Re:Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cl...
by gpm on Monday January 18, 2021 @05:39PM
(#25827572)
I think "free speech" is not quite as simple as a single concept.
Despite how it's often portrayed, Parler was not hosting uncensored speech, on the contrary it was a heavily moderated platform controlling for a certain set of speech.
I'm not convinced that this example (really any of the examples of speech surrounding Trump) are actually representative samples of what private communications products not subject to control by any central authority looks like.
There is still someone that was exercising free uncensored speech here (under the american 1st amendment definition) - but that person is the person running Parler, and not the users. What we observed with this deplatforming was one set of platforms with relatively little censorship (though a fair bit in absolute terms) stop supporting a sub-platform with a lot of censorship.
One lesson I would take away from this is that enabling platforms on which censorship is performed by a third party not under your control can be scary. The amount of damage bad-faith moderation/censorship can do was surprisingly (to me) high - I would have thought people would notice and reject it more strongly. Uncensored platforms for speech might also be scary, but I don't think Trump gives much evidence for it (sites like 4-chan might, I don't really know).
Another lesson I would take away from reddit's handling of Trump (in general) is that manipulation of algorithmic content discovery can do a lot of damage. There we saw that happening with things like bots upvoting (as well as bad faith moderation), but I think the pattern is more general. If you can choose what people are looking at, especially if you can convince them that it's "organic content", it can do a lot of damage. I'm told that similar issues with Facebook/Youtube content discovery existed as well, but I don't have first hand experience with those issues (youtube tends to recommend random technical and rocket related content to me, and I barely use facebook).
Whether those lessons are "anti free speech" - well that's up to your definition of free speech. I don't think they are under my definition, but I think they are under the US constitutions definition.
Despite how it's often portrayed, Parler was not hosting uncensored speech, on the contrary it was a heavily moderated platform controlling for a certain set of speech.
I'm not convinced that this example (really any of the examples of speech surrounding Trump) are actually representative samples of what private communications products not subject to control by any central authority looks like.
There is still someone that was exercising free uncensored speech here (under the american 1st amendment definition) - but that person is the person running Parler, and not the users. What we observed with this deplatforming was one set of platforms with relatively little censorship (though a fair bit in absolute terms) stop supporting a sub-platform with a lot of censorship.
One lesson I would take away from this is that enabling platforms on which censorship is performed by a third party not under your control can be scary. The amount of damage bad-faith moderation/censorship can do was surprisingly (to me) high - I would have thought people would notice and reject it more strongly. Uncensored platforms for speech might also be scary, but I don't think Trump gives much evidence for it (sites like 4-chan might, I don't really know).
Another lesson I would take away from reddit's handling of Trump (in general) is that manipulation of algorithmic content discovery can do a lot of damage. There we saw that happening with things like bots upvoting (as well as bad faith moderation), but I think the pattern is more general. If you can choose what people are looking at, especially if you can convince them that it's "organic content", it can do a lot of damage. I'm told that similar issues with Facebook/Youtube content discovery existed as well, but I don't have first hand experience with those issues (youtube tends to recommend random technical and rocket related content to me, and I barely use facebook).
Whether those lessons are "anti free speech" - well that's up to your definition of free speech. I don't think they are under my definition, but I think they are under the US constitutions definition.