> I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me.

Then what about lies? The real problem of the last few years is that really blatant lies have been remarkably successful in the "marketplace of ideas" and quite hard to effectively argue against (if you disagree, try using facts and reason to convince a QAnon believer that the world isn't run by Satan-worshipping pedophile Democrats who Trump & Muller are secretly preparing to defeat in a blaze of glory). Those lies are fuel for those "specific threats or calls to violence."

I think a lot of the conventional beliefs around free speech make assumptions that may not be as true now as they were in the past (e.g. most of the participants will act in good faith (or at least have some shame) and act reasonably, and that any participants that don't will be quickly identified and ostracized). The error is sort of like classical economics theories incorrectly assuming people will be rational economic actors when they often aren't.

And what of the lies which led us into the Gulf War and the Iraq War? Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of those lies, and they were broadcast from coast to coast by every credible news media organisation in existence. The same organisations now being lauded as the bearers of ultimate truth.

When the next set of lies is rolled out to land us in another unending conflict, I would quite like the internet to be a place where information can freely flow. My fear of governments is far greater than my fear of kooky people on the internet.

> And what of the lies which led us into the Gulf War and the Iraq War? Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of those lies, and they were broadcast from coast to coast by every credible news media organisation in existence. The same organisations now being lauded as the bearers of ultimate truth.

What "lie" led us into the Gulf War? Are you claiming that Iraq did not in fact invade and conquer Kuwait?

And what about the stuff about Iraqi WMDs? I'm obviously not claiming that lying was invented in the last few years, so pointing out some lie that gained traction in the past doesn't really challenge anything I said.

> When the next set of lies is rolled out to land us in another unending conflict, I would quite like the internet to be a place where information can freely flow. My fear of governments is far greater than my fear of kooky people on the internet.

There's a good chance that the kind of freely flowing information I'm talking about will likely just lead you to a different lie. If the truth (or interpretations approaching the truth) is a needle in a haystack, it's unlikely that many people will actually ever find it. That's a problem.

> Are you claiming that Iraq did not in fact invade and conquer Kuwait?

I am claiming that the Nayirah testimony helped manufacture consent for US military involvement.

> I'm obviously not claiming that lying was invented in the last few years, so pointing out some lie that gained traction in the past doesn't really challenge anything I said.

You claimed that the problem of the last few years was blatant lies gaining traction in the marketplace of ideas. I am pointing out that lies have forever gained traction in the marketplace of ideas, while also being co-signed by authoritative news sources and politicians.

> If the truth (or interpretations approaching the truth) is a needle in a haystack, it's unlikely that many people will actually ever find it. That's a problem.

I agree, but I don't believe that restricting speech or massively censoring information is the correct solution. Or a solution at all.

>> Are you claiming that Iraq did not in fact invade and conquer Kuwait?

> I am claiming that the Nayirah testimony helped manufacture consent for US military involvement.

Oh, I see. I think the difference is that wasn't really the casus belli for the Gulf War (the Wikipedia entry doesn't mention Nayirah at all, for instance), while the WMD lie was the literal casus belli for the Iraq War.

> You claimed that the problem of the last few years was blatant lies gaining traction in the marketplace of ideas. I am pointing out that lies have forever gained traction in the marketplace of ideas, while also being co-signed by authoritative news sources and politicians.

I think we're using different definitions of "blatant." I'm talking about stuff like QAnon or Stop the Steal. In comparison, the lies you're talking about are far more credible and believable.

> What "lie" led us into the Gulf War?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

You did claim

> The real problem of the last few years is that really blatant lies have been remarkably successful in the "marketplace of ideas" and quite hard to effectively argue against

so I think it's fair to point out that this is not in fact a new problem, and that private companies probably aren't going to solve it.

> so I think it's fair to point out that this is not in fact a new problem, and that private companies probably aren't going to solve it.

The new problem is is not the successful spread of lies, but the frequent successful spread of lies at massive scale that fall apart at the slightest inspection. Basically: bonkers conspiracy theories becoming mainstream consensus in large segments of the population.

> bonkers conspiracy theories becoming mainstream consensus in large segments of the population.

I think the only new thing is "bonkers conspiracy theories", when beforehand it was more like "state sanctioned lies". Pick your poison, I guess?

Truth will be unknown in any case, but free speech can at least expose lies as such, which can't be done in controlled propaganda.

We do have some limits on lies. There are libel/slander laws.

These limits are usually very weak, though. They vary from place to place, but tend to have a high bar, are expensive to pursue, and have many exceptions.

Those don't cover other dangerous types of lies, like telling people drinking bleach will protect them from COVID, or telling them COVID is a hoax and they shouldn't wear masks, or the whole antivax thing.

Furthermore these laws almost exclusively apply when speaking about specific people. QAnon people can be sued if they say "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of children". However they are safe saying "Democrats drink the blood of children." I don't understand why these two should be treated differently from a moral, ethical, or legal perspective.

Also these are largely viewed as civil issues and not criminal so Hillary Clinton needs to take them to court and not the State. These two issues combined basically give Americans free rein to make up whatever lies they want about whatever group they wish to defame.

'Threats of violence'

'Threats of coordinated violence'

'Satire with violence'

Are all part of a type of information wherein we can make rules and try to apply them fairly.

Saying 'Twitter allowed this but not that' is besides the point - it illustrates that Twitter is either inconsistent or hypocritical or both ... but it doesn't abnegate the notion that policies can be crudely made to work.

If you straight up threatened to murder someone on Twitter, they'll take it down.

The problem of 'mass mistruth' is much more complicated, because of course, making the stupid claim that 'the COVID vaccines kill 50% of it's recipients' probably would normally be within the realm of protected speech - but when 100% of Americans are subject to such lies, 25% of them refuse to take the vaccine, and 5% of them want to get violent an overthrow the CDC & murder Fauci because he's 'killing children' - well it becomes a problem.

One key thing to understand that nobody here in HN wants to contemplate is that the 'commons' is utterly not a clearing house of information wherein the truth rises to the top. This is totally the opposite. The commons is an arena of populism where we plebes act on instinct and emotion, we chose the information we want to hear, we buy into the lies of groups and ideologues.

The truth is almost irrelevant, because it can only ever be contemplated in the context of legitimate authority, which is why we 'mostly trust' the CDC, Homeland Security, our Judicial system etc. etc..

'Coordinating Violence' is a problem that can be dealt with in all but the eyes of those wanting 'absolute free speech'.

But 'Lies and Misinformation' we must understand is actually a serious problem, and worse, there's no clear path to how we can solve this.

There's no doubt we don't want corporations, and not 'Tim Cook' making these decisions, probably not individual bureaucrats or ideological politicians ... we're all going to have to work hard to find something that works and that is fairly transparent and fair. FYI Apple doesn't want the headache of deciding who speaks and not - they just want to make money and not get into risky scenarios.

The difference between a lie and a mere falsehood or even a mistake is intent and knowledge. The legal system is perfectly capable of determining intent and knowledge (when including not just actual but cases where knowledge was recklessly disregarded). We also already have laws that in certain contexts outlaw such lying. The most common examples are perjury and lying to officials either FBI or immigration, the latter specifically in the context of one's status. The laws, particularly the first two, lost a lot of their punch because of rampant misuse by authorities - the latter overused by federal agents to buy time to build cases they can't otherwise Constitutionally establish legally, the former was found to be so common among police testimonies that it had both a term - 'testilying' and hundreds of academic papers on the subject leading to no reform and little added enforcement. We also have laws against defrauding - which usually just adds onto a specific intent to gain something of value. It's not that we can't keep free speech as the Constitution sets it but still regulate particular instances where the state can prove a case of bad intent and knowledge, but the long history of applying these laws not for justice but for coercion, to fill quotas, carelessly, and unevenly have eroded the erstwhile authority prosecutors have in using them without creating a political issue for him or herself. I think restoring integrity in the system so that these cases can be taken as nonpolitical is arguably an even more difficult task, but certainly if done right, would have the most legitimacy and be the most narrowly targeted.

But outside of that I'd much rather have corporations than bureaucrats handling such matters, because at least they can be incentivized to do the right thing. After all, corporations are ultimately voluntary entities formed and owned by average people, and when their conduct fails to match societal expectations, they lose customers and revenue, which is at least some incentive. Furthermore, they're protected by the constitution to do the moderating. They are allowed to keep the undesirable off their platform. No matter how much Josh Hawley wants to nationalize big tech to make America into White China, he can't actually do it without an armed mob. In contrast our administrative laws and particularly those with enforcement powers have effectively been turned into the Constitutional backdoor that through sheer luck Trump was unable to realize as the easy and if not legal, at least unchallengeable way to stage a coup, just as their suppression and kidnappings over the summer resulted in no real consequences, it's by design, and one that circumvents much of the Bill of Rights with essentially no oversight, judicial or congressional, the former by doctrinal custom and the latter by negligence. They pose a much greater danger, because they not only get into risky situations, legally they're effectively immune from almost all responsibility in a way that even puts qualified immunity to shame. I hate to pose these not as hypotheticals but as actual comparisons, but Apple haven't kidnapped me for all the complaints I made about the shitty 2017 MacBook keyboard yet, while federal agencies with militarized regulatory enforcement powers have, supposedly all through mistakes, "deported" over a thousand American citizens to random countries they have no connection to. They're the backstop we should never lean on.

> But outside of that I'd much rather have corporations than bureaucrats handling such matters, because at least they can be incentivized to do the right thing. After all, corporations are ultimately voluntary entities formed and owned by average people, and when their conduct fails to match societal expectations, they lose customers and revenue, which is at least some incentive.

Those are some awfully large assumptions. We know that incentives are not trivial to structure, companies choose not to comply (think about how companies like Facebook just write fines off as a business expense), or actively attempt to interfere with the processes which manage those incentives.

Similarly, your definition of companies is unsupported by evidence. Few average people create them (it costs too much), and they're only completely voluntary in a few areas where entry costs are low, consolidation is uncommon, and the services are voluntary. In computing, for example, what percentage of people have a realistic choice other than deciding whether they prefer Apple to Google, or Apple to Microsoft?

A better approach is to stop assuming sweeping properties inherent to the sector and look at the incentive structures. Almost all organizations do exactly what they’re setup to do and need outside visibility and oversight to make sure that aligns with the larger needs of society. Both government agencies and companies produce bad results when the incentives don’t align — as we can see in this very case where it’s easy to ignore problems when the alternatives cost money.

To your first para:

Lying, in the context of FB posts etc. is not illegal, so

To your second post:

Companies have no incentive to honour your rights, and as a side note, they will pursue their personal, petty squabbles to their own ends.

Google, FB and Apple systematically have leaders who prefer 'one side of the political aisle' and could easy tilt the scales in that direction.

This is an abomination really wen can't allow that.

I think we probably need some decent legislation.

Should we ban hyperbolic exaggerations? phrasing things in way that makes it seem like its a Biblical battle between good and evil, should be allowed in my opinion. I think its questionable how many literally belief in those things. But exaggerating things has been part of story telling forever.

Its also not that off to call someone a witch, that literally brags about staying youthful by applying a cream made from baby foreskins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY2aOHQlAco

And referencing Epstein island, which many elites did go to, is not really a conspiracy theory anymore. Its a documented fact.

In this instance I don't think calls to violence are really the problem at hand. Specifically, what is the difference between getting on a box on a street corner and calling for the death of so and so and saying the same thing on the internet? The difference is the speed at which the message propagates and the breadth and targeting of the audience that hears it. The technology and its unregulated use are the problem not primarily the speech it facilitates. Facebook and Twitter in how they are designed are the problem. They are the equivalent of giving everyone an information machine gun with infinite advertising backed ammo and then asking everyone to abide by the honor system. We don't do this in the physical space and we shouldn't in the digital space. We are currently in the process of learning all of the old lessons of society building the hard way when it comes to the internet. Thats because Twitter and Facebook didn't intend to build societies they intended to make money. They did both but only really cared about the latter.

Do you mean like when Kathy Griffin was holding up the presidents bloody head with no recourse? Or the summer riots which were heavily coordinated on Twitter? Twitter is still in the app stores. Extremism is on Twitter, Facebook, and all platforms, yet they came together like a mob and eliminated the one they didnt like.

Yes, I agree. Iran's supreme leader is still on twitter. But a counterpoint is that that ISIS was driven out of twitter and FB systematically. Correct me but you're implying in your statement is they "eliminated the one they didn't like [because of political views]" but that's not necessarily the only reason

EDIT: Given your other responses, we're at an impasse. Bowing out.

ISIS and other islamists are very much still on twitter.

I forgot the other reason: to give a gift to the new party in power in hopes of stopping the anti-trust cases. The dems were nudging some of them, ill be interested to see if we get a magical 180 degree turn.

It was a stupid gesture on her part and she paid a step price for that act, so it wasn't so free.

When talking about the riots that happened it important to acknowledge all the players. Most of the protesters against police brutality were peaceful and exercising first amendment rights of the first degree -- complaining about government abuses.

There are recorded cases of agents provocateur, e.g., https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-...

And the police themselves were not passive in these regards, at least in the case when the protesters were not about white nationalism.

No platform recourse and they didnt even ban the material, even today. You could say the capital protestors were “mostly peaceful” as well as the vast majority did not storm the building. Even those on the capital steps were a tiny minority of who showed up. Im really not here to argue case by case and combat mental gymnastics for why one sides extremism is ok but the others is not. Im simply pointing out that all platforms have extremism and calls for violence but only one was banned swiftly.

So you're saying that she didn't have a right to post that picture at all?

Again, what she did was stupid and tasteless, but if you think that it was intended as a call for violence then you're venturing into Rorschach test territory.

The capitol "protest" was designed to lead to the attack on the house. Perhaps many present were just there to just "speak up" but the breach itself was no accident.

She posted it again with impunity, so it basically was free, seeing as she was not deplatformed after the first or second time doing it.

She lost a lot of work over it -- therefore she did pay a price.

As stupid and tasteless as it was, to make it into a call for others to cut off his head is specious at best. And that's a key issue in play: the intent of the the message.

You're engaging in weak whataboutism.

> You're engaging in weak whataboutism.

One of the major threads of the political discourse is that right wing businesses, representatives and protestors are being treated differently than left wing ones. How would you - even theoretically - make that case without drawing comparisons?

There is little room to argue that if any figure associated with the right was waving a mock severed head around that would be cause for extreme social, business or potentially legal consequences and/or people losing faith in basic civil liberties. There would be panic.

The standards are too visibly different for the gap to be dismissed.

Left wing protestors were protesting against police brutality. And violence occurring at those protests must be recognized as having outside agitators intent on derailing the peaceful protest.

The right wing protestors at the capitol were trying to overturn the results of the democratic process, and were prepared to do so by force.

There's a difference there.

I don’t see how this can be dismissed as “whataboutism” to discuss examples of how the specific policy under discussion should impact different types of speech.

It’s literally the topic of discussion. You could say, two sides of the same coin, but it’s not even really that.

Where do you draw the line for violence and inciteful speech? If you’re willing the draw a different line depending on the policy goals of the person speaking, then you’re taking a political position not a moral one.

What do you do when people simply want to spew emotional tirades and mindlessly copy memes, and won't argue in good or any faith? What is that worth really?

That's their right to spew whatever they want. Just because it's worthless doesn't mean we should stop it. I personally think every single conversation in Twitter is absolutely worthless, maybe even has negative value. Does that give me the right to shut down Twitter? No. I value free speech so if people want to waste their time spewing nonsense, that is their right.

I think this point of view neglects the emergent properties of a society where millions of people can spew nonsense all at once, at the speed of light, using AI assisted audience targeting. Crackpots and liars have existed since the beginning of time but never before has a technology been designed to so readily amplify and reenforce their nonsense. Never before has a technology been so adept at hiding from you that the speaker is a crackpot or liar.

I think the issue is rather the visibility of the nonsense, as a global species we are still adapting to this new communication medium

This is because we use 'votes' and 'likes' along with non-transparent algorithms to amplify certain voices over other.

Nothing to do with the medium, but how we structure social media.

It’s not even just the visibility, it’s the direct harm the actions of these people cause. Whether it’s to their own personal relationships or nation states. QAnon should make a lot of people nervous about the state of unfettered free speech and the idea that the counter to bad ideas is more speech.

"At the speed of light" isn't the problem. We also used to communicate at the speed of light through MySpace, text messages, and so on without these specific problems.

No, it's twitter's right to carry it or not. AFAICT there's no right to tweet.

You bring up a good point. I don't engage with folks like that. I assume they're already indoctrinated or an influencer from outside of the country or a troll. If I'm feeling empathetic I might try to appeal to the human in them.

Edit: If you're asking me as if I were the host of the free speech platform. I guess I would allow everything except anything that violated criminal law. And would keep a law firm on retainer to field complaints and give the final say to our legal department. It's a tough question.

It doesn't matter who you engage with.

If 10% of Americans are convinced that QAnon is behind the scenes running the show, and they believe that, and act on it in a variety of ways, then it's a huge problem.

I suggest with the election, COVID and QAnon together we are probably already feeling the results of mass misinformation.

It's an ugly problem because none of us really want to suppress people for saying something not technically true. I mean, who doesn't like a good alien conspiracy theory? Until it gets out of hand ...

QAnon is as successful as it is because it is tapping into the cognitive dissonance created by things like federal mishandling of the Epstein case (slow walking allegations made since the 90s, the 2007 sweetheart deal which granted immunity to any unnamed co-conspirators, not having raided Epstein's New Mexico ranch to this day, etc), as well as the fact that wealthy and powerful elites continued to associate with him long past the point his predations had become an open secret, and they have suffered no professional or legal repercussions whatsoever.

The mainstream media says "he killed himself and was a one-off and all these rich people just wanted to solicit charitable donations and there's nothing more to see here," and anyone with two skeptical brain cells to rub together can see that's a lie and (if they are actually moved by the horrendous circumstances of the Epstein case to find out the truth) they go searching for alternative sources of information, at which point they're often easy game for disinfo merchants of various stripes who gain a foothold simply by not insisting they're crazy for even asking the questions in the first place.

The insistence that this is purely a problem of "mass misinformation" seems almost belligerently blinkered to the broader context and reasons why our society's institutions have lost credibility and trust.

It's as successful as it is because it is KNOWINGLY tapping into the cognitive dissonance, for the purpose of inciting domestic terrorism and the collapse of Western society.

Basically, look at the things you cited as the reason such an attack could be effective, even unanswerable. If the rich people, etc etc, behaved better and weren't awful, it would be a lot harder to mount such an attack. But it was made easy to do, and for that reason the whole 'freedom of speech' thing is nothing more than an attack vector at this point. We've lost that. There is no way it's sustainable the way some people would like it to be sustainable. There are powerful interests, state actors, weaponizing every little shred of freedom to destroy Western society, and I don't see any good answers at this point.

It was a weakness. We could have freedom of speech as long as it wasn't being weaponized on a massive scale against us. We could have freedom of speech so long as massive calculated lying wasn't a primary tactic, so long as people could be taken at face value. That's simply not true anymore.

The Epstein case and QAnon are separate things. If QAnon decides to include Epstein as a part of their fiction, that doesn't make QAnon real.

My suspicion is that QAnon is an alternative reality game created by imageboard trolls. But then foreign adversaries saw in it a potential to subvert the US and they decided to amplify it as much as they could. This suspicion is not based on any hard evidence, but I think it is plausible.

Foreign adversaries from troll farms spend their entire day finding ways to cause harm and troll farms are a cheap way to inflict that harm. Unlike the cold war era, they don't have to pay operatives to travel to the US, they just need social network accounts. Remember when Russia interfered with the US election by buying ads in social networks? Those ads are available here:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/05/10/thousands-rus...

All these ads have the objective of amplifying any narrative that is against the best interest of the US. Make everyone angry, make people fight each other, cause economic harm, amplify dissent, diminish governance. And everyone is falling for it, again:

- Foreing trolls amplifying antivaxxers and antimaskers have the objective to make everyone sick and stretch lockdowns forever so that the US economy is ruined.

- Foreign trolls amplifying racists and race baiters have the objective of divide the US into groups and make them fight each other, as well as diminishing trust in the government.

- Foreign trolls amplifying anti-science discourse also have the objective of make people skeptical about science, drive people away from science, with the added bonus of making people fight each other, incentivize pollution, demoralize the population, etc.

However, those foreign adversaries could not be successful if it wasn't for one person: Trump. Foreign adversaries love Trump because he is the person that promotes division and infighting. Trump denies climate change. Trump said vaccines cause autism. Trump said you should inject yourself with bleach, and downplayed the coronavirus. Trump uses racist dog whistling... Trump is the wet dream of any foreign intelligence service, he did more harm to the US than the KGB could ever do throughout the entire cold war. If you voted for Trump, you are not a patriot, you're a giant chump... and if you cannot see it now, there's no hope for you.

QAnon has almost nothing to do with Epstein.

QAnon exists because 10-25% of the US population will believe total fantasies, especially those that are biased towards their worldview.

It's about 55% in uncivilized countries.

We are animals, trying to be human. Most of us aren't fully with it. Rationality is a new concept.

In the world of micro-aggressions, there needs to be a very strict definition of what we mean by violence.

I hope this is sarcasm...

In the United States we’ve always understood free speech does has its limits: slander/libel, “yelling fire in a crowded theater” — I feel like calls for violence and genocide already fall well out of our boundaries of free speech. But it’s always been understood political speech is unrestricted.

I do think people have cynically exploited this understanding by trying to classify calls for political violence as merely political speech, arguing that as long as the calls for violence have a political angle it’s free speech. And arguing moderating such things censorship.

I'm not convinced calling someone the n-word is the same as threatening his life for that reason.

So MAGA fan would be the same as the n-word, because I can tell my Bubba hey what are we going to do about the MAGA fanboy over there.

Is that threatening his life too?