It's worth noting that there's also a side that wants the opposite of that, to censor bad opinions, but not be able to refuse making a gay wedding cake.

Hypocrites are not limited to specific groups, they're universal.

No one is forcing Google or their employees to write hate speech on a cake or an app though, that's a pretty massive difference in analogies. Nor are people asking for a free-for-all where Google can't delete any speech on their platforms.

People were fine when they were deleting spam and had a limited content restriction policies against things like directly promoting violence or posting gore/cp and other obvious tier stuff.

I haven't heard many people pushing for governments to force Google et al to not be able to delete things from their platforms either - outside of some tiny fringes who don't understand how the internet works.

Which is therefore still consistently pro-freedom. Likewise compelled speech + censorship of an arbitrary and ever expanding list of wrongthink is consistently authoritarian.

I really don't see the contradiction in either of these worldviews.

It's the classic centralized top-down puppet-mastery of individuals choices vs embracing the chaos of freedom of individual choice (within some limited boundaries). This battle has been waged for as long as society has been around and is a natural side-effect of power structures.

Both situations are really a matter of freedom of speech. Forget Google, does a person with a personal website that allows comments get to control what comments they want displayed on their site or not? Does that person get to choose what work they want to accept from a potential customer?

Both situations boil down to freedom of speech. Both have extra, specific laws that deal with their situations. Without a well thought out justification, a mismatch between the position on those is likely hypocritical, no matter which you are for or against. A well thought out positions may not be, but I don't think most people actually have a well thought out opinion on the intricacies of how these intersect, and what it means, and instead fall back on what they would like to be able to do in that situation, or on their impression based on the way it was presented to them (I think it far more likely contextual presentation is to blame for some of this than actual reasoning). It does little good to point out the hypocrisy of some group on a specific issue when that form of hypocrisy is widespread and rampant. We should also point out the cause of the hypocrisy itself.

There's a subtle distinction though: one is censoring based on the speech, and the other is censoring based on the speaker.

The cake example specifically is more subtle (legally), since there's an argument that the cake is custom. I think this gets very tricky legally, but on the broader point, it isn't hypocritical to say censorship based on concept is okay, but based on speaker is not.

> I think this gets very tricky legally, but on the broader point, it isn't hypocritical to say censorship based on concept is okay, but based on speaker is not.

I don't know. I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion, or the idea of homosexuality, even if you think censoring Muslims and homosexuality is not. At what point does censoring discussing about homosexuality become censoring homosexuals? I'm sure some people would say immediately, and to them, there's no difference between censorship based on show they are and what they feel or believe?

That's why I say it requires a very well thought out argument. I can be convinced that it isn't hypocritical to distinguish these (I'm exploring my thoughts on this subject, I don't have extremely held opinions on it, other than that it's complicated), but nobody has to be satisfaction yet.

> I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion

Let me give you an example: It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam. It is not acceptable to enforce that Muslim individuals cannot hold positions in government.

The first is discrimination based on content, the second is discrimination based on, let's call it character.

That's not really answering the question, which I think gets to the point of the distinction you made. Is it okay to censor discussion of the Islamic religion? That's a concept. We can agree it's not okay to censor based on an individual, but you distinguished the types of censorship based on concepts and individuals. Why is it okay to censor Islam but not Muslims (or is it not okay, in which case your prior delineation of circumstances doesn't hold)?

> It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam.

That's not even about censorship, so I'm not sure how it applies.

Again, this is why I think it's important to have a well thought out argument, otherwise it may be hypocritical. I'm not even pushing a different side, I'm just trying to get you to articulate specifically why these two things are different, and pointing to examples doesn't do that at all. It's just a list of value judgements that you assume someone else will agree with without providing the rational behind those judgements (presumably believing it's self evident).

If someone cannot distinguish why two separate situations are different but states as fact that they are, then they are being hypocritical, whether those situation are different or not. Nobody should be stating things as fact that they can't explain. Being hypocritical has nothing to do with the truth, it has to do with knowledge, actions and beliefs.

> That's not even about censorship, so I'm not sure how it applies.

I'd argue that political action is a form of speech, so laws that prevent certain kinds of political action are speech. How do you draw the distinction between a law, which you're arguing isn't speech, and political donations which are, at least under the law today, a form of speech. I'm claiming these are all the same thing, because you can't draw a non-arbitrary line between a congressperson addressing congress and a congressperson drafting a bill and me asking a congressperson to draft a bill. They're all speech. You're free to disagree with that framing, but that is how I view speech. It's for this reason that I also don't agree with the common-in-the US excuse of "it's just speech so it can't hurt anyone", or similar. The only difference between your "just speech" and a law is who is willing to listen to the speaker.

Now, you can claim that we're talking about government representatives, so things are different, which may or may not be true, but I'll accept that. Perhaps people who have more authority should be given less freedom, an interesting tradeoff. But let's ignore the government entirely and just discuss what makes the two situations distinct.

So, it clearly isn't okay to censor Muslims, because that rule cannot be fair/equally applied. It will, by definition, be discriminatory against individuals, which seems to be the bad thing we want to avoid (or maybe I'm wrong and you're okay with discriminating against individuals?). However, censoring certain topics may be done without discriminating against individuals. It applies equally, for example, to a Muslim person wanting to extoll Islam and to a Christian wanting to demonize it.

If we bring this full circle: preventing Muslims from speaking ensures that they will not be represented [in the discourse, in the government, whatever]. This can, realistically, only be harmful to them. Banning discussion of Islam certainly has the capacity to be harmful to them, but also has the capacity to not be harmful to them (for example if the discourse is full of demonization of Islam, perhaps banning discussion of Islam is a net-gain for individual Muslim people).

Obviously this requires, like, an actual fair moderator, and it raises a bunch of tricky questions (like is the meta-discussion of whether it should be acceptable to discuss Islam, itself an acceptable discussion?), but it isn't, call it, implicitly harmful.

tl;dr: Removing people from discourse cannot be beneficial to those people. Removing concepts from discourse depends.

>>> It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam.

> How do you draw the distinction between a law, which you're arguing isn't speech, and political donations which are, at least under the law today, a form of speech.

No, it's not about censorship because it's not preventing speech, it's about ensuring equality. It's fundamentally different in the same way a law that gives a right is different than a law that prevents an action. There's a fundamental difference between reduction of something (or the increase of other things to match) and the elimination of something.

> discriminatory against individuals, which seems to be the bad thing we want to avoid (or maybe I'm wrong and you're okay with discriminating against individuals?).

Well, I did just say in the prior comment "We can agree it's not okay to censor based on an individual", so I'm not sure why it needs to be a question...

> However, censoring certain topics may be done without discriminating against individuals.

And censoring the types of cake you make may not affect individuals either, if it's over something like your dislike for dogs. Let's assume both cases affect individuals. If you think it fundamentally changes what the argument is to restrict the web services side to items that affect individuals, then that points towards some ambiguity in the phrasing of the things being compared on one or both sides. That's progress.

> for example if the discourse is full of demonization of Islam, perhaps banning discussion of Islam is a net-gain for individual Muslim people

I think we're on shakier ground if we're justifying specific actions based on perceived public opinion and actions, because that's extremely subjective. What one person views as fair and rational discourse on a topic another views as lies and slander (dog whistles are a thing, as is being accused of dog whistling when honestly requesting information).

> Obviously this requires, like, an actual fair moderator

That doesn't exist. By the nature of the items we're discussing, I think there's a good chance it might be impossible to exist. The fair moderator of today is the one seen as blatantly biased in the discussions of tomorrow. Social mores change.

> tl;dr: Removing people from discourse cannot be beneficial to those people. Removing concepts from discourse depends.

Does it? What's a concept that being removed from discourse is beneficial? I think this is a very subjective point, and can't be taken at face value. There are some people that believe no concept should be entirely taboo. Those people actually wrote our Bill of Rights.

While I agree that removing a subgroup of people from discourse is generally not beneficial to those people, I will note it's generally agreed that it's sometimes beneficial for society. That's what we do with criminals. It may be that it being okay for some groups and not others means the way you group (the attributes that make the protected classes) matters most here.

> Forget Google, does a person with a personal website that allows comments get to control what comments they want displayed on their site or not? Does that person get to choose what work they want to accept from a potential customer?

Why would you ever want to ignore Google in this situation? Unless you don't want to earnestly debate the real topic?

Their size, control, and the fact they run massive platforms for publishers to post content, whose consumers often can post their own content, with multiple centrally controlled areas for control for hundreds of millions of people at any moment, makes it pointless to ignore such important context and semantics.

Debating the role of these major gatekeepers at a cultural, rational, and moral level - in the context of the position which they actually hold in society - is an entirely valid, and essential to any useful arguments.

Just because there are some weak analogies to governmental constitutions, or small business's/independent publisher's/individuals website's freedom to choose what people post directly on their site/app, doesn't mean it's a useful position to judge what self-imposed limitations should be employed by major monopolistic companies who run entire portions of the internet.

Great power requires great responsibility.

The difference here is basic common sense.

The fact people keep resorting to these reductionist analogies, ignoring critical context and arguing from positions of fundamentally different levels of power/responsibility, in order to push some pro-censorship and expansive moderation of speech, shows the weakness in these arguments.

If you need to ignore significant amounts of context to make your points then you're being deceitful, whether intentionally or not.

I'd go even further to argue this intentional ignorance of context and semantics is a fundamental tactic used by pro-censorship activists - despite the fact context and intention are fundamental to almost all human communication, verbal or otherwise.

At a more local level it's commonplace for these activists to ignore the obvious intention and context of the speaker, and critically the tastes and tolerances of the specific audience itself - who are entirely voluntary consumers. Making whole words, phrases, and concepts totally off limits, regardless if it was used in intentionally and rationally derogatory or offensive ways.

It's basically intentionally missing the forest for the trees. All for some vague greater good. No matter how many false-positives, unintended side-effects, misunderstandings, or wasteful side-shows it creates.

> Why would you ever want to ignore Google in this situation? Unless you don't want to earnestly debate the real topic?

Because presumably Google isn't special and doesn't lave laws and ethics that apply only to them? I'm trying to distill the issue to its essence.

> The fact people keep resorting to these reductionist analogies, ignoring critical context and arguing from positions of fundamentally different levels of power/responsibility, in order to push some pro-censorship and expansive moderation of speech, shows the weakness in these arguments.

If you think I'm doing that then you're making a lot of assumptions about what I was trying to communicate and why I commented, and you're way off base.

I'll make it clear, just because I pointed out a fault I see in a position doesn't mean I subscribe to the traditionally opposed opinion, it just means I'm willing to point out faults as I see them.

Additionally, hypocrisy doesn't care how correct one argument is over another. It's entirely possibly for someone to be a hypocrite and correct. We have a situation where some people believe A is okay and B is not, and some people believe A is not okay but B is okay. Unless they can actually distinguish why A and B are different, both groups of people are hypocrites, because they're either regurgitating someone else's opinion, or they're speaking before they understand what they're talking about. Whether one side or the other is "right" doesn't matter, hypocrisy isn't about correctness, it's about using the same knowledge and convictions to come to the same desired outcome with similar facts. Without the knowledge to distinguish between situations, how can someone be so sure that they differ?

And that's before we even go to the fact that there's actually four possible combinations of those attributes, not the two that have been presented so far (both negatively), and that the "right" way to view this is one of those.

I'm not saying all people making such arguments are making consistent arguments, but there's a consistent argument to be had that being forced to say (or write) something (say on a cake) and being forced to not say (or write) something are both compulsions in communication, and to be opposed to all compulsions in communication (to the positive or negative). I've heard several people argue that a cake shop should be compelled to sell a cake to a gay couple, but shouldn't be compelled to write two same-genedered names on it or compelled to craft a plastic figurine of two grooms or two brides for the top. I've heard it argued that if the gay couple wants "Susan and Jeff" and a little figurine of a bride and groom, or any other artistic expressions they'd do for a strait couple should be compellable, but the government shouldn't be able to compel artistic expressions or writing.

Now, I'd boycott the hell out of such an establishment, but as an abstract argument, I think compelled expression is a bad idea. It's really not that huge a step from compelled expression to re-education camps.

Twitter's service isn't that they write 140 character prose for you, and YouTube's service isn't that they create videos to your specification. It would be hypocritical to demand that YouTube be forced to create a custom video to your specifications (or a ghost writer forced to write a book for someone with whom they disagree) and yet the cake shop shouldn't be forced to write two same-gendered names on a cake. These people arguing against forced cake lettering aren't arguing for forced book creation or forced video creation.

Once again, refusing to make a gay wedding cake makes you a jerk and worthy of boycotting, but there is a consistent argument to be made simultaneously against forced expression and against forced silence.

Yeah, not so much.

The difference is in the legal definition of protected class. It is illegal to discriminate against someone based on their membership of a protected class -- ethnicity or disability for instance.

Removing an opinion or banning a user based on violation of an agreed upon term of service is not the same thing. Having an opinion does not make you a member of a protected class, and a private corporation is free to allow you or disallow you from use of their services to broadcast that opinion. Newspapers have been doing this since the dawn of print. Google could not, for example, ban someone for being Jewish.

You can argue about whether sexual orientation deserves status as a protected class, but it is disingenuous to claim that the two are the same thing under the law. It is a false equivalency.

I feel that the goalposts here have been shot out into space and are orbiting the barycenter where the point is.

Let's maybe spell out separately whether or not these two situations are equivalent or not a) legally, b) ethically, c) in principle.

Fair enough.

a) As I stated in the argument about the difference between discrimination against protected classes versus hosting content on a private server, I'd say that legally, these are not equivalent.

b) Ethically is an interesting question. Since the ethics of denying someone service based on their sexual orientation is largely viewed as reprehensible, maybe a better question would be whether or not (freed from questions of protected class) the baker would decorate a Nazi themed cake versus allowing federated apps that are largely used for the dissemination of white supremacist ideology to be hosted?

c) In principle, I'd say they are not equivalent for the following reason: selling and decorating a cake is a business transaction between two entities. The cake (decorated or not) ownership moves from producer to consumer. The consumer is purchasing a physical cake. If the cake is ever made public, it is at the behest of the purchasers of the cake, and any consequences of that public display will be suffered by the purchaser. Essentially, the baker's name is not on the cake, and no one needs to know.

Hosting apps or other contents affects the reputation of the hosting company, and damages to their business reputation fall on it. Think about Facebook being recognized as a conduit for foreign interference in U.S. elections, or whether or not the New York Times will accept ad content from an adult video company. The name on the masthead is the entity that suffers the damage first.

I don't see the word 'law' showing up anywhere in kbensons comment. It's disingenuous to claim that kbenson was making a legal argument.

kbensons is explicitly referencing a legal case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

> but it is disingenuous to claim that the two are the same thing under the law.

Have you ever heard the term "strawman"?

You could make the argument that the "socially liberal" side that wants to censor hate speech, but protect gay people from discrimination is logically consistent.

A social liberal could argue on the point of protecting the rights of a marginalized minority. By censoring (for example) calls for violence, social liberals are protecting the safety of the targeted group. By requiring a cake shop to serve gay couples (or interracial couples, to throw in another example), social liberals are protecting a marginalized minority's access to services.

None of the reporting I saw on the wedding cake cases actually described the cakes.

Are we talking normal wedding cakes, that you can buy from nearly any baker, with some ordinary decorations, that just have two men's names instead of one men's name and one woman's name after the "Congratulations", and have two mass-produced little plastic men on top instead of one little plastic man and one little plastic woman?

Or are we talking something you'd get from a baker like Duff Goldman, which is a custom designed and made unique work of art specifically for you that captures the artist's interpretation of your wedding, and inherently is an act of speech on the part of the artist?

Its custom designed cake. That baker has been sued yet again because he refused to bake a trans-themed birthday cake.

I don't believe he has a problem selling cakes to anyone, just that he refused to design cakes with themes.

Size (importance) of the company. Can your electricity company disconnect you because they don't like what you're saying online using that electricity?

An electricity company is a utility however. They're a natural monopoly in a way that a "website" can't be

If [large social media platform] doesn't want that kind of content, it's not unreasonable to simply make one to soak up that "ignored" market segment. Reddit can't shut you down for hosting your own internet forum for instance

Interestingly, L.A.’s mayor has threatened as well as executed water service disruption to people hosting large parties.

I get why one might want to do that, but I don’t think it’s the right precedent to set.

it's a terrible precedent, and borderline corrupt. mayor garcetti has proven to be a weak orator and leader, and weak leaders resort to force rather than reason and persuasion. he's solely focused on winning political points with wealthy backers here and nationally, because of his ambitions (and ranking behind gov. newsom), the people and precedent be damned.

he's ineffective with the power he has, can't get the homeless off the streets, can't build housing or make it affordable, can't improve educational outcomes, can't reduce unemployment and underemployment, has no real empathy for regular people (despite his emotion-laden language, and spanish!), and yet he wants to reach into our private lives and coerce behavior at the margin (saying this despite wholly agreeing that house parties are a terrible idea right now, but let's persuade, not force, and have a dialogue).

the irony is that angelenos have been an exceedingly compliant group to his orders, adhering to both lockdown and _outdoor_ mask mandates at upwards of 95%. even if some of that is social signaling, that's startlingly high, making any a dictator proud. and yet he wants more.

It's extrajudicial punishment, without a trial. It's a godawful precedent and I'd be amazed if was legal.

I can't see how a head of state threatening to cut off basic life necessities punitively is legal.

>but I don’t think it’s the right precedent to set.

I've thought about this statement for about a half hour now. What does it mean? That punishing individuals for ignoring public health mandates is a precedent we don't want? Or is it just the 'utility' being used that is problematic for you?

I don't get it.

Taking away a fundamental requirement for life is cruel and unusual, and the punishment does not fit the crime.

I don't know how I feel about cutting off the water service, but "cruel and unusual" seems like a reach.

It would be cruel and unusual to deprive a prisoner of water because they have no other means of attaining it when you withhold it. Turning off city water service to a property is different. The property owner has other options they can take to get the water they need to stay alive.

In Russia the right to access clean water is enshrined in the constitution. If a vilage relies on a certain lake / river, and lost that access e.g. to pollution, the government is complelled by law to fix the issue at no expense to the residents. It is not good enough to say "they could hire a water truck".

This also strikes me as abuse of power, one must not suffer arbitrary and random punishments. Whats bext, we will start cutting internet access to everyone who swears on the street, disabling electriciry to anyone who protests?

Today it’s “public health” reasons. What other “good reasons” will they find apt tomorrow?

The lack of due process?

> If [large social media platform] doesn't want that kind of content, it's not unreasonable to simply make one to soak up that "ignored" market segment. Reddit can't shut you down for hosting your own internet forum for instance

This is true enough for Reddit. It's far less true of the Play Store, because the platform (controlled by the same people as the store) throws up scary warnings if you try to install any other store so that almost nobody uses them, and on the only other major phone platform third party stores are prohibited outright. Which means to get your users to follow you, you don't just have to get them to visit a different website, you have to get them to replace their phone with one from a different hardware vendor, switch operating systems, and replace all of their other apps -- if that's even possible for them.

And what when the only two platforms both do the same thing? It's obviously not feasible for an individual app developer to create their own phone platform and hardware and get everyone to switch to it.

doesn't it go both ways? if you flip both positions, it's also inconsistent.

Google removing apps with spam/malware is one thing, & not something people would actually complain about. That also doesn't apply to removing the fediverse apps. They don't contain malware, they're simply alternative social networks. If they're going to remove them for having content they consider inappropriate or whatever excuse they're using, they need to remove other social media apps like facebook & twitter, because they certainly both have plenty of that too. Otherwise it just looks like an attempt to remove competitors to facebook/twitter. I also don't see what this has to do with a business refusing to make a cake. Businesses do have a right to refuse service. In this case if you're going to remove apps claiming they violate a specific violation, but don't remove other apps which will also inevitably be in violation the same way, it's reasonable for people to question it.

I have to say I generally agree with you that when someone points out a contradiction in some common political stance, the reverse of that contradiction exists in the opposite stance. It seems pretty common, though it generally results from distilling a more complex view into a simplified statement (which may edge into the territory of creating men of straw).

>generally results from distilling a more complex view into a simplified statement

couldn't agree more. it's so frustrating seeing this everywhere online. this isn't twitter, you can write as much as you want. I read comments online to try and understand other viewpoints, and I can't do that without substance.

How so?

The first hypocrisy is the defense of the right of a business to make arbitrary decisions w.r.t. service (not bake the cake), while simultaneously demanding that the business not have the power to refuse service (condemning private censorship).

The reverse position is not hypocritical in the same way, because condemning discrimination against customers on LGBT grounds is not at odds with censoring discriminatory speech - in fact, the two positions are aligned.

You could try to argue that private censorship is itself a form of discrimination, but most people who hold the second position would not concede that the people who practice hate speech are a minority worthy of protection - so for them, no discrimination is occurring.

A bakery is not a speech platform.

Allowing speech on your speech platform is not the same thing as compelling others to speech.

Comparing "allowing/disallowing the use of a tool" to spread YOUR message, to the "demanding that an artist/artisan create a message of YOUR liking" is very disingenuous. To be fair, I'm a libertarian and in a perfect world, you can do whatever and allow whoever you want to use/not use YOUR business. But this analogy of the gay wedding cake is simply not a good one.

It was the first one that came to mind, forgive me.

The basic thesis of my analogy was "you want 'free speech' forced upon private companies, but also want to allow them the freedom to dictate what content they allow under their 'brand'"

Oh I agree here. I think if you go into business to make cakes, you should vow to fulfill all your cake orders.

Likewise, if you say you're a webhost, you host websites.

If there's a legal issue, you report it. That's it.

There is a huge number of bakeries. What one doesn't want to do, others will.

Google is arguably in a monopolist situation. If they block your app or opinion, you're silenced.

Because it is illegal (and morally wrong) to treat people differently because of who they are, not what they say or do.

Being a gay is not a choice, the same way as being a black, a minority etc. Being an asshole is a choice on the other way, the same as being radical left or radical right. The former is protected the latter is not.