The proposition that free and open discussion creates civil war is frightening. If we are prepared to believe such a thing, then we have no democracy to protect.

If the freeness encompassed saying "let's have a civil war", "these people are your enemy", "buy weapons for the incoming civil war", and selling t-shirts with a proposed civil war start date, then maybe?

How do you think civil wars start? And how many actual wars have been started by lies? Usually by the instigating government or yellow press, but in this case it's DIY yellow press letting people make up their own lies.

Incitement isn't permitted by any interpretation of the 1st amendment.

The current state of affairs offers nothing more granular than shutting down all of Parler in response to their failure to moderate this speech effectively.

Discussion? I haven't seen discussion come out of the US on a number of topics for decades. Discussions might start, but someone comes along and starts incoherently screaming.

Lies are often how wars start.

I suspect you believe that as an article of faith, but it makes me think you haven't been on the internet in decades. Go onto thedonald dot win and you'll see hundreds of thousands of people who have created an insulated bubble where assertions that support their preferred outcomes are articles of gospel.

If you can go on there and convince a single person that the election was legitimate, that ballot security measures make it impossible for their beliefs to be true, and that Biden was legitimately elected, it's possible for the proposition "free and open discussion can diffuse false ideas" to be valid, but if you can't, then you might want to reevaluate.

Actions like these where one side fully suppresses the other - one set of standards for themselves and another set of standards applied to people they oppose - are exactly the kind of actions that lead to civil war.

Comparing ~70 million Americans to paedophiles...

or comparing ~70 million Americans to Nazis

if the boot fits

Welcome to the streisand effect. Big tech has effectively silenced 80m Americans and Parker and other alternative wrongspeak will grow much faster now.

Do you really think 80MM Americans have been "silenced"? What is wrong with you. As a member of a group that has been historically marginalized in the US, it's laughable to see tech bros act as if they've suffered some Red Summer of 1919 because they can't post on social media.

The 80M number is not “Americans silenced”, it’s the number of Twitter accounts that follow Trump’s Twitter account.

Evidence generally supports the notion that deplatforming works. If you remove people from your platform, they generally end up scattered across other platforms or new platforms in smaller numbers. “Alternative” platforms are more likely to collapse, which just makes things worse.

Think about this—when was the last time you heard about Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos? What happened to r/fatpeoplehate or r/watchpeopledie? If you want to find these communities, where do you go? You have to search them out. Maybe you check out one of the chans. Maybe you go searching for Discord invites. But you still keep a Reddit and YouTube account, of course. You keep using Twitter and Instagram and Facebook even though the communities you want are deplatformed.

Most people don’t go through the effort. The communities end up fractured. The alternative platforms like Parler and Voat are often worse for exactly the same reasons that they exist in the first place. That’s why deplatforming succeeds.

That is not the Streisand effect.

If you start conflating free speech with child pornography when that isn’t even relevant or necessary to the point at hand then it’ll be no wonder if you lack responses, and maybe you’ll consider that proof of a strong argument, who knows? Maybe that’s even the point of slinging that in there. I fail to see how that will lead to productive discussion though.

Neither I nor the person I replied to mentioned free speech. They asserted that Google or Apple removing an app will lead to Google or Apple "[taking] everything else from you".

I pointed out a class of apps that are banned and asked why we haven't slipped down the slope they described.

> in uncensored, insufficiently moderated communities

> if so, why doesn't the prohibition of apps for child pornography

Forgive me, I was obviously mistaken to bring up freedom of speech or to claim that you were conflating apps/sites that allow freedom of speech with those that allow child pornography.

/s

Edit: fixed my egregious typos.

The point is that free speech absolutism requires that child pornography be protected speech.

There are good arguments against free speech absolutism, but this is not one of them, since child pornography IS protected speech in the US. You can write a book of poetry that has entire chapters featuring Achilles and the Tortoise raping babies in patently offensive detail. If Congress tried to pass a law that bans your book, it would easily pass the Miller test, and the Court would tell them to think again. Heck, you can find books featuring pornographic scenes involving children on Amazon today.

Of course you are not allowed to possess or distribute explicit photos of actual minors (the same way you are not allowed to possess or distribute human kidneys, or for that matter copies of Windows XP): fortunately, none of these acts are speech, even under extreme straw men versions of free speech absolutism. Easy test: you are still able to convey any of your thoughts/opinions and make absolutely _any_ point to any audience without inconvenience even if you don't resort to these activities.

So, you're saying that anyone can write an entire book on overthrowing the government and sell it on amazon, but Twitter has silenced however many million people? It sure sounds like there are easy avenues for people to share ideas.

Not sure what argument you're trying to make here.

If the state would use its influence to get one single bookstore in Bumsworth, Arizona to stop selling one specific book on repairing video cameras [2], that would certainly be a free speech issue, and it would certainly violate the First Amendment.

Yes, even if the book remained available in every other bookstore across the nation, and every book discussing other ways of repairing video cameras would remain available for sale in Bumsworth. Just imagine a state attorney trying to use that as a defense, to explain why the "No Video Camera Repairs in Bumsworth Act" does not violate the First Amendment. It would be ridiculous.

You're trying to use the same defense while the leaders of the largest soon-to-be-opposition party are banned en masse in an effort to align industry with the incoming new administration, while people with significant cred [1], who happen to be on bad terms with opposition party in question [3] denounce the whole thing as an "unacceptable act of censorship".

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/01/09/russian-dissident-alexei-naval... https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347969772177264644

[2] more pertinently, a book about the acts of the Catholic Church in Bumsworth, or the mafia connections of the mayor of Bumsworth

[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-05/donald-trump-us-has-n...

Here’s another easy test: say the government bans photos of something innocuous, like cars, but allows text to be written about them. Take a photo of a car, go to jail. You can write a book about racing, though. Free speech?

Of course not. The medium

The medium has nothing do with free speech. Sorry, didn’t notice my post got messed up.

> large proportion of Americans are radicalized in uncensored

You do realize, both sides of America think the other side is radicalized. This was literally the reaction on Trump's first day of office:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXR3d22BhHs

Have you forgotten about that? Does that look anything like the 6th? No, of course it doesn't. Had those people been let into the State House, it may have burned to the ground in 2017!

> insufficiently moderated community

Section 230 was put in place because it's difficult to moderate effectively when you're trying to launch a startup. Are you saying no one can launch a social network unless they have the money and staff to moderate each an every single post that comes in?

> You do realize, both sides of America think the other side is radicalized.

On Wednesday, while our elected Representatives and Senators were in the process of finalizing the count of the US election, armed Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Several of these people were carrying zip-tie handcuffs and were hunting for Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. 5 people died in this insurrection attempt. Here's the video of the QAnon insurrectionist who was shot by the Capitol Police as she was breaking into the area where our elected Reps and Senators had retreated to.

This was an attempt to overthrow our government, and it's a matter of luck that our legislators weren't executed by this mob. Attempting to "Both Sides" this is intellectually dishonest, as a riot in the streets is a categorically different thing than a seditious conspiracy that involved the violent disruption of the finalization of results from our election.

> Are you saying no one can launch a social network unless they have the money and staff to moderate each an every single post that comes in?

I'm not intimately familiar with Section 230, but I don't want my country destroyed. If Google and Apple facilitate distribution of a toxic product that destroys my country, that's a problem for me.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ash...

Huh, that's pretty crazy, especially with AOC herself writing up impeachment papers:

"Sunrise planned a sit-in in Pelosi's office and asked Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to help them publicize the event, which she instead decided to join herself...The sit-in took place on November 13. Over 250 protesters showed up to occupy Pelosi's office, with 51 being arrested by Capitol Police."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement

Why does Pelosi's office not seem to have door locks?

> Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol has the ability to destabilize the country?

How are we to know? Four years ago everybody was like "do you really believe a senile ex-talk-show host will withstand a round of debate^W^W^W^W^W become the Republican candidate^W^W^W^W become the president? Come on."

Yet here we are.

> Why do you think there was a seditious conspiracy? Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol have the ability to destabilize the country? Remember, we have layers upon layers of armed forces that would end any such attempt very very easily.

You might want to review the facts. The Capitol Police were overwhelmed, our elected representatives, who were in the process of finalizing our election, had to run for their lives, and the layers upon layers of armed forces were not there to protect our representatives. This was a massive security failure and we should never come this close to having our elected representatives taken hostage and executed by insurrectionists. And if that had happened, yes, it would have destabilized the country. How could it not?