You mean a society where the most charismatic/popular members get the attention of the masses, mostly by telling them what they want to hear? Yes, I think I'm prepared to live in such a society.
I think, in your attempt at making free speech look undesirable with your mention of "amplification", you forgot that this amplification is for everyone, including you and those who agree with you.
What Facebook and Twitter are doing is providing a product that amplifies and places speech in front of particular eyeballs and ears. There are many, many issues with what Facebook and Twitter are doing, but they're all unrelated to the legally-protected constitutional free speech.
Some people have argued that "posting on Twitter/FB may as well be considered protected speech, since society depends on it so much" which is an interesting concept for sure, but has no basis in law yet.
Finally, to your last point, the amplification is not for everyone, and that's at the core of why people hate these companies right now. Users are subjectively amplified or suppressed, or kicked off. And this unequal treatment of users is at the very core of their business model: they make money by selectively amplifying content.
The US Founders thought that people must have the ability to speak their mind, to discuss and challenge each others ideas. They thought this ability was so important they enshrined it in law.
public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation
Free speech doesn’t mean you’re protected to speak whatever you want in any setting. Speech is subject to private property and common sense. If you are profane on my property I’ll kick you out and ban you. That is NOT a violation of your free speech.
This seems to equate the ability to publish with a society that's filled with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence. Is it possible that society won't have any more or less falsehoods, more or less uncertainty, or more or less violence than a society in which you don't appoint some "knows better than the reader" censor to decide what people are allowed to see and read?
It seems insanely presumptuous to me that some censor at Facebook or Google won't turn into a violent maniac when they see the things you seem to propose that they censor, but the general, unwashed masses will. Give adults some credit.
We've had the church around spreading falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence for centuries, and the world is still here (and still improving). I don't think letting people publish whatever legal content they like is going to suddenly send our world to hell in a handbasket. The danger from uncensored publishing is overblown.
Not to mention the world is getting better only in a very narrow sense. Environmentally, we're entering a very dark period. The falsehoods surrounding climate change will cost us a great deal.
Those falsehoods comes mostly from old people watching fox news. Young people who grew up with mostly unfiltered communication on the internet are typically for doing something against climate change. So this only strengthens the point that free flow of information is more desirable than filtered communication.
People who want to manipulate the masses hates this though, so they try to make every argument they can that free flow of information is harmful and we need to stop it. Basically anyone with power have nothing to gain from you and me being able to freely communicate, so they want to reign that in as much as possible. I'm not sure why you want to make the rich and powerful even richer and even more powerful, but that is what you are arguing for.
It would be a horrible outcome if speech maximalism succeeded and prevented people from acting to protect their customers, property, society, etc., against destructive speech.
Of course, you can say "yeah but if you allow suppression of speech then it'll be used for evil" -- as in, Twitter can kick off whoever they want. But going as far as legally protecting any and all speech, in any situation and on any public or private property, is far more destructive in my opinion.
I think this is perhaps a straw man. Nobody is asking to protect unrestricted speech in all private venues.
Would it be so bad to make it illegal for large services that have private DMs to snoop/censor those, such as we do presently for large services that have private telephone calls?
The dichotomy isn't public/private. The phone company is private and they aren't allowed to tap your phone (unless they're doing it for the government), and they're not allowed to shut off your service because you called members of the "wrong" political party too often.
Your stance is super reasonable. But look around, many people in this conversation are effectively arguing in favor of totally, globally unrestricted speech, which I find extreme and untenable.
Do you think that if we somehow broke this monetization model, that companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google would cease to be the behemoths they are, and the amplification mechanism might go away?
If these platforms presented the content without interpreting and curating it for profit, they could at least take the stronger stance of being a platform instead of a speech curation/distribution/amplification system.
For example if Signal was externally pressured to take down speech based on its content, they would be like "We don't have that ability." But in the case of Twitter and FB, that ability and practice is at the very core of their business model.
The problem, IMO, is that most users don’t understand how social media works from a business perspective. Advertising companies put a lot of effort into not being known as advertising companies.
Another fun thought experiment: consider who runs political ads, especially local advertisers (highway billboards etc) and what speech they’re willing to accept. Consider Comcast / cable networks and what speech they’re willing to accept. Who are their customers, how are they making money, and how does that affect what speech they are willing to accept on their platforms.
That says a great deal doesn’t it? They are too ashamed and know it is an immoral business.
Yes, obviously. "But people may say false things on the internet" is not nearly as strong an argument as "you will be prevented from criticizing your government on the internet".
This is truly ironic given that exact abuse has been perpetrated by these tech companies in order to build their empires in the form of advertising and manipulating users on their platforms.
Also, your dismissal of humanism is appalling.
Neither side of this coin is a straight answer; you can easily poke holes in either by imagining the terrible consequences of the alternative. The answer IMO is people, groups, societies, should decide what's constructive and destructive and converge on a balance that works for them.
Your approach results in a star chamber of elites that make value judgments on what people can SAY, which directly impacts what they can DO. Society is limited to their judgment and belief system.
There are countries that exist today with this model, and it is not a pleasant existence to be a regular citizen in those countries especially for creative “weird” people who represent most of the major innovations in the world. Read history and see for yourself how this approach leads to poor outcomes for the majority. In fact, it is at the core of the founding of the United States itself.
One approach leads to a narrow, controlled, and directed society that is controlled by the elite; the other brings breadth and freedom to pursue crazy thoughts that can lead to major innovations.
You seem to be mixing up “free speech” in the constitution and the normal to and fro negotiations and tensions between people. In private life people need to be allowed to act against speech that they find harmful.
On a more detailed note, I draw a sharp line between normal speech and selectively amplified speech. Twitter and Facebook are in a bind because their business is to curate speech amplification in order to maximize exposure to ads. So if you ask “why did person X see post Y?” it’s because Twitter/FB decided to show Y to X. So they have automatically become at least partially responsible for the effect of that post.
So to me this Twitter/FB censorship fiasco is not about free speech censorship whatsoever. It’s about these companies being in the business of deciding who sees what, being externally pressured to do a better job.
It wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever to ask Twitter/FB to “stop censoring” while admitting that they should be allowed to curate feeds to maximize ad revenue.