We can likely reach pre-2016 levels of Internet freedom again. I'm not sure if Gab is a critical piece of that, but they seem to be doing mostly the right things right now (though I would like to see some sort of /r/all mechanism for popular activity, right now feeds appear to be completely self-curated).
Before the masses were corralled into walled gardens. If a free and open Internet was a threat to gatekeepers, walled gardens are the solution. You can say anything you want on their platforms, as long as it adheres to the party's content guidelines.
The gate-kept illusion of freedom is arguably more toxic, because it normalizes the curated garden of propagandized views.
Yes, you have more options than broadcast TV, newspapers and radio. Especially if you espouse mainstream views which one would easily find on those sources.
There was a time before eternal September, let's call it August. Google searches were populated by independently run forums and websites. Tech giants were not bent on imposing their political will. Individuals were getting the word out about Hans Blix on independent sites. One can only wonder how Twitter or Facebook's fact checkers would handle that today.
"Experts confirm Saddam has WMD"
In the august days before fact checkers and Facebook, users could still obtain free hosting. They could even post on forums without learning the basics of HTML. That's when the history of the Internet turned.
What some people don’t seem to understand about the first amendment is that while the government is obligated to not stop you from publishing, no private party is obligated to assist you.
What some people don't understand about freespeech is that it's a bigger principle then just the 1st amendment protections. Most of us are not arguing that companies ARE violating the law/first amendment. only that political/religious speech restrictions by large gate keeping institutions can have similar negative effects on society. We are arguing for ether more protections to be put in place or even for social change where instead of demanding companies censor these who disagree with us we demand they allow them to speak, EVENTHOUGH we disagree with them.
> Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
> Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
> There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
~ John Stuart Mill, On Library (1859)
The total audience for the internet was far less in those days.
Now the entirety of society is an "internet addict". I'll admit the nerd inside me feels a bit vindicated, even if horrified overall with where the internet has taken us.
The other day I was thinking back to when I was younger and people freaked out at the possibility of dating someone you met online. Now with dating apps it's the norm.
To the contrary, the Internet was still growing by leaps and bounds. I propose that the Internet had reached a point where vested interests needed to capture it to maintain control of the narrative.
I'm not sure how old you are, but when is this time you speak of? AOL had users in a walled garden for decades. Then those users moved to myspace, then facebook. You're going to need to be more specific about this magical time when the average user was somehow "free of walled gardens".
There have always been alternatives to the walled gardens, they have never been larger than their walled alternatives.
Facebook and Twitter are actively policing speech that is not illegal.
That is why your analogy is inapt.
The free hosting providers were not engaging in political censorship. Google had a maxim, "Don't be evil". They didn't have infoboxes explaining, "Experts agree that enhanced interrogation is not torture".
Maybe start by explaining how they were worse?
"There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech."
But I can't find an official source.
Consider this hypothetical situation. Imagine your favorite actor comes out with some really, really horrible political views, like women should be the chattel slaves of their male guardians. For a lot of people, even maybe you yourself, discovering this about a person is going to heavily color your views not only of him but of other things he does, and you're not going to enjoy seeing films he stars in any more. Since the film studios aren't idiots, he's going to be essentially blacklisted from any future roles. There's the consequences.
However there is no law against our hypothetical racist being uninvited from the opening of an art gallery whose first exhibition is the work of african-american artists. It is a private organization who does not want to associate with someone.
Or to put it simply: it's OK to downvote someone. That's how communities work!
I don't like radical anti-abortionists who camp out at abortion clinics, but I recognize we all have this right. I wish they would pursue their goals more civilly, they would likely get some sympathy if they were humane about it, for example.
That's probably what mc32 is referring to.
Non radical anti abortionists are most moms and dads who prefer not to abort but don't go out there and agitate.
edit: but apparently I misinterpreted the comment so mea culpa, my bar for "radical" is different than mc32's.
It boils down to this: if you think wrongly you aren't allowed to speak. We have all been down this rabbit hole before, none of this is new, it never works out well.
If you disagree with the above, I'm afraid it's a misunderstanding of the intentions of the first amendment to the US constitution.
Additionally, hate speech is also violence, and you cannot hide behind free speech to say "but look, you're doing physical violence to me". So, yeah, beat up nazis.
2. You'd be fine if republicans commit "self defense" by punching ANTIFA and BLM activists, right?
Of course there's consequences for your speech. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequence.
If you're an outspoken Nazi, you have the right to your speech, but I have the right to not interact with you, and companies have the right not to serve you. Those are consequences of your speech.
Freedom of speech means you won't be arrested for it, not that everyone needs to listen.
So you'd be fine if amazon refused to serve you because you're a pro-union sympathizer, right?
I can't believe people don't see the similarity and are willingly going down this path. It's so blindingly obvious that it's the same tactic used in Stalinism, Maoism and McCarthyism but people gleefully want to wrap their arms around it.
None. For organizing a violent insurrection? Several.
Totally agreed. Notably, nobody has suggested this. And nobody has, at least so far, been prosecuted for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
At best, those "peaceful" protestors (who somehow in their naive purity managed not to be able to read the vibe of a crowd that erected a noose and gallows outside the White House, or notice the rioting, broken doors and tear gas) are still at least guilty of trespassing, and some of vandalism.
Vandalism would only apply to those who stole or defaced something, certainly not the majority.
And neither of these charges justifies holding a political prisoner for 6+ months without trial, as the US government has done.
I'll let the Justice Department know they can drop all charges because slumdev from the internet has rendered their verdict.
>Vandalism would only apply to those who stole or defaced something, certainly not the majority.
The majority didn't enter the Capitol, and the majority haven't been charged with anything. If your assertion is that people are being arrested and charged with simply being there the actual criminal charges levied prove otherwise[0,1]. People who have been accused of committing actual crimes are being charged for those crimes.
>And neither of these charges justifies holding a political prisoner for 6+ months without trial, as the US government has done.
They aren't political prisoners. They aren't being persecuted for their political beliefs. Most people charged are out on bail, and the ones who aren't are the ones charged with serious crimes.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charges_brought_in_th...
[1]https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/six-months-january-6th-attac...
If the accusation is true, then it's a crime and the punishment should be much more severe. If the accusation is false, then it's a non-issue (and clearly not a crime), and there should be no punishment.
Big tech and universities do not have the skills, experience, resources or obligation to resolve the question of guilt clearly and fairly. Let's leave that to the courts.
I'm not saying things are perfect or that there aren't any problems, but I feel sometimes the historical perspective is a bit lost.
How is the "historical perspective" relevant here? Are you just arguing "we actually have it pretty good right now compared to the past so we shouldn't feel so bad about freedom of speech slipping"?
Dangerous antivax nonsense is not well moderated on many of those platforms, especially Facebook
In fact, when you realize that the internet has provided more forums for free speech than any technology in history, it beggars belief to suggest that there are less forums now than before.
We are at the ultimate highpoint of access to freespeech forums in American history, and to suggest otherwise is nakedly ignorant conservative propaganda pushing an emotional angle against technology corporations who enforce common sense rules against violence, terrorism, and hate speech on their private networks.
I maintain that until Fox News or conservative talk radio is mandated by the government to stop suppressing my free speech rights to have access to the network to say whatever I want, that Facebook and Twitter should not be forced to support insurrection and violence masquerading as free speech.
It's hard to understate how outrageous this lie is. It's like suggesting "folks today have less access to electricity than at any point in American history". It's such immensely stupid lie that how could anyone fall for it?
Instead, historic public forums were mostly related to in-person meetings - town halls, clubs, pubs etc. These have not been outlawed nor disappeared entirely, but they are almost entirely atrophied. Instead, public discussion has moved almost entirely online. This has created a complex situation, as online forums are almost always private property, unlike the forums of the past.
This situation is creating an unprecedented situation for free speech - as private mega corporations, not bound by the first ammendment, are now in control of a huge percentage of public communication. It seems pretty clear that Facebook or YouTube can't just be handled as publishers, nor as network operators, nor as broadcasters, nor as any other traditional form of communication. We will need to invent a new concept of how such communication should be regulated and moderated.
On the other hand, it's also true there is more public communication, and with higher reach, then probably ever before in history.
The idea that every government and "public" forum in American history was government land is crazy to me. People weren't going into the courthouse to have friendly debates. They were in inns, bars, churches, etc. I would wager the vast majority of all "public forums" you refer to happened in a private location.
Thus this isn't some unprecedented scenario, as the church has controlled public speech in all but the biggest of towns in this manner for our entire history.
I'm reminded of the Red Scare where socialists and communist sympathizers could not meet because all the meeting spaces were private and they were banned from meeting there. So much for historical public forums! What few private forums were available were targeted by the government and its sympathizers for shutdown, violence or worse.
Imagine putting the government that ran the red scare IN CHARGE OF what constitutes free speech and who can publish what.
>We will need to invent a new concept of how such communication should be regulated and moderated.
No thanks, I like Free Speech and Liberty and we never need to invent a new way for the government of the day to control speech.
Last year they were outlawed.
You don't think there should be a difference between platforms and publishers?
A billboard is a publisher; the content there is clearly governed.
So the criteria seems simple:
* is content freely posted? What is the approval process for content?
* if content is freely posted, are the rules for removing content uniformly applied and viewpoint neutral?
* what mechanisms exist for appeal, protest, modifying the rules, etc?
Platforms are defined by what they don't allow.
Publishers are defined by what they do allow.
One of the problems with trying to use an actor's own policy to distinguish between platforms and publishers is that the goal of creating such a distinction in the first place is to restrict the ability of the actor to undertake certain policies.
So no, that won't work. Try again.
Where is "force" coming into this other than various government demands and threats?
This entire debate is about making private networks such as Facebook into "public/government spaces", thus meaning the Bill Of Rights would apply to a private company (an outrageously anti-Constitutional concept) and it would count as government censorship for Twitter to ban an insurrectionist like Trump.
And with this radically anti-Free Speech conservative supreme court majority, you better believe that the rights of private networks to publish content free from government interference is still high risk.
And even if you take the shorter view, there are still more places for people to discuss them. Facebook and Twitter didn’t even exist until the mid-2000s and the Internet has been readily accessible since the late 1990s.
to my generation, this is much more poorly framed by arguing whether Facebook is comparable to a pre-internet private establishment, than it is framed by the internet being simply the air that we breathe, an ether in which sound naturally vibrates and which trying to legislate the dynamics of should seem equally ridiculous.
There will always be a place for people to express themselves, but it may not always be as convenient as some would like. But the Constitution does not require convenience or free amplification services.
This is the entire rub, though. Exactly how convenient it is should be a matter of primal importance to the root relationships between citizen, state, and countrymen that the founders found and advocated for. Beyond the momentary mire of the current legal/political order, one feels that all citizens should have some instinctual understanding and positive desire for the sort of healthy, dynamic, and free social order that we're all ostensibly (or increasingly just nominally) in support of as Americans. Whether this dynamic comes under repression from this type of entity or another is a flatly ridiculous non-sequitur (I'm positive that the founders had the same level of love for the East India Company as they did for the British crown)
Complicating this, the surrounding legal framework and precedents around computing technology is near-universally acknowledged to be in a state of completely hopeless shambles; every critical chunk of the system was designed and implemented in the 20th century, with the assumptions of 20th century media tech casted squarely into them. Exceedingly few TOS and EULA precedents have progressed an inch since the era of 1980s shrinkware tech. The "Congressional inquiry of big tech leaders" parade we continue to put on is a gigantic joke and a gross historical embarrassment. the DMCA and the CFAA routinely horrifies any sensible person that examines them for a couple of minutes.
So two things; while the current legal system collectively catches up to modern tech basics like "how to use an AOL modem", we should be direly concerned that a large portion of the country seems to have abandoned any personal sense of (first creeping, now a torrent) of the predictable horrors incurred under a tyrannical regimes that expressly suppress YOUR (God-given!) constitutional rights.
The second thing, of course, is that all this stuff eventually needs to get resolved in the tangible court of legal opinion. I have no doubt that Mr Torba's constitution claim will fail under our current legal system, and I generally accept the rebuke that the 'digital native' class haven't done enough of the aforementioned positive work themselves to outline how these new usages of these new technologies should harmonize with the constraints and institutional knowledge of the existing legal/political system, which has accumulated a ton of valid merit over its mostly-contiguous 250-year-long history.
At some point there's going to have to be a big palaver regarding one's fundamental right to own, operate, and make sovereign decisions (as a citizen subject to the constitution) about some part of their computing stack. Probably won't get resolved today, but I think Mr. Torba's response seems like a healthy statement to rally around.
Instead he argues that there should be a lot of newspapers, to accurately capture the growing audiences and government should not interfere in the growth of private speech
It was considered virulently anti-Liberty to use government to force a newspaper to print an opinion they disagree with, and that concept remains true today.
If Facebook does not wish to publish violent speech, they don't have to, just like the New York Times editors can choose, just like Fox News can choose, just like every "free speech" newspaper, news channel, or network can choose.
This is the essence of free speech, that the government cannot unfairly control your network and tell you that you can no longer choose what to publish.
It's sad that people are this against Liberty that they demand government forcibly control networks to allow whatever speech the ruling party currently feels is "free".
you can't simply switch off of Facebook the way you would drop a publication you dislike. the network effects keep everyone trapped in. i can't believe we're still having this asinine back-and-forth a full decade after we learned how natural monopolies form via the ordinary dynamics of social graph consolidation.
Metcalfe's law is a thing people, you can read about in on Wikipedia [1] and we can maybe start moving beyond a 1993 understanding of what an internet platform is.
Imagine all of the people who have been arbitrarily labelled as "alt-right" in social and traditional media. Do you actually think this is what they generally want?
Many of them self identify as alt-right. It's largely a self-selected identity. They're often proud of the term too. I have yet to see someone mislabeled alt-right when they're a vanilla conservative. Alt-right really is the far right of old but with Gen Z aesthetics.
Am hoping that our protections will be renewed because of potential loss of market share, and financial interests. BigTech isn't worth much if they go after 45% of their user population, I mean, product. Because of that I still actively use Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
Just because the causes have not been enumerated lucidly or coherently doesn't mean that there's not two different peoples in the USA who would like to dissolve the political bands connecting them to one another.
Being put on a no fly list or terrorist watch list are some examples. Happened all the time during the war on terror.
The bizarre irony is that this condition is a core tenet of Fascism, which is something the "woke" anti-free-speechists claim to be fighting against.
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/biting-the-hand-that-feeds.808...
[1]https://congressionaldish.com/cd-237-hunting-domestic-terror...
Free speech is good for antifa, bad for pboys. Free speech is good for pboys but bad for antifa.
They are both groups of hoodlums and both have the same rights to free speech, but people will want whoever they agree with more to enjoy it and those they agree with less to not enjoy the rights.
Well put. As we've also seen from numerous leaks and incidents over the years, big business and government often works hand-in-hand, with revolving door policies and barely legal indirect bribes happening regularly.
That the government is now seeking to curtail the First Amendment by exerting pressure on these companies should be alarming to anyone.