do_ believe in freedom of speech, in the sense that any individual should be allowed to say what they think and that should be largely free of legal ramifications.
However I do think there are limits to this, and specifically I don't think that you should be allowed to blatantly lie without any risk of consequences. This is the standard that publishers are held to, they can basically publish whatever they want so long as they can demonstrate reasonable evidence that it is true.
On the other hand, there is a deeply toxic "thought censorship" going on right now, which I cannot describe as well as this article does: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i...
I couldn't be more opposed to this "thought police" movement that is growing largely on the left.
But to preserve a reasonable middle ground between "unlimited free speech" which includes blatant deception with no consequences and the Orwellian thought police, we do have to have some standards of what is acceptable and what can get you in trouble. To me that standard is truth supported by evidence.
And all I am arguing is that social media should be held to the same standards as traditional media, that when their claims are unsubstantiated they can face legal consequences.
Regarding this:
> And all I am arguing is that social media should be held to the same standards as traditional media
If I were to slander someone on HN, HN should be held responsible? It seems unworkable in practice, since HN is an automated system, more akin to the post office or a public bulletin than a traditional publisher.
(Though, obviously, it's sort of in the middle, since they will moderate particularly obnoxious comments.)
But if you hold them liable, it would be unreasonable legal risk to assume to allow the comment section to continue to exist, no?
I think it’s possible that Facebook and Twitter, etc. could not exist under that threat of legal liability. A few years ago I would have said that was unbearable, but now I’m not so sure. The flat earthers and anti-vaxxers of the world worry me. I don’t think they should be prohibited from speech by any stretch, but Facebook and Twitter engagement algorithms lead to echo chambers that amplify radicalism and research has shown how that directly leads to an increasingly angry, divided, polarized citizenry.
It’s one thing if we are angry and divided about truth. It’s another if entire cohorts of the population no longer believe in objective reality because the Facebook algorithm serves them a never ending stream of anti-vax untruth. And much worse the hate groups that lead to “doxing” and worse.
I don’t know what the appropriate answer is, but I don’t think that the status quo is trending in the direction of a better future for humanity, and I think it’s good for us to be asking tough questions and possibly reconsidering whether some of the newer technologies like social media are, on aggregate, worth the harm they cause.