Completely free speech has never existed on internet platforms. E.g. we ban and remove spam comments all the time from forums, blogs and other forms of online discussion. We've also constantly banned bad behavior too (death threats, racism, brigading... etc).
I don't know why you're upset about this particular incident?
This is funny. Do you think someone confused Twitch with the US government? Do you think only the government should be concerned with free speech? Do you think corporate censorship isn’t important?
I see comments like yours frequently and get confused. Of course government censorship is more dangerous than corporate censorship. But saying that Twitch isn’t government is like responding to BLM with “well, technically all lives matter.” Of course it is true, but not really relevant.
The issue here is that Twitch doesn’t seem to respect free speech and build it into their services. Legally, they are allowed to do this. Ethically, that’s bad. Ethically, companies not supporting and building and fostering free speech leads us to some sort of Disney hellscape where all video calls must include smiles or people get booted, etc etc
Slippery slope hyperbole aside, I think it seems pretty fundamental to me that private communication platforms for the general public need to have free speech as an ideal and apply restrictions carefully. Making blanket band without considering context seems like it will make the experience less useful for communication.
That being said, I’m surprised there was even a confederate flag emoji ever available and surprised took this long to remove.
> Completely free speech has never existed on internet platforms
I just find it odd that you brought up government like it’s relevant to free speech and censorship by corporations. I’m genuinely curious as to maybe you think corporations censoring speech is appropriate. And I like this forum to be able to ask.
In my mind, I don’t want the phone company bleeping me out when I curse. Or disconnecting my service because they think I might be buying drugs. Phone companies are regulated by government to legally require these kinds of free speech requirements. But that doesn’t mean I can crank call people, or spam people, there’s still rules.
I think my problem with these companies is that they are arbitrary in their restrictions. And they seem biased politically.
Perhaps they aren’t biased. But similarly, while being required to show ID to vote may seem reasonable, in practice it discriminated against certain political parties.
Many of us run an ad blocker in our browser. Is this not censorship of certain types of speech?
Yes, this is exactly what's happening. Or, maybe the inverse: people think "free speech" means they can say whatever they want without consequences. This is not the letter nor spirit of the law.
No, because forcing social media platforms to publish speech they object to would infringe upon the free speech and free association rights of those platform owners. Twitter has the right to decide what it will and will not allow on its platform, and it has the right to change the rules as it sees fit. And I guarantee that everyone with an account had to agree to terms of service to that effect.
And no, just in case this comes up, Twitter doing so does not mean they somehow stop becoming a "platform" and become a "publisher" and should lose Section 230 protection. That's not how Section 230 works, and the distinction between platform and publisher commonly used in these arguments doesn't really exist in a legal sense - Twitter is allowed to moderate their platform beyond merely removing illegal content, and can even express political bias in doing so - while remaining not liable for user supplied content.
Perhaps we are too used to take free speech on private walled gardens for granted. These sites used to pretend to be proponents of free speech, but now that veil is being lifted and we see what they truely are. Is one not allowed to complain about this transformation? To the casual observer, these sites set the impression that they are a public forum yet they enforce their policies with a strict partisan bias. That is the crux of the issue.
While individuals and private entities are not obligated to follow that law because it is direct at the government people can rightly complain that it is in bad taste when they stray too far from holding themselves to the same standard.
A private entity banning confederate flags and nazi symbols in avatars is palatable enough on its own. But it is decently close to having to censor those sorts of things in legitimate historical contexts. See for example all the genuinely historically centered youtube channels that have to censor those symbols because otherwise the algo will bury them. I think we can all agree that that latter case is not ok and is the kind of censorship that should be complained about. Considering how many historically themed video games there are out there and how strongly people believe in free speech it's understandable why more than a few people do not like this move by Twitch.
When machine translation gets so good as to be transparent, correct, and effortlessly ubiquitous, we'll probably see more cross-cultural communication. And along with it, a bunch of additional clashes, new taboos, and additional reduction in the range of acceptable expression. I probably say things that someone halfway across the planet thinks are abhorrent all the time, and I only get away with it because we're not interacting yet.
This mostly changed due to 'corporate personhood', the idea that corporations should have the same rights as people.
This article goes in to a lot of how this has lead to corporate abuses of power:
https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol41...
This one's an easier read, but basically an editorial on the one above:
https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-histor...
You have a right to free speech. You don’t have a right to force everyone to listen. What a fucking awful world that would be.
What would the side effects be of not being able to remove people from your store because they're behaving in a way you don't like? What if YouTube could not, legally, remove content that was "abusive" or "hateful"?
(Again, not saying I think this is how things should be, just trying to entertain the idea a bit.)
The discussion about what is and what is not reasonable censorship should not be limited to constitution and its meaning.
Network effects make Twitch a natural monopoly. Which means that a little bit of regulation to combat that might be a good idea.
Amazon thought it was cheaper to spend a billion dollars on Twitch than to build a competitor itself
You either have to be the first mover or a mega-corp to make this happen. It's clearly not something you can do as an individual at this point.
That being said, just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not possible. Parler is a recent example of this.
Recently we've seen DNS providers, CDNs, payment gateways, and even banks shut down services for wrong-thinkers.
Accelerationists are cheering these actions. That should tell you all you need to know about the likely outcome.
Except now it's not normal people, it's hate groups that are being pushed out. This seems like a material change for the better.
If you think this is a recent phenomena or if you think it's somehow only being aimed one way, I suggest you read a bit more American history.
Implying that this is a black-and-white issue or that the current status is objectively superior is disingenuous or ignorant.
Fifty years ago it would have been unthinkable that the fringe groups being violently censored and oppressed would now be in power. Where might we be fifty years from now...