Also, when it comes to publication, plenty of stuff used to be essentially banned by 'platforms', it just wasn't obvious because "user-generated content" was barely a thing (letters to the editor) in comparison to people posting on Facebook and Youtube and Twitter and Tiktok.

Random people being able to post content for thousands or even millions to immediately see, with no explicit gatekeepers prior to submission; this is largely a recent thing. And it makes sense that of course everywhere has rules, bare minimum basically nobody likes people spamming stuff, for example, even in cases where it's legal.

If you create a message board about model trains and some rando starts constantly spamming ads for their series of NFT's, I guess banning them is technically 'censorship', but you could also call it 'the bare basics of maintaining a functional community'.

I think that for platforms like Twitter and Facebook, perhaps it may make more sense to end up a situation more like newspapers, where you have more reputable papers like the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ that have stricter rules, and then you also have the National Enquirer or other random outlets that have little to no standards. If Twitter and Facebook want to have somewhat tighter rules where they censor people, that's fine, the people being censored should then just have options of other platforms with different or fewer rules. Just seems like the problem to me is that people expect these mega platforms to be all things to all people, when that's probably not realistic.

Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam.

Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis.

Free speech protects good faith debates.

Just out of curiosity what are the political posts that have caused people to be banned?

I see Jo Jorgensen, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Mark Rubio, Mitch McConnell, etc. I've never seen anyone banned for saying to end the Fed. To cut taxes. To have family values.

I don't really know anything about the people you mentioned, I am not from the US. I know Sanders and Cruz but not about any instances of censorship.

Who do you think is the target of deplatforming which the current US government promotes? There are also articles about how deplatforming allegedly works, so it has to target some people I guess.

These other people that were mentioned are from all areas of the political spectrum.

After the Capitol Attack in 2021, Twitter deplatformed then President of the United States for inciting violence. Who in the US Government do you think is leading the deplatforming?

Just because it was political doesn't mean that a particular person or group in the government was responsible.

> I don't really know anything about the people you mentioned, I am not from the US.

In the US, I have not seen Facebook banning people for explicitly political reasons, and IIRC studies have not found any obvious partisan bias there.

There are reasons for banning that overlap with politics, certainly, like promoting conspiracy theories, as those tend to be more common on the far left or far right.

> Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis.

It's not a strawman, as many people assert that platforms should just let anything not-illegal stay up. You may not believe this, but there are others who I've seen assert it.

> Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam.

It's not the same, but the issue is that once you're past the border of "we'll only ban illegal stuff", you're now in the realm of much more subjective decisionmaking. In practice, many forms of speech could be classified as both political, and harassment/bullying/other bad stuff, which is what usually happens with Facebook.

In their case, they don't want to get into the political sphere, but they do want to bad blatant misinformation, and in practice that does overlap with politics.

>to bad blatant misinformation

This is also dangerous. Imagine what the government of Mississippi or Indiana during the Jim Crow era would label as blatant misinformation.

Also, in a recent court case, Facebook admitted their fact checking was opinion and therefore protected from defamation. So to put those together, Facebook is censoring because of their opinion disagrees with the opinion of the censored.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/13/facebook-bizarrely-claims-its-...

> Imagine what the government of Mississippi or Indiana during the Jim Crow era would label as blatant misinformation.

But we're not talking about the government, we're talking about private platforms. Others are allowed to spread misinfo if they so choose.

> Also, in a recent court case, Facebook admitted their fact checking was opinion and therefore protected from defamation. So to put those together, Facebook is censoring because of their opinion disagrees with the opinion of the censored.

Fact checking is an attempt at objectivity that is nevertheless partially subjective, but that doesn't mean it's not better than doing nothing. You wouldn't improve the New York Times or Wall Street Journal by dragging them down to the level of the National Enquirer.

>But we're not talking about the government, we're talking about private platforms. Others are allowed to spread misinfo if they so choose.

Yes, but we are. A lot of the COVID misinformation isn't declared misinformation because the fact-checker isn't an expert at COVID, it's because they are cross checking it with what the government says (CDC/NIH/etc). So the fact checker is using the government's facts, so imagine if they used the government's facts on race during the Jim Crow era.

>Fact checking is an attempt at objectivity that is nevertheless partially subjective, but that doesn't mean it's not better than doing nothing.

Depends on who is doing the fact checking. To continue with the prior hypothetical, what if someone stated in 2003 that there weren't WMD's in Iraq. The fact checkers would check with the government's facts who states there were WMD's in Iraq. The fact checker (not an expert on WMDs) would possibly label that as misinformation. In this example, it would be better to have done nothing.

In the situation where the facts are whatever the government says, that's not fact-checking or journalism at all, that's just being a mouthpiece to power.

That's irrelevant: it's still not the government doing the banning, other platforms could use different heuristics or just not have those moderation policies at all.

> The fact checkers would check with the government's facts who states there were WMD's in Iraq. The fact checker (not an expert on WMDs) would possibly label that as misinformation.

I don't remember the government providing any real evidence of this though, whereas for, say, the COVID vaccines, they've each had different medical trial phases, followed by data on the general populace once they reached widespread deployment. Those are very different situations.

You're right that of course there's nothing that absolutely guarantees that fact checking is better than no fact checking 100% of the time. Just like, say, a white supremacist forum's idea of 'moderation' may be worse than no moderation at all. I should amend my point: moderation and fact checking are potentially better than doing nothing, and in the case of the major platforms, definitely are.

I agree. It doesn't help that these platforms themselves want to be all things for all people and have partially succeeded. That's why most people just don't see the parallel with publishing and its rules. For them Twitter and Facebook are the internet

"I think that for platforms like Twitter and Facebook, perhaps it may make more sense to end up a situation more like newspapers, where you have more reputable papers like the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ that have stricter rules, and then you also have the National Enquirer or other random outlets that have little to no standards."

Don't forget, media outlets can get the pants sued off of them for knowlingly publishing false and defamatory information. I think we're well past the point of websites being held liable for the content they host, user generated or not, and make public/promote algorithmically.

He actually handles that distinction early in the article as a quote:

> [...] he noted that there exists not just a right to speak but a right to hear. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

But this is of course a gray area. You don't have to listen to anything anyone has to say, but it's also possible to sideline something enough that it is effectively censored without being outright forbidden.

I don't see how that quote addresses it. Wouldn't the relevant right be a "right not to hear", which he doesn't mention?

> You don't have to listen to anything anyone has to say

If you're a student, and it's in the state mandated curriculum, then you do.

> it's also possible to sideline something enough that it is effectively censored without being outright forbidden.

I 100% agree with this.

> I don't see how that quote addresses it. Wouldn't the relevant right be a "right not to hear", which he doesn't mention?

You're right, I misread your comment. He really does not differenciate this clearly, despite having examples for both cases.

That’s completely inapposite to the point being made above. Choosing a curriculum is about curation—it has nothing at all to do with free speech, neither in the legal sense, nor in the broader “free speech values” sense.

I think we really need to have a “who controls the curriculum” conversation. When I was a teacher, we could chose from whatever the books the school had a ton of lying around. Not a good way to make a selection.

At the same time, people are freaking out when parents want a say I what books their children are evaluated on.

If it was up to me, we’d focus on the classics: Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, etc.

Important to not accidentally let any 20th century books into the curriculum, let alone any 21st century ones?

Sorry, I meant to include Gilgamesh ;)

> Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school.”

Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)

Public education is a service provided by the government. What material the government chooses to teach or not teach using parents’ is entirely up to the government and the parents. Free speech is irrelevant to curricular choices because teachers aren’t there to engage students in a marketplace of ideas. They’re being paid to provide a service. Organizations that provide content make such curation choices about what sorts of content to offer all the time.

This is stated like it is an absolute fact, not a reflection of our hyper-capitalist society. I would argue that reducing education to a content curator is harmful to what it aims to be, although the analogy is not entirely inaccurate, unfortunately. Is education an infotainment service or a search for the truth? The latter requires a free exchange of ideas and informed debate, although this is rarely encouraged in our current school system.

I don't think students are the right audience for "informed debate", since they go to school to become informed. Sure, you can (and should!) simulate informed debate in class, to train students in the method, but the value that teachers add is that they curate the topics and can provide arguments and answers.

Eventually education turns into an actual search for truth, but that only happens in university where actual research happens. Until then it's all a more or less guided preparation for independent research.

K-12 education is not a “search for truth” or about “free exchange of ideas and informed debate.” These aren’t college kids. These schools are to socialize kids into the morals and values of their society and to teach them the basic foundational knowledge their society believes to be true. That has nothing to do with “capitalism” and indeed is what pre-capitalist societies long understood education of children to entail.

I’m not following your “reflection of our hyper-capitalist society” comment here. Can you explain what you mean?

From my current point of view, curriculums are largely set by the state which has an interest in promoting itself with very little capitalist or free-market elements involved.

Let's make an analogy. I suspect there are some teachers who may teach evolution as "just a theory" and add creationism to what they teach. I don't mind if children learn about creationism, but during their required hours at state sponsored schools, I don't want the time to be wasted teaching creationism. So I would like to restrict creationism from the curriculum.

Or how about this analogy, Zambia is a real county with real history. However, I care about what American kids learn. While they can spend a week learning about Zambia (and Tajikistan, Gabon, Kiribati, and all 200 world countries [taking 4 years]), I would prefer that they spend that time doing something else more important just as US history. So I would like to restrict the amount of world history from the curriculum.

You fall into the trap here of having someone decide for others what is and is not valuable to learn.

Once you take this step you legitimise the idea that there is an authority with the power to censor - ostensibly for good reasons - and sooner or later that power will bend somewhere else.

It's important that children learn about everything, especially about opposing ideas because only then can they form their own opinions and develop critical thinking, and most importantly the ability to reevaluate an idea based on changing data.

To paraphrase your analogy I prefer my children to only learn about the US healthcare system, and not waste time learning about how other countries do it for better outcomes with less money.

And this is the problem with your post - who decides what is OK, and what is a waste of time?

Ps - I am upvoting you not because you are right, but because you add a valuable perspective to the conversation, and I support your willingness to bring it.

He's talking about this at a school. The fundamental premise of a school is that someone is going to decide what is and is not valuable to learn. And that there is an authority (embodied in the teacher) who has the power to decide what will and will not be discussed in class.

Assuming you mean what you wrote, you may be arguing for abolishing the public school system. In principle that seems like an interesting idea, but the rest of your post isn't quite congruent with that so it seems possible you've missed that this part of the thread is about school curriculum.

So yes, clearly there is a carriculim, and someone has to set that, and there will be a flavor to that carriculim based on the social environment.

I don't have a problem with that, and I don't have a problem with teachers bringing their own personality to the classroom. I am not vegan, but if my kid has a vegan teacher that would be valuable in exposing them to that world-view.

I do object to political interference in education. When the govt decided what material is OK, and what is not, then you remove the variety of thought which exists in the world. And ultimately that leads to a lack of personal critical thinking which leads young (and older) adults to belive anything.

You may struggle to reconcile this with the idea of public schooling and keep your position coherent. Particularly compulsory public schooling.

It is hard for the government to control the school system and also for the government not to exercise any control over the school system. I think you might be advocating voluntary, private-only schooling here - although I also think you might disagree with that opinion.

I wouldn't say I'm advocating for private school,or even lack of govt in school matters.

I guess my primary point surrounds censorship, especially when it comes to dictating what teachers can say or teach (in addition to, in the context of, not necessarily in place of the cariculum)

Isn't this still the same distinction? That's still just saying that nobody can force students to learn about critical race theory, not that they can't go read about it on their own if they want.

No, it says that critical race theory cannot be offered. That's specific and distinct from required.

It also depends on what is offered in its place.

We don't debate this enough, because it's invisible to most people.

Free speech in the broadest is exactly about curation, implied approval (proof by authority doesn't work philosophically, but absolutely does work rhetorically and politically), and access to airtime and audiences.

All of those can be bought with money.

To make an obvious point - if you can use money to impose your choices wrt curation etc, speech is no longer free.

This is a completely different meaning to "Talk about this and the government will imprison and/or murder you."

The latter hardly happens to anyone now. The former is absolutely foundational to the media.

There is no "marketplace of ideas" because those with money and political power can always enforce their narratives on those without - and they can do it cleanly, deniably, and effectively without needing to murder or jail dissenters.

They can even do it from behind various front organisations and curated movements, pretending to be scrappy freedom fighters railing against an oppressive mainstream.

Speech isn't free in any genuine sense while that remains true.

Ah, I see: that affects whether it's allowed to be taught in an elective class or not. Yes, to fully oppose censorship, we should allow critical race theory to be taught in optional elective social studies classes. But then we should also allow optional elective science classes to teach that evolution is wrong, because to do otherwise would be censoring the young-Earth creationists.

If you can find a way to teach that without violating the Establishment Clause, sure. The only way forward I can see here would look like a comparative history of religions course, which would teach various creation stories from a neutral viewpoint. And that doesn't seem to be what those campaigning for anti-evolution education have been looking for. Curious if you've got any fresh ideas, though.

Maybe that was a bad example. What if instead of something religious, there was a class teaching some kooky conspiracy theory as fact, like a physics elective saying that perpetual motion is possible, but that the patents to make it work well enough to overcome friction have all been bought up by Big Oil and suppressed?

It would need the support of textbook companies to print it, school boards to buy into it, teachers to deliver it, and students interested in taking it. There's a whole marketplace of ideas out there, and the course you're proposing simply wouldn't survive it.

Teaching intelligent design needn't violate the Establishment Clause. Nobody says schools can't mention religions and what they believe, just that they cannot require students to adopt one.

Using taxpayer money to promote religion has been held to be equivalent to an "establishment" of religion. This means that any schools funded by the tax man have to be strictly secular, even in their "elective" activities.

The language I used allows that possibility. But, in the specific legal challenges I'm aware of in this area, that's been the constitutional obstacle to teaching creation as fact.

I don’t remember the case, but I read somewhere that the Supreme Court drew a distinction between deciding not to add something vs taking away what was already there in regards to school libraries.

Assuming this is referring to Maus, it wasn’t a part of the curriculum, it was just a book that was available in the library. The school board removed it from the library, clearly in an effort to limit access to it.

> Assuming this is referring to Maus, it wasn’t a part of the curriculum.

It was.[1]

[1] https://www.wate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/01/Cal...

Ah, my mistake. From what I read before I thought they just took it out of the library.

I'm not in favor of book banning, but that book shouldn't be allowed in a library.

I’ve never seen/read it, curious to know why you think it shouldn’t be allowed in libraries.

I get the irony but in the current context that doesn’t really read as a joke.

P.S. That was sarcasm.

Why not? I’ve heard of it but never read it. I just know it’s widely acclaimed and about the Holocaust.

You are correct. Not sure why you're getting down voted.

Just because Pinocchio isn't in the curriculum doesn't mean it's banned. You can still get it in the school library.

Not in curriculum != Banned

Another confusing facet of the debate is a significant number of participants who equate not being given an audience or a trivially-used press (in the form of a popular website) with being censored.

And then there is the new “cancel culture” that does not target the speech itself, but the reputation of the author. By using horrific accusations and smears, the author’s reputation is destroyed, so that people don’t want to hear the speech anymore, based on the lies they heard about the author.

Outside extreme examples like child porn or speech that is copyright violation I am not aware of many cases of actual prohibited speech in the US.

Schools however are a grey area because attendance is mandatory and the state sets the curriculum.

It’s not a gray area at all. Public schools are a public service paid for by tax dollars. The government excluding certain things from the curriculum doesn’t implicate freedom of speech any more than it excluding certain bus routes implicates freedom of movement.

Forced curriculum on students, at all, is no different than re-education camps; state sponsored indoctrination that both political parties (currently) support.

All education should be consensual

You're essentially saying school vouchers, and then the government doesn't choose the curriculum at private schools.

In a public school there isn't anyone else there to choose the curriculum. Everyone there is a government employee.

No, I'm arguing that forced schooling in general is an unethical act, on par with communist indoctrination, and there should be no government run schools at all