So... people who believe in “free speech” as a moral value will disagree with your first paragraph — and hence, your entire post.
You assume your conclusion, so your argument fails to be persuasive.
“I disagree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to say it” is a maxim of free speech — and a bold declaration of the exact opposite of your message: if we want a free society, we have a moral duty to aid the freedom of others — not suppress it.
However, these modifications doesn’t work the same way: “to defend your right to be trending on Twitter” or “to defend your right to be on CNN tonight.” These things are still forms of speech, of course, and yet their exercise does in fact preclude others from likewise exercising. It doesn’t make sense do defend every person’s right to be trending on Twitter.
Isn't "trending on Twitter" a popularity contest? As in something's "trending" because more people (users, as opposed to Twitter the company or their moderators) have chosen to interact with that tweet instead of some other?
I think that "to defend your right to say it", in this context, does mean "to defend your right to be trending on Twitter". What I understand by that is that anyone has a right to not be artificially prevented from trending, such as hiding the tweet from other users (censorship) or "not counting the votes" correctly which won't have a tweet "trend" even though it's the most retweeted / replied to.
As I've said on another comment on this thread, my tweet is my speech, it's not Twitter's. And if the "trending" is the effect of the users' actions, having a tweet become trending is the collective speech of the users, not twitter's.
It's pretty much the same thing with CNN. Having someone on "cnn tonight" is CNN's speech. They choose to have person A instead of person B.
Twitter removing a tweet or otherwise preventing it from trending is like some external entity – e.g. the cable company – preventing CNN from having person C on the show because they don't agree with person C's speech.
In my opinion, in this scenario, CNN is like the Twitter user, not like Twitter the company. Just because they have some third party on the show doesn't make CNN any less of a publisher of speech. Just as if a Twitter user chooses to quote someone instead of someone else (as opposed to twitting an "original thought" or "own opinion").
But on the contrary, Twitter’s trending feature (and indeed all distribution on all public social media networks I’m aware of) is active promotion of speech. Humans at Twitter are deciding which tweets trend, regardless of whether they’re doing so manually or using algorithms (which they designed) to automate the process.
Even a very simple change to a very simple ranking algorithm, like changing the relative value of likes/comments/etc. or the time decay of whatever values are being counted, can significantly change which content gets promoted. These are choices that humans make at Twitter.
That's partly true. I think it's "unfair", or rather disingenuous, only when the company claims there's no manual intervention. I wouldn't really have an issue with a company saying "we're looking to promote this or that speech". I think no one really takes issue that Democrat or Republican conventions don't have speakers from the opposing parties. They are clearly labeled "Democrat", so people expect this going in.
I think the crux of the matter is these platforms pretend being an unbiased space for people to communicate, when they clearly aren't. Or rather, they aren't as open anymore. Once people flocked to them, and they became a common place of exchange, the rules drastically changed.
Literally everything on Twitter is Twitter's property other then where governed by intellectual property law agreements and even then it's still someone's private property they have a right to control!
A country club being very popular doesn't suddenly make it a public space.
I'm not a Twitter user so don't know exactly, but from what I see being discussed, it seems to me that there used to be more tolerance towards certain groups (apparently right wing, but probably others, too). But maybe that's just it, the rules themselves haven't changed, they're just more strictly enforced now (I actually don't know).
I'd say that what they're doing is obviously not illegal, or else we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because it would be much more clear-cut.
However, it's more of a "moral" issue, for lack of a better term. They advertised the platform as a medium for everybody to exchange. Now that a lot of people have gone there because of this advertisement, it has become more or less a public utility.
Now, again, I'm not saying what they're doing is illegal, they are not legally a utility, there are other avenues for people to communicate, etc.
> A country club being very popular doesn't suddenly make it a public space.
While I think you're right in the general case, I can't help but think there's a question of measure involved.
The country club will advertise exclusivity. Even if it's just for pose, and it's actually easy to gain membership, it will actively not pretend it's open to any and everybody. Also, it will require people be somewhat close geographically and will have a fairly limited reach. If the club said "we're open to everybody, we want to encourage public conversation" [0], then I'd consider it the same way I do Twitter.
Contrast this with Twitter, which explicitly advertises its openness.[0] And when you can subscribe to Twitter just by having a random browser and an internet connection, wherever you are in the world, and when pretty much anyone and their grandmother are using it to communicate, and when there's an assumption (be it misguided!) that Twitter is a public space, I think it's at least worth it to consider the question.
The answer may well be a firm "no", but it may also be "woops, this is actually something new, which we hadn't considered in our (quite old) laws. Maybe we should do something about it".
To sum it all up, I think Twitter, FB, etc are all a fairly new kind of "thing". They are private entities in that they are funded, operated, etc by a private company and with that private company's goal in mind. But their operations are clearly designed to attract the most people who then communicate on their platform.
Just as we regulated what can and can't be done by a telephone company or an electrical company (all private entities!) when those came about, I wouldn't be shocked for there to be some kind of specific regulation for those platforms, more than "just don't break any laws". It seems pretty obvious to me that trying to apply pre-existing models to them doesn't work all that well.
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[0] From about.twitter.com, emphasis mine:
> We serve the * public* conversation. That’s why it matters to us that people have a free and safe space to talk.
> We believe real change starts with conversation. Here, your voice matters. Come as you are and together we’ll do what’s right (not what’s easy) to serve the public conversation.
There are no laws governing how a corporation defines it's "values" as an entity and it certainly has no need to follow that - freedom of speech is my freedom to lie through my teeth publicly about everything I believe, for example.
So again: Twitter has always been able to talk about how it's for things, but at the end of the day it's Twitter's garden and we all play in it.
I mean if for you the scale simply doesn't come into equation, then yeah, I guess Twitter, serving millions and millions of users and being used for communication by many public figures is exactly the same thing as a random server in someone's basement serving 100 people talking about some niche subject.
Of course there has to be a line drawn to distinguish the two, and I don't know where it should be drawn. I think it's a tough call.
But then, in the case of FB and Twitter, maybe this has "run out of hand"? Maybe those platforms became public forum in spite of the companies' wishes? Let's assume that's the case. Does that mean we shouldn't do anything about it?
> There are no laws governing how a corporation defines it's "values" as an entity and it certainly has no need to follow that - freedom of speech is my freedom to lie through my teeth publicly about everything I believe, for example.
It is, but your doing that exposes you to my freedom of calling you a liar. Hence, the "moral" component I talked about in my previous post.
I think where the government should come in is when you're trying to get everyone inside your private space, to use it as a general communications medium (as opposed to niche, interest-based), and then you cut off those you don't like for whatever reason. Would you be OK with a utility, say the electric company, denying you service because they don't agree with your – non-illegal! – use of their electricity? If not, why's Twitter different?
You're demanding the government step in and nationalize a business which in no way has a monopoly on a concept which has never been protected - the right to a broadcast platform.
Right up until it runs into their 'trending blacklist'. An admin tool that the existence of was leaked a while back.
Actually, it would be illegal to ban people based on politics (as Twitter does) where I live (Seattle), as doing so violates rules for public accommodations which require the owner (a private company) not to discriminate based on political ideology. Rules for private establishments to enforce public access and equality are normal.
Whether or not you think it makes sense to defend the right to be trending on Twitter depends on whether you view it like the bar (mic night open to all) or like CNN (editorial control).
Of course, if Twitter is like CNN and not the bar, they should lose copyright protections — those aren’t meant for edited anthologies (like CNN).
What? No, you absolutely do not have to correct false statements you make to be a journalist. Reputable publications post retractions and clarifications because that is how they maintain their reputation, but it is in no way a requirement.
The FCC is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press. It is, however, illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news, and the FCC may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior from persons with direct personal knowledge.
This is also besides slander and libel, lying about an individual or organization.
What particular laws are you referring to?
> This is also besides slander and libel, lying about an individual or organization.
Sure, you can get sued for that. But getting sued for libel or defamation doesn't mean you can't be a journalist anymore. A journalist who loses a libel lawsuit can keep writing even if they've been sued into oblivion.
The Nazis are perfectly capable of building their own platform.
Free expression is a moral right.
And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them?
> Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond.
How did we turn so quickly to this view? When I was growing up, everyone would have blanched at the suggestion that attempting to "silence others" is a-okay. It wasn't that it was illegal. It was that it was a strategy that would only occur to weak, ineffectual people who were afraid to argue on the merits.
> Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.
By what principle is it wrong for the government to censor? Once you've answered that, please explain how that principle magically stops at the government.
> Free expression is a moral right.
> And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them? ...
> By what principle is it wrong for the government to censor? Once you've answered that, please explain how that principle magically stops at the government.
Yeah, it's a moral right, but its implementation is more complicated than a lot of people want to acknowledge.
Is it censorship for you to refuse to wear a shirt that I give you with some slogan I agree with? No. Is it censorship for you to take down a yard sign with that slogan that I placed in your front yard? No. What if you allowed someone else to put up a yard sign that you agree with? Still no.
If literally one guy owns all the land in the world, is it censorship for him to control what signs get put up? Almost certainly.
No one's going to be able to give you a pithy principle that fits in an internet comment that tells you where the censorship/not censorship line is, given the huge grey areas between those extremes. This is an area where lots of interests need to be balanced, and where reasonable people can disagree.
Well, I'm curious, what do you think it is?
If I run a forum or a blog, should I have to allow any comment, to be morally in the right? Let's say I run a forum dedicated to discussing Christianity, and some person keeps posting arguments that God isn't real, or posts pictures of aborted fetuses, in every thread on my forum. If free expression is a moral right, is it immoral for me to remove such content from any thread? Even threads about daily worship or about lost loved ones?
And good health of the society requires free exchange of ideas and freedom to debate this ideas without fear of being persecuted and punished. Yes, even if you're end up being wrong - in fact, freedom to be wrong (excluding, of course, recognition that you're wrong) is vital to any proper debate, since if being wrong implies one's destruction and punishment, no serious and honest debate is possible, and no serious and honest truth-seeking through free exchange of ideas is possible either. You'd either fear to express your ideas, if you're powerless, or use your power to suppress other's ideas and punish them, if you're powerful - and that would have no relation with whose ideas are better.
Only when the exchange of ideas are free, and only when ideas can participate in this competition without prior approval by powerful incumbents, any healthy democratic society is possible.
And yes, whoever in power in such society, which now includes the big tech leadership, have moral if not legal responsibility for it - a responsibility that they are not only neglecting but blatantly violating right now. Censorship by powerful monopolies is as wrong as censorship by the government, and we need to stop hiding behind this stupid idea "but it's not government, so we can ignore it".
When people openly promote and even plan violent attacks against others big tech should just leave things be?
However, I think that in the case of the monopolies being discussed here, it's different. The issue is that they "enable" speech in a generic way. They don't enable this or that speech in particular. They also don't force A to listen to B's speech. If anything, they do the complete opposite, what with the whole "echo chamber" situation. I think this is the whole meat of the "platform vs publisher" debate.
A newspaper or other media have to actively "enable" something. When they publish speech A, they choose to not publish speech B. It's often an "either / or", at least for questions of space. They produce whatever speech they print / show. It's theirs, it's their point of view.
However, Facebook, Twitter and other similar companies only put out a tool. This tool is then used by this or that person to speak this or that argument. FB doesn't actively and directly help speaker A anymore that they help speaker B. Also, as an FB user, no one forces you to listen to B's speech if you don't care for it. Your right not to listen to speech you disagree with is not infringed. If I publish a story on FB, it's my story, my speech, not Facebook's. Just as if I shout in the town square it's my speech that I shout. It doesn't become the mayor's speech because it's in his town or the square's architect because he built it in such a way that my voice can physically be heard.
If you consider that FB has some right to prevent people from speaking "wrong" views, then why stop at FB? We should come up with ways to help other companies to prevent their product from being used for speech and other actions they don't agree with. Like the power company. Maybe they don't like their electricity being used to spread some "wrong" ideas. I'm pretty sure the local bakery isn't all that happy either to support some X-ist fanatic.
Where do we draw the line?
Facebook actually deliberately manipulates people's feeds in order to promote content that will increase engagement. Twitter does the same by default.
> Just as if I shout in the town square it's my speech that I shout. It doesn't become the mayor's speech because it's in his town or the square's architect because he built it in such a way that my voice can physically be heard.
The town square is public property. If you instead decide to step inside a private business and shout they can have you removed from the premises.
> Like the power company. Maybe they don't like their electricity being used to spread some "wrong" ideas.
Electricity is regulated as a utility and as such wouldn't be allowed to cut service for that reason. A bakery could refuse to bake cakes with swatiskas on them if they so chose for example. Where the private business's choices on refusing service runs into trouble is when they refuse service based on a customer's race/ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.
The two major credit card companies that dominated could have canceled anti-war "haters'" credit cards in the name of patriotic support of the just cause, banks closed their checking accounts, the major airlines refused to fly them, and so on, and those on the left with your principled commitment to the right of "monopolies and near monopolies" to enforce their political preferences would have had no major objections--as long as it really is a general principle and not just a pretense.
Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others
And yet I suspect that this support for the "freedom" of the most powerful to silence, control, and enforce their will is not really the general, politically neutral commitment to everyone's freedom of choice that it pretends to be.
Of course, in reality phone company's exchange the right to monitor what you say for common carrier status which makes them legally immune to the fact you are saying it, and credit card companies do in fact ditch whoever they want because they have no such burden.
The solution in one case is obvious (protect net neutrality) and the solution in the other case would line up with the calls for US Post to be extended to offering basic banking services to ensure an appropriate floor on the transaction market, and as a government entity would have to allow everyone to transact.
It's not clear to me what you seem to think Google, Twitter or Facebook should get in response for becoming a "public plaza" style arrangement which would be detrimental to their business model and wouldn't destroy the rest of the internet in the process? After all is a DDOS attack also free speech? A botnet? What are we going to obligate them to carry and on what basis?
I think there is such a thing as critical communication infrastructure, and even if it run by private companies, it should be protected from censorship. Whether all of FB or just private messaging fall under this is more debatable, but there have to be clear limits on what a company that facilitates communication between 1 billion people can do.
Critical infrastructure must be legally protected from censorship and (private, mandate-less) eavesdropping. Whether it is run by a monopoly or many small companies is immaterial.
No one has been prevented from buying their own internet connection or DNS names and running their own site over the "common carrier" status internet backbone infrastructure.
It's just a lot less useful when your goal is radicalization and you need to hit the widest possible audience to get conversions.
What if Amazon will refuse to do with business with people who support unions next? It no longer seems impossible to ke.
Amazon is not a common carrier: the cloud, other people's data centers, have no legal requirement to be neutral about what runs on them (and it's not even clear how this would work given the difference between compute and communications).
Secondly, there are limits even in current law on what grounds a business can refuse to do business. For example, Amazon could not refuse to do business with someone because of their skin color, or because of their religion. Extending this in more of a free speech direction (where companies could be prevented from refusing to do business with organizations whose message they do not condone) is not unthinkable (though there are pros and cons).
Well said.
What we have today is an oligopoly on speech by a small handful of ideologically identical technotyrants who have managed to circumvent the first amendment without ever having had to so much as introduce a bill to Congress.
If this keeps going it isn't going to end well.
Maybe there is a different set of regulations that could be applied to those platforms beyond something like Section 230. But the side effects of that could cause serious damage to those companies, depending on how the regulation was crafted.
This doesn't work if every platform - whether they have market power or not - are compelled to censor by mobs. Most recently, Glenn Greenwald wrote about journalists trying to get Substack to censor its authors [1]. Well before, Signal employees tried to make their company have an anti-extremism policy [2].
The fact of the matter is, most people don't know enough about censorship to fight against it, and so small groups of dedicated people can create enough of an uproar in their circles about something to make it untenable for any major platform to speak about it, simply because those platforms now have to contend with a vocal minority pushing a narrative. This has been a very common tactic in India, where I'm from: interest groups will object to a movie or a book loudly enough to de-facto, and even sometimes, de-jure censor it. Most recently, a Netflix series lead to a controversy as it dared to show teenagers doing drugs. This lead to Netflix being notified buy the Indian equivalent of the CPS, and was directly caused by people complaining about the show on Twitter. [3]
There is a pardadox of tolerance with respect to free speech. We cannot expect to maintain freedom of expression if we treat everyone who actually expresses themselves as a sinner.
1: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-start-demanding...
2: https://www.theverge.com/22249391/signal-app-abuse-messaging...
3: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/mar/11/netflix-...
In every thread about free speech, the people against it cite the 'paradox of tolerance'. Or half of it anyway. They invariably leave off the back half, which is pointedly anti-censorship:
>Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — *In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.* But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
-Karl Popper
I don't disagree with this as stated. But the reality is different. When the tech-oligopoly has a mono-ideology and they all censor the same people, and then pull the rug (hosting) out from under competing platforms, and then rip up the signs (dns) pointing to alternatives, and then siege the opposing cities (payment processors ban them) it becomes a much worse problem. That moves from the theoretical to the practical.
> Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.
Yes, because it's not just websites. It's infrastructure and finance colluding with the presentation layer. At what point do we all agree that it's a problem, and admit that the powerful aren't always right?
This succinctly expresses a feeling of mine I hadn't been able to put into words so beautifully. Thank you!
The point you are making is just not relevant. Not even tenuously.
The urge to preempt what an audience hears is suspect.
Furthermore, your calculation of someone's reach isn't entitled to be the standard of how reduction of reach is to be applied.
In fact, you don't even own the audience or the platform that you claim you have the right to deny others from using.
You have absolutely no say, sway, or stake in anything you are discussing. You're just hiding behind a Google lobbyist's buzzphrase and pretending you are targeting people you don't like.
I think there actually is such a moral obligation.
But a warning to those who downvote: It's a trap! By doing so you're agreeing with me.
It is 100% infeasible for me to contract any of the canon taught in my office: diversity is a top priority, women are oppressed, etc. I don’t even disagree with all of it, but I do know that I don’t have the option of doing anything but earnestly nodding my head at the diversity events.
Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond.
If there is some notion that we have no choice but to enable other's views then our own views become secondary to them. We no longer have absolute control over expressing the views we agree or disagree with.
Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.