https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

I'd say the first and only rule is that there aren't any rules that everyone must follow. There will be subpockets with different subcultures, with each one building and enforcing their own set of rules, but no single centralized style of enforcement.

No commercial network with a company backing it could ever offer a space like that, because they are liable to monitor and moderate the worst content that goes through their property, thus creating a single centralized culture based on the company's values.

That sounds like a free market. A government provides a minimal container and you’re free to create your own sub-pocket with your own rules inside of that structure. If you don’t like the rules of sub-pocket A (ex. Twitter), you can go create sub-pocket B (Truth Social). And they have no centralized style of rule enforcement because they are their own unique private enterprises.

Maybe the problem isn’t Twitter. Maybe the problem is expecting Twitter to act like an unbiased government when they’re not. They’re a for-profit sub-pocket with their own subculture. Just like Reddit, YT, FB, TikTok, etc. They’re all competing for eyeballs and ad dollars while independently enforcing their own rules.

The different 'subpockets' will be competing for expansion as organisms in an evolutionary environment, but describing it was a market would be using the wrong model. The trend of simplifying every free organizations as markets is harmful to rational analysis, and I'd say it comes from over-reliance on a set of values that see it as the only valid tool for solving every problem - i.e. an irrational prejudice. We should do better in our analysis of the evolving world, since society is going through never-seen changes and applying old recipes will limit our understanding.

Twitter is not “the defacto (sic) town square”. The claim that it is is most typically deployed as an argument that it should be regulated. The rest of this comment continues apace. These are standard talking points in the (right wing) drumbeat to try and curtail free speech by regulating Twitter (and other social media companies).

Government mandating tech companies to censor information is supported by a far higher percentage of Democrat voters:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/10/18/glenn_gre...

I hope you don't complain about this ever in the future and just accept that Elon is allowed to pressure Twitter to change it's moderation policy to support the principles of open discourse more.

Why? Does an ad get contaminated by association?

Or it's a minority who gets to call what's "hate speech" and what's not, and pushes advertisers to not want to risk this (who wouldn't give a fuck otherwise)?

People buying ads certainly think so. Or more specifically they think their brand or product denoted in the ad will be associated with the context in which it appears.

And they are the customers.

As there are left wing people tweeting away (AOC). what’s the point here? We going back to trying to stifle right wing speech?

Random Joes that have no voice will not be banned. Make a name for yourself and start gaining followers and you most certainly will unless it’s too damaging to twitters reputation. Their sporadic treatment of these types of people are what allow you to hide behind this reasoning, they keep you guessing on their procedures.

You're literally in the middle of a discussion about how Twitter isn't the "de facto" public town square, because nearly nobody actually authors original tweets.

In any event, fuck the public town square. That's where slaves were sold, that's where gay men were stoned, that's where people were hanged for all manner of terrible reason that had nothing whatsoever to do with justice.

Twitter, as awful as it is, is many orders of magnitude better than the town square. May we never return to those times again.

[Free speech and the open town square is how we got away from the atrocities you outline. There is no societal progress without free speech, which twitter is actively clamping down on. It's regressive and taking us back to when dominant ideas couldn't be challenged.]

[No, we got away from the practices I mentioned above through discussion that did not take place in a "public" town square. Basically anywhere else, but certainly not the "public" town square. One reason, among many, is that a "town square" is not nearly as ubiquitous as you seem to believe, historically. Dominant ideas can easily and are frequently challenged on Twitter and in modern discourse generally, it's just not tolerant of the racist, awful ideas that some might want to discuss. It's not going to lead to progress to continue to discuss how one race is superior to another, for example, and yet that's all some groups seem to want to talk about.]

There's also a cultural aspect that can't really be solved by Twitter, like petitioning someone to be fired for making a gay joke ten years ago.

[0] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ok-dude-twitter-susp...

[0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/

“ CNN typically utilizes loaded emotional words in sensational headlines such as this: Trump pounces on Justice Department report findings.”

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/

So are we gonna be biased or call every guilty party out?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Or was your statement made such that only the right wing makes such headlines?

Or are you russian and just trying to sow division?

Which is it?

Also you still didn’t change what I said, just avoided it by trying to claim “whataboutism”. Fight it all you want, it’s not going to change the truth.

That's also how you get slaves fred, labour laws passed, and so on. Most revolutions started on public squares (and public cafes, and such). And further progress was created by open dialogue, in books and other discourse spaces. Which people thinking like the above wanted to stiffle.

And, no, the "public square" wasn't what brought slavery for example.

It was more the discussion in the "polite"/"good" upper echelons of society, for their own benefit. The same people who run and profited from that racket. And the same, good, rich and aspiration class people who wrote diatribes against gays, or intented scientific racism, eugenics, and other such novelties.

In other words, by the same kind of classes who today dictate what the unwashed masses should talk about and what not, now.

I would further love to hear what you think would happen if you did that while committing the "crime" of being black.

Getting made fun of on Twitter seems like a substantially less severe consequence than what would happen if you proposed radical ideas in the "public town square" throughout history.

I would love to hear how you think the idea of giving up slavery was discussed and eventually won over in the North itself (who kept slavery well after the revolution).

I would also love to know why you think the public square means addressing everybody (like giving a lecture or declaring some platform), as opposed different people being able to discuss things with others in a public space.

>I would further love to hear what you think would happen if you did that while committing the "crime" of being black.

The same thing that would happen if you commited what is considered a crime against today's order on a modern public space.

>Getting made fun of on Twitter seems like a substantially less severe consequence than what would happen if you proposed radical ideas in the "public town square" throughout history.

That's only because 99.999% of it is of less consequence - compared to people discussing the abolition of slavery or setting up a revolution back then.

Try something that the current establishment considers threatening and equivalent to the above, and see how far you stay (a) on Twitter (b) in a job, (c) out of jail.

...and you want more of that? Gotta start to question your motives here, friend. Not seeing any real upside to this, and I'm starting to wonder if the goal is maybe to take the voice away from the people who are, for the first time, finally getting a say in how the world is governed, because you don't like what's being said.

No, but nice strawman.

I only accept (rather, I know, don't have to "accept" or not "accept" as hand given) that the public square was at the main representative of the general sentiment, but also the space to discuss and break from it.

It hasn't been always and/or globaly "consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups". Often it was more progressive than the elites towards those groups, who had more of a chance to discuss their ills and suggestions in the public square than in the "englightened" spaces of the rich, the government/powerful, and the upper-middle class, which peddled more in the conformist ideas of the time, were the ones who actually profitted from slavery - and of course the ones that owned plantations...

>Not seeing any real upside to this, and I'm starting to wonder if the goal is maybe to take the voice away from the people who are, for the first time, finally getting a say in how the world is governed, because you don't like what's being said.

You got it backwards. You don't like things being said. I don't like things not allowed to be said.

Just logistically, how did these "public" town squares function? Were they periodic meetings? Did people just walk to the center of town and start shouting? Who spent their time in these town squares, when they could be working/providing for their family? Since they didn't actually exist in history, there's nowhere I can look this up, and I'm curious about what you think happened historically.

Setting aside this made-up "town square" concept for a moment, you really seem to want to allow some speech, but to not allow other speech, and that is really the problem here.

If you want to allow all speech, then you necessarily must allow for speech that (successfully) calls for the "cancelling" of people who speak, as well.

In other words, either you support Twitter's ability to express itself through the banning some users for their speech (which it does exceedingly sparingly to begin with, people are not banned for ideas, but for specific expressions of those ideas), or you only selectively support free speech. You don't get to have it both ways.

Only one side of the argument wants people to say anything they want, once you realize association is a form of speech. The side that supports Twitter’s expression of speech is closer to “everyone gets a say” than the side forcing Twitter to publish content it doesn’t want to.

You still get to speak, just not on Twitter. You don’t get to trample on Twitter’s rights. That’s anti-speech.

Certainly not in public squares. If I think about it , Black freedom and black rights came from not from discussion but action. Forcing Everyone , everywhere to look at the issue it was by hitting the hearts and minds of Americans brought the newspaper and television that allowed Civil Rights movement to propagate that it did.

It was Media , not the public square that won our rights. Not white men who suddenly found a guilty conscience and talked about it. Hell the discussion had to forced.