I think a lot of confusion comes from people who only acknowledge free-speech-as-legal-right encountering people who support free-speech-as-moral-principle.
Here's the rub, I think most people also support limiting extreme speech. IDK that there are many (any?) defenders of someone shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.
That, to me, indicates that the morality of limiting speech is more than just a simple binary choice "any limits are bad, no limits are good".
That's what "Free-speech-as-legal-right" is really trying to get at. It is the law trying to make the moral arguments for what free speech is and isn't and when it can be morally curtailed.
To me, the law has struck a decent balance. I don't think it's hugely immoral for a social media company to moderate their own content however they choose. Are downvotes in HN immoral? I don't think so. Do people here in HN believe flagged content is immoral or content that goes against the community rules? I don't think so.
To me, the only way this would be an issue is if Parler had no method to get their platform running. That's not the case. They can self host if they so choose. It isn't unreasonable for them to do that (many companies do).
That being said, I DO have an issue with ISPs choosing what content their customers have access to. That is mainly because a lot of people DON'T have a choice of provider. There is often only 1 high speed choice in a region. For them to filter or block content is a major issue.
Not really. There's not currently any huge controversy about banning spammers, DDoS attacks, or child pornography. A few fringe groups will argue it, but most sensible discussion concedes that censorship is useful and we need limits.
Parler's moderation policies caused their own problems. They decided they wanted to be a platform friendly to violent extremists. Their noted lack of moderation of violent rhetoric, calls to violence, and planning of violence made them a pariah.
Amazon is free to associate with whoever they want. They don't owe service to Parler or anyone else.
And it's not as if you can just go to the social media network down the street. Sites like Parler are trying to be those alternatives, and it's a tough business to even be #2 in.
Higher quality people might not like the seedy pawn shop in that strip mall with all the WW2 memorabilia, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to try to do business.
No part of AWS or Twilio fall under common carrier regulations. They can choose with whom they do business. They would and do cancel service for clients doing illegal things or against their TOS.
Amazon doesn't owe Parler a viable business. Parler made themselves into a toxic environment that drove third parties to abandon them.
I disagree with this argument not because I disagree with your conclusion, but because the issue is much, much darker.
It's not that folks are claiming "you must allow all speech," it's that they're saying "your free speech rights aren't as important as mine. As such, you should be forced to host/amplify my speech even if you don't want to do so."
That's not advocating for free speech, that's demanding that some folks' free speech rights be limited in favor of those of others.
And that's not only wrong, it's hypocritical and morally reprehensible.
These preachers set a great example of batshit old guy. Some times an amateur philosopher would debate them. Usually everyone in the audience came away convinced if the horrors of homosexual bigotry.
Where are people to see these shining examples and learn not to go down that path? How do they sharpen their arguments or even know the opposition?
The same place they've always been. On college campuses debating with philosophers. As well as everywhere else that happens.
If you're coming at this from the point of view who sees considers private companies doing the bare legal minimum to be fine and acceptable than pretty much everyone who think private entities should be more accommodating to speech than that is just going to look like various flavors of free speech absolutists/extremists.
My personal belief about why free speech should exist is that it helps us discover the truth, both morally and factually. As such, I think we should make spaces accessible that allow any idea to be discussed, even the ones we currently think are wrong, and if we limit speech we should do it such that no idea is rendered inexpressible. However, I understand that not every space should be a complete free-for-all, and I have no problem with limiting the way in which an idea can be presented to ensure politeness or harmlessness.
Within the scope of this belief, I find it obviously okay to deplatform speech up until doing so harms our overall ability to discover the truth. Past that point a tradeoff exists. I think that the removal of Parler is a tradeoff between the free speech of its users, vs the self-determination of Google, the potential harm done by Parler, and the existence of other spaces where ideas can still be discussed. While I therefore find removing Parler to be acceptable, I still feel that the moral principle of free speech must be applied to that decision, even if it's outweighed by other factors.
1. The moral principle of what should be platformed (which you agree is not everything) 2. The moral principle of free speech (which is what is in the constitution preventing the government from preventing freedom of expression)
I think we can agree that there is confusion but not on the type of confusion.
Even free-speech-as-moral-principle has limits, as defined by John Stuart Mill, who said that free speech can be curtailed when the expression causes harm. People get confused about this because they think free speech means all speech is free of consequence.
Inciting violence, coordinating death threats against individuals, and other similar expression causes harm.
There is no protection for calls to violence.
I don't think anyone has asserted that Parler or its employees are advocating violence.
This is a violation of AWS's TOS which is why they're breaking it.
The comment I was responding to was misleading IMHO ("the speech Parler is being kicked off AWS for").
As you point out, they aren't being kicked off "for speech" they are being kicked off for insufficient moderation of someone else's speech, which speaks to the difficulties of being an at-scale content provider.
Again though, we’re getting lost in the weeds here. Parler’s entire selling point, and the only reason it had any users or any product, was the implicit promise that “we won’t moderate content”.
Maybe they were, it'll be tricky to show it for certain from our vantage point, but it certainly doesn't help their case that the whole point of platform that they weren't going to moderate said content.
You can’t build a platform for organizing murders, knowingly allow users to organize murders on your site, and then claim it’s not your fault because technically you aren’t responsible for UGC. Surely there’s a line where it’s just a veneer of an excuse.
Is it possible to build a platform with user generated content that is agnostic regarding the content in the same way that a traditional telco is agnostic about the content of phone calls (or SMS)? Is the difference that the messages are private rather than public?
We don't expect telco's to create filters or to independently moderate or to block the content of phone calls or SMS messages and basically legal mechanisms must be used to trigger any action against a subscriber. I realize that this is largely due to the legal framework of a "common carrier".
What I'm asking is, what would a "common carrier" look like for platform that had user generated content? Perhaps it isn't possible?
The problem with a social service behaving that way is everyone who tried the "anything goes" approach over the last 30 years started idealistic either gave up and added some rules or became a toxic cesspool.
That makes sense to me. There are zero social environments on earth where some type of obnoxious behavior won't get you thrown out. Why would the web be all that different?
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To be clear, this is a hypothetical about idealists acting in good faith. Over the years we've also seen bad actors feign utopian motives to try and avoid responsibility for their actions, which is a different conversation entirely.
100%. Absolutely.
> We don't expect telco's to create filters or to independently moderate or to block the content of phone calls or SMS messages and basically legal mechanisms must be used to trigger any action against a subscriber. I realize that this is largely due to the legal framework of a "common carrier".
Not only do we not expect it, but the more privacy-oriented people expect it to not even be possible, and use things like end-to-end encryption that make it impossible for the carrier to know what the messages contain.
But perhaps there simply is an inherent problem with being a platform for user-generated content and that it requires somewhat robust moderation to avoid being cancelled, sued, or arrested.
I think you need to define was "common-carrier" means.
As far as I'm concerned, once a message is deemed to be intended to be public, "common carrier" goes away for the service that is going to be broadcasting that message to others. The copper/fiber/etc. lines between me and Twitter are still a common carrier, because even though my Tweet is going to be public, the individual TCP packets going to Twitter are still intended to be private.
Any system for publicly posting messages that isn't moderated will be overwhelmed by bad actors, since bad actors will nearly always be kicked off of moderated platforms.
There were guillotine memes with 50k upvotes on reddit right before the "insurrection" happened!
(1) There is a better solution. The problem is that they are monopolies. So bust the monopolies. Require interoperability — a proven solution in other industries. A service needs to be treated as a utility — meaning large amounts of regulation — when it is a natural monopoly, meaning there’s no practical way to avoid a monopoly. That’s not the case here. Don’t use a ton of regulation where a much smaller amount will do.
(2) It doesn’t solve the problem. A social network utility still needs moderation. How would making a social network a utility make the moderation decisions better than what you’re getting now? Complicating things, in the US the first amendment means the government can’t establish laws to limit free speech, so a public utility would have to be a minimally moderated cesspool.
Actually yours is the predominant view of those on the left and HN in general - “they are private companies so deal with it”. From a purely legal perspective, that view is almost certainly correct.
The issue is a societal one. Half the country isn’t just going to sit down and shut up because a few liberal billionaires told them to. They’ll create alternatives, and then we will have not just a philosophically divided country, but effectively two Internets - one for conservatives and one for liberals. Where does it end from there? Do hotels and restaurants in California demand to see proof that you are a registered Democrat before you are allowed to patronize them? Do liberal employers start carrying out mass firings of conservative employees?
We are seeing the beginnings of a country of ~300 million people being cracked in two, on a much deeper level than has ever happened before. I can’t think of something less American than a bunch of business owners ganging together to strangle the life out of a small business because they disagree with the politics of some its users.
Actually it is the predominant view, left and right. Except in this specific case, where the right doesn't like it.
> We are seeing the beginnings of a country of ~300 million people being cracked in two, on a much deeper level than has ever happened before.
The Civil War may beg to differ. The real issue is that we've never reconciled the divergent view point from that war. Race is still the largest dividing factor in this country and this incident was about race (and ego) more than anything else.
Show me an instance where anything remotely close to this happened - right leaning businesses banding together to take a left-leaning business entirely offline by cutting off all services to them. I’ll wait.
Civil War...
The Civil War occurred at a time when actual physical war was the predominant way that societal differences were settled. That is no longer the case, except perhaps in the minds of some of the idiots that stormed the Capitol.
But on an intellectual level, this event with Parler is akin to an act of modern civil war. When you endeavor to kill an organization, are you not in a sense declaring war on them? Further, was this action not designed to frighten others into getting in line with the ruling party, lest they suffer the same fate? While no guns were used, those seem very similar to the actions normally taken by those engaging in civil war.
An example is pirate sites or underground drug sites. Those are largely blacklisted -- and fit into a (far) left-leaning philosophy around a class of freedom. I'd argue most of those are less extreme than Parler.
> When you endeavor to kill an organization, are you not in a sense declaring war on them?
Isn't that what Trump wanted to do with the NFL after Kaep took a knee?
> Further, was this action not designed to frighten others into getting in line with the ruling party, lest they suffer the same fate?
Sure, in the same way that death penalty is meant to scare murderers.
You're trying to make this out to be a site of critical thinkers espousing different views that are being trampled on, while most everyone else recognizes it more like a revenge porn site.
You are comparing the exercise of freedom of speech to committing murder. Not quite the same thing in my opinion.
An example is pirate sites or underground drug sites. Those are largely blacklisted -- and fit into a (far) left-leaning philosophy around a class of freedom.
Those sites are offering illegal goods and services. That is why they are offline. Companies are generally ordered by law enforcement to take them down. Again...hardly comparable.
The point is they weren't only exercising free speech. They were inciting a violent riot.
> Those sites are offering illegal goods and services. That is why they are offline. Companies are generally ordered by law enforcement to take them down. Again...hardly comparable.
Again, the calls to march into the Capitol, provocation of violence, etc... are also illegal. But you won't find our government ever willing to take that stand. The distinction is less clear than you suggest.
Lets put it this way, no one is suggesting to blacklist the WSJ or the National Review. The Parler is the equivalent to an Antifa social media network for planning attacks on right wing establishments.
Speaking of Antifa...if Parler is equivalent to it...it’s bit hypocritical that they still have a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/antifaintl?s=21
Note, Parler does have a Twitter account too. I have not heard people looking to ban that — so really not hypocritical at all.
Yet.
But we are starting to break that norm, beginning with the natural wedges: commerce where the service or product _IS_ enabling the purchasing in a direct way. The question is if we can stop at _direct_ enablement or whether it will continue to indirect forms.
A scary example would be for Square to start refusing to process payments for ideological reasons.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-stops-processing-payment...
For stripe, the example would be refusing to process any CC payments (as a consumer) for registered republicans whatsoever. Beyond it being foolish commercially, it is much more intrusive than a refusing a direct 1:1 contract.
Except that's not what happened. Stripe didn't cut off the Trump campaign's ability to raise funds. They didn't block access to their bank accounts. They didn't freeze their assets.
Rather, one company (and they aren't even close to the largest player in that industry) chose not to process online credit card transactions for them.
The Trump campaign has many other online payment processors that it can do business with. They can still accept donations via many other means (checks, bank transfers, cash, etc., etc.).
A single company (which is just a group of people) decided they didn't want to do business with another group of people.
Stripe, it's shareholders and employees are under no obligation to do business with anyone.
And the fact that the customer is a political entity strengthens that, as their right to support (or not) any particular political entity, candidate or position is integral to a free society.
I don't see how people can make this argument with a straight face. If you accept that this one company should be allowed to decide to cut off someone for ideological reasons, you tacitly accept that all companies could cut someone off for the same reason. Hiding behind it being "only one" right now is to use a technicality to dodge having to defend the principle you are implicitly advocating. The action isn't more right or wrong because one or more company is doing it--you either defend the principle at full usage or you disavow it.
I'm not people. I'm just me and don't represent anyone else except myself.
As for it being "just one company," that isn't really important. It could be 10 or 100 or 1000 companies and I'd say the same thing.
And not because of the content of the political views being (or not) supported.
It has nothing to do with any of that.
If the government can force Stripe (or anyone else) to support a particular (it doesn't matter which one either) viewpoint by forcing them to associate with a person or group they don't wish to associate with, then they can force me (or you, for that matter) to do the same.
I can't and don't speak for anyone else. For me, it's about specific constitutional rights. I don't and won't support abridgement of those rights for anyone, whether I agree with them or not.
If you believe that it's just fine for persons or organizations to have their freedom of association rights abridged, then you are anti-freedom and stand in opposition to the liberties and ideals in my constitution.
And if that's true, then so be it. But don't try to pretend that your argument is anything other than an anti-liberty, anti-democratic (small d) one.
This is utter nonsense. For example, abridging a company's right to not "associate" with minorities/gays/etc, i.e. their right to not serve them, is not anti-liberty. If the goal is maximizing liberty, it takes targeted regulation to achieve the maximal state. Ensuring everyone can participate in the economic and social infrastructure is a feature of maximizing liberty.
I didn't realize that I needed to specify that this didn't apply to protected classes[0]. I assumed that was understood, but I guess not.
Yes, there are a number of groups (see link) which individuals and businesses are barred from discriminating against. But in this circumstance, that's irrelevant.
Because political affiliation is not a protected class under federal law, and even where it is (CA, NY and a few other states) that only applies to employment issues, not business-to-business contracts/transactions.
The right to political association has never been abridged, nor should it be. Any suggestion otherwise is, as I said, anti-liberty and anti-democratic.
Political choice is a bedrock principle of our system. And forcing anyone to support a political viewpoint they do not wish to support violates both settled constitutional law and the ideals of a free society.
Nitpick about protected groups if you like, but there's no "there" there.
The law is the law. We are a nation of laws. We are not a nation of "do what hackinthebochs wants."
This is the most American thing I can think of if you remove the last bit about "because of politics".
That escalated quickly!
Given that being “censored” by sites like Twitter is also a big complaint of the far left (because it has happened a lot), my hope is that splintering to alternative sites won’t be so binary. Having 40 Twitter clones seems better to me than having just one or two.
Except those are false equivalences. It's not "conservatives" that are the problem. And they aren't.
They have just as much right as anyone else to their point of view, political preferences and to advocate for them as anyone else.
However, those who would use violence, intimidation and lies to advance their political goals are not conservatives. Or liberals.
They are, at best criminal thugs and, at worst, radical insurrectionists bent on destroying our constitutional republic and the rule of law.
And calling such folks out for their behavior isn't a slap at "conservatives," because those who are honest when they call themselves that (at least in the US) want to preserve our constitutional system of government and the rule of law.
Don't conflate the two. Because they aren't even remotely similar.
I don't agree that "infringement of free speech" can happen in a commercial context. The right to free speech is the right that you cannot have government force act on you for what you are saying; e.g. the government has no right to tell you "don't say this or it will have consequences". As for private contracts: Trying to enforce "free speech" that must not be infringed upon in private contracts would also mean all NDAs are always void, and would be a huge intrusion into another liberty: That of entering into arbitrary agreements with each other.
The .cn regulator cracking down on Ant Financial because they did not like what Jack Ma said is an infringement on free speech. A private business actor deciding to terminate a contract because they don't like the business partner is not.
Related: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/midtown-uniform-patagonia-will-...