I’ll be the first outside of Twitter to defend Twitter’s free speech and private property interests, but that doesn’t mean free speech isn’t under attack by governments and the politically ambitious.

Twitter wants to kick you off because Twitter wants to kick you off? Fine.

But Twitter does kick you off because the Government, any government because screw authoritarianism wherever it lives, asked them to? Then there’s a problem.

Free speech is very much under attack.

If the platforms we use to communicate -- and which generally allow any communication, no matter how poignant or inane -- allow some speech, but not others, we have a problem.

Twitter is compelled to take down some messages. Facebook temporarily hellbans users for crossing over lines. I saw an article yesterday saying the US wants to filter SMS messages. E-mail seems safe at present, but that could change suddenly. Governments seem to be enacting hate-speech laws disallowing saying certain things, and that's double-plus good only if you agree with the power of the day.

How, pray tell, do we have speech of any consequence, if the methods we regularly use to speak are denied to us?

Here's the SMS thing for the curious

> Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-vaccina...

That seems to be about stopping spamming over SMS. AFAIK censoring SMS between unknown individuals isn't even technically possible.

SMS is unencrypted and routes through the carrier's hardware. I can't see that much difficulty in, say, implementing a list of phrases or URLs which result in the message being dropped, given carrier cooperation. (The carrier cooperates or else they end up called into Congress over and over to testify about such-and-such)

Standards don't provide such filtering functionality and telcos operate their equipment as a black box, so they don't have ability to implement additional features, especially when there is no business case for that and it could open them to new liability (undermining safe harbor arrangement).

You’re right I forgot communication didn’t exist before Twitter and iPhones. How silly of me.

God said let their be Steve Jobs and suddenly human communication…

Privately owned infrastructure was never for you. It’s for the elites to corral you all along.

Believing Twitter was ever on your side was your first mistake. They were Walmart; moved in with low prices now they’re raising them.

It’s an emotional con to keep you focused on a political narrative (American dream of free enterprise; for some, toil for depreciated wages for the majority) and not exploring alternative communication pipelines.

How free is our speech if it’s constrained to Wall Street, tech companies, SV, and DC? You walked right into constrained speech in order to fit in.

Certainly it is true that speech existed before the Twitter and the iPhone, and continues to today.

I (theoretically) could start my own newspaper and spread my opinion around, or go house to house and tell people there will be a meeting on a specific topic. With enough work and funds, I may be able to air my own television or radio station. I could do a letter writing campaign and spam everyone in a specific area code. I could scrawl graffiti on buildings to try to spread word for my cause.

All of these are good things, but it seems silly to me to be allowed to speak, but not be allowed to speak where people are listening.

And, I fear, all of these could be negated, too.

Imagine, for example:

- you are free to speak, but your newspaper is bad for the environment and must not be allowed (while others newspapers serve the public interest and are fine)

- you are allowed to transmit your TV or Radio program, but your license will be revoked if you talk about certain subjects.

- you can paint messages all you like, so long as they are inside your house

- you standing in the public square on your soapbox violates my safe space and must be disallowed

- you can speak freely, but only inside your own head (or far away from civilization), for your every word is being tracked and you'll be cut off from the economy if you don't say the right things

Fortunately, I don't think we're very far towards any of those dystopian ideas.

Truly, Twitter is not required to let me tweet, nor is YouTube mandated to let me post a video, but given the monopoly on attention they have within their spheres, if I can't speak there, my ability to speak freely has definitely been curtailed.

These SV companies amassed a level of power over the public square that nobody saw coming. Especially during a time of lockdowns the only speech that American citizens had with their other citizens was via 3 platforms, all of which were stiffling free speech, even to the point of banning some CSPAN coverage of a politician that represents them.

That’s a blatant lie, or more generously, harmfully ignorant perspective.

Academics, thinkers, have been warning about private power eroding public for decades.

Oh sure SV specifically is new NOW, but they haven’t done anything Walmart didn’t do to little communities decades before, or ATT hasn’t done; co-opt control of public government for private gain.

I’m done with this community. It’s a bunch of ostriches who are equivocating their failures as political agents; don’t login. They lose their power.

Stop living in the bespoke simulation in your head.

And newspapers also, long before Walmart was choosing which books or magazines or music to stock. But Walmart has never had direct control over the public square at the incredibly grand scale that Twitter, Facebook and Youtube do, that's the point.

Take a look at Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center for an interesting case that set precedent in California. The CA courts have determined that certain areas of shopping malls are designed and used for public congregation – the modern equivalent of the town square – and should thus be treated as public for a for purposes of First Amendment analysis, which means that a much higher standard applies to speech restrictions in these areas.

This standard could be applied to privately-owned online "town squares" in future decisions.

This would only apply to local town squares.

You can not reasonably argue that a worldwide forum is a US town square.

>"No one has ever had a “freedom to demand others broadcast my personal speech at great technical and financial cost”."

Twitter's business model is to get as many users as they can and to have them tweet prolifically. The financial impact is minimal. Scale matters. We aren't talking about coercing a cakeshop. Twitter is a de-facto public square and looks a lot more like infrastructure than a publisher.

>"It’s authoritarian af to believe everyone else is your tape recorder."

Why are we so concerned about being 'authoritarian' against a massive corporation when said corporation is making editorial decisions and silencing journalists and citizens? We should not be putting the 'rights' of a corporation above the liberties of human beings.

People are down voting you, I suspect, because you appear to be vigorously defending the ability of corporations to infringe on personal liberties while appearing to champion liberty itself.

Twitter is a private organization that owns the physical infrastructure it’s managing.

When did we switch from capitalism to socialism? You own their infra and agency now?

The slippery slope is every pleb thinking they’re David going against Goliath. Really you’re all just berating and competing with your neighbors. Turning them into ephemeral ideas all living behind a blue bird logo.

The masses cheered this all on ignoring the political reality they exist in. The chemical bath washing through your brain isn’t the same as others.

>"When did we switch from capitalism to socialism? You own their infra and agency now?"

This is a non-sequitur. Organizations censoring speech can happen under any kind of economic system.

As a thought experiment, how would you react if Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, collectively decided that Libertarians were a problematic and dangerous threat? And, these companies decided to de-platform every libertarian account they detected in the name of public safety. Would you champion such behavior? Would principles dictate that you defend their right to suppress you? I know this seems like a bizarre thought experiment, but I genuinely think the Libertarian crowd gladly defends their own censorship.

Ultimately, which do you value more, Capitalism or Liberty?

It's one thing when it's removed for violating TOS or when masses report it. It's entirely another when a government in power uses their clout to demand that journalists and advocates are silenced. That is the very definition of attacking free speech.

The failure to see that is why you're being downvoted.

Or you’re existing under a chemical delusion that two different things are occurring.

It’s humans who don’t want to perpetuate other humans speech.

I’m not going to live in your unscientific epistemology about nation states being worse than corporations; both enabled by humans. It’s all just humans.

I don’t have to important other flimsy humans who aren’t of godly abilities. Tailoring my speech to keep my neighbors happy, seeing the nuance their way, is a direct attack on my speech.

> I’m not going to live in your unscientific epistemology about nation states being worse than corporations; both enabled by humans. It’s all just humans.

There is an honest distinction you’re missing with your reductive view of States and corporations: States have the power to detain, arrest, try, judge, imprison and kill you.

Tell me when Twitter throws a flashbang into anybody's home in a no knock raid at 3AM. The monopoly of legitimate violence is a huge difference.

> No one has ever had a “freedom to demand others broadcast my personal speech at great technical and financial cost”.

Common carriers cannot moderate message contents or discriminate based on senders/receivers. Social media now does both, but they could arguably be regulated under common carrier laws. They are of course not obligated to do this for free, but that's their business model.

We had a recent discussion on this from a paper written by a legal scholar, so I suggest you check it out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27762145

Uh, have you heard of the phone company?

social media playbook 1) create company based on free exchange of ideas 2) get lots of users, crush all competitors with network effects 3) oh no some ideas are icky! they do harm to my Black body or are transmysoginist or whatever. We must shut these ideas down! 5) restrict controversial opinions to just the left wing ones 6) make asinine point about private platforms

Human playbook: put social agency into enabling invasive private and public power, complain about lack of free agency, reboot social contract.

If you all don’t like it put your agency into dismantling these power structures rather than logging in to the matrix they erect