At least in the US, you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever you want. That right should never be taken away. However, another privately-run website should never be forced to broadcast anyone's content to hundreds of millions of other people.
There's a fine line between not amplifying someone and silencing them, and when the choices of very few privately run websites affect who gets heard and who not then we should be wary about them amplifying harmful speech and equally wary about them silencing speech harmfully.
I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large. There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction[0]. And they'll even host it on a subdomain of theirs, if for some reason you have trouble getting a hostname for your hateful or crazy (but legally protected from censorship by the government) blog. And if laws are ever made restricting what those web hosts can do, then we're getting into the realm of the government restricting free speech, which is a different conversation entirely.
Regarding your second paragraph, the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it.
(caveat: I'm in the US, so my opinions are US-centric)
[0] for example, https://nearlyfreespeech.net
We've already seen the goalposts move when AWS and CDNs were dropping politically unpopular clients.
If it helps, we're already pretty close to the end of the slope. There's a very limited number of last-mile ISPs, so we're only one Twitter mob / protest away from Comcast / Verizon / Cox / AT&T holding press conferences about how they're blocking politically problematic domains and IP addresses. Then it'll only be tech-savvy users with VPNs that can access "free speech," at least until those become the target of the mob, too.
I'm not a libertarian by any means but I do have some amount of faith that if what you're describing comes to pass, the free market will provide alternatives, if demand exists. VPNs are one such alternative.
I truly believe that it's harmful to society to guarantee free reach to everyone. It's kind of like the paradox of tolerance, if you've heard of that -- if private entities are barred from moderating content on their systems, the discourse will devolve more than it already has into conspiracy, hate, and other forms of unwanted content.
The argument is that moderation should be done by publishing companies and who face liability for their content. It should not be done poorly, en-mass by platform companies who do it at scale using automation and don't face legal liability when they mess up.
The only exception I see to this is to allow community organized and run moderation for noncommercial communities.
They would - and and they are. That's why it's easier to publish fanfic on the internet than with an actual publisher. Tumblr is not on the hook for unauthorized titillating usage of copyrighted Disney characters, but HarperCollins would get sued to bankruptcy if they attempted the same. This is why the calls to repeal section 319 is idiotic - it will lead to more "censorship"
The argument is that, instead, these other, non-publishing, major communication platforms should be treated how we run other major communication platforms in the past, such as the telephone network.
We have existing laws, that could be extend to cover other communication platforms.
Telephone companies have been required to do certain things for decades, and the world hasn't collapsed because of it.
citation needed
> There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction
perhaps, but how much pressure do you think they could take, if pressured to take down your content by other private individuals & corporations?
> the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it.
i don't think anyone is claiming that there is or should be a right to be heard. this is an issue of control over who can be heard, and the distinction is important.
for example, in a "free" twitter, i could post some racist tirade, and expect it to gain no traction/retweets from my followers & some random others. people might see it, but it is principally no different to making the same speech in the city center: i'm going to be heard, but no one is going to listen.
we're all talking in extremes here too, which really isn't helping. yes, moderated platforms can remove racism, abusive content, etc., but they can (and do) also remove regular speech: more realistically, above, i would have been more likely tweeting about the lab-leak hypothesis of covid, back in the time where any proposed cause other than the wet-market exposure hypothesis was being labeled as racist. do you think people that have been deplatformed/decried/cancelled for opinions like that were retroactively recognized as being legitimate? if so, where's the profit motivation in that?
Uh, the US constitution and a few centuries of case law?
> perhaps, but how much pressure do you think they could take, if pressured to take down your content by other private individuals & corporations?
The one example host I gave has been around 20 years. I trust that they have a good legal team and have faced mobs of angry people before, and that they'll continue to be around for a while longer.
One problem that I didn't bring up in my original post is that as soon as someone can be heard on twitter, their content is subject to algorithmic manipulation. So someone's fringe opinion could be broadcast to thousands or millions of eyeballs and made to seem like much more of a mainstream opinion like than it actually is.
In a perfect world, where no manipulation is possible, I do agree with you that making sure people can be heard is the correct solution. But until or unless we get there, my opinion is that letting the platform have leeway to moderate content is the best path forward. If people tweeting about covid lab leaks (which I'm still not sure would be considered a non-fringe opinion in 2022) get caught up in that, then that sucks for them, but the alternative is worse. They are still free to set up their own site to discuss their theories.
i'm sorry, i interpreted your point to broadly be "free speech with limits", which i understand to be at-odds with the constitutional definition.
> The one example host I gave has been around 20 years.
no offense intended to them when i say i don't recall ever hearing about them in any setting, controversial or otherwise, which would lead me to believe they haven't experienced significant pressure to remove anything.
> [...] their content is subject to algorithmic manipulation
yes, i agree. "the algorithm" makes astroturfing much easier to perform and be effective.
> In a perfect world [...]
well then there's a bit of a bootstrapping problem here, no? principles like free-speech were idealized and create in order to make the perfect world (for some values of "perfect"). hell, in the "perfect" world, free-speech wouldn't even need protection. i don't think it's sensible to mandate a principle after the fact.
> which I'm still not sure would be considered a non-fringe opinion in 2022
there is no scientific consensus yet - surprise surprise - but we are at least now talking about it[1].
> but the alternative is worse
i'm not sure i agree with you here.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-potential-covid-19-lab-...
Ugh, my main point is that the concept of "free speech" in the US is not relevant at all to the question of whether a private entity can remove you from their platform for saying something they don't like.
You can claim that in the colloquial sense, the phrase is used more liberally to mean any censorship whatsoever, and that may be true. But in my opinion that is conflating two concepts, and those doing so are either 1) confused or 2) being deliberately dishonest by trying to smuggle some sense of constitutional/government mandate into the conversation.
and i'm saying that you appear to treat social media and digital identity as some superfluous luxury that can be revoked without consequence from an individual as punishment (or for more dubious reasons), much like how republicans view health care and social welfare: with the notable exception of the US and one or two others, every country recognizes that private corporations must provide health care (or the means to it - i'm talking about the equipment, education, etc. being provided largely by non-governmental institutions), and citizens must be allowed to access to it regardless of who they are and what they've said, or even done.
yes, you are correct that the constitution does not prevent private corporations from removing content that they do not like, that is the point here. there is no question over the legality of such removals, and i don't think anyone here has tried to raise one.
i'm not trying to smuggle constitutional/government mandate, i'm explicitly trying to discuss the notion of whether or not it should exist.
You seem to be confusing "free speech", the concept, with "free speech", the legal right.
Most codifications of the legal right limit themselves to protecting against certain types of government interference.
However, the concept itself is absolutely not limited to contexts where censorship is imposed by a government. To try to impose this limitation is 1984-style thought policing that tries to remove existing language to control what can be said.
I'm not talking about some colloquial meaning, but the core meaning of the concept of "freedom of speech".
My point is that in the US, the narrower legal/constitutional concept of free speech is often implied, inadvertently or deliberately, when people are actually only referring to it in the broader sense that you describe. For example, a banned Twitter user might say things like "Twitter is a disgrace to democracy"[0] which confuses others into thinking there is some constitutional or legal harm being done when in fact there is none.
I have no problem with having a debate about whether the core concept of free speech is a universal right that should be guaranteed everywhere (surprise: I don't think it should be a universal right and I think it's downright dangerous to society to force all private entities to respect it). But I see the two meanings get confused so much that I felt a need to call it out.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-news-twitter-marjorie-...
I would whole heartdly agree with that, but only because you added "all".
I think just as there is a balance in placing limitations of corporate freedom of association just like placing limits on free speech.
I do think that free speech is valuable enough that we should carefully consider placing restrictions on how and why large, oligopolistic corporations can exercise their right to freedom of association.
I think a lot of this can be solved with a "user's bill of rights" that protects users from arbitrary and capricious enforcement of nebulous terms by service providers.
I think most of the rest of this would be ideally solved by narrowing or eliminating the types of moderation a corporation can engage in while maintaining liability protection under section 230. Possibly with language giving special exemptions to community run moderation.
Nah, you'd get a whole bunch of followers who are happy to see someone say the quiet parts out loud and would retweet.
Without social media, overt racists have to meet in private and the effects are local. With social media, they get a microphone that reaches the world and it spreads worldwide.
I saw an interview where even infamous neo-Nazi Richard Spencer claimed to not be a racist, he just doesn't think races should intermingle, and that white neighborhoods should stay white.
This is the biggest misconception many proponents of absolute free speech have. Many movements, both good and bad, have begun in social media (Twitter / Facebook, etc.). Everything from the Arab Spring, to BLM, to Unite the Right in Charlottesville and January 6th, were at least in part organized on social media. Just because _you_ don't think an idea is worth listening to, does NOT mean that there aren't hundreds or thousands of people who disagree and will listen. I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but to assume it's not real is just plain wrong.
Calling a black person the N word or accusing that person of rape without evidence?
If removing racism is acceptable why not the latter?
No, you can not create your own website. Take this Parler debacle: booted off appstores, AWS, DNS providers, Cloudflare, etc.
Go build your own internet, we're in a free country? Not that I have sympathies for Parler folks, but I was horrified when people even here were cheering at Parler's demise. Don't you look somewhat ahead? Don't you see how many centralized gatekeepers are now everywhere? The potential of abuse to quash dissent is immense, and the possibility of all gatekeepers closely allying with the government is not alien to me. I have seen this happen right in front of me. When it will happen in your country, it'll be too late.
The reality is that some companies are so dominant in their respective fields, that it is in the interests of society they should not discriminate anyone if they don't like their views. Google and Apple should not be the ones to decide if the user can install the app on his device, even if this app is made by a militant far-right neo-nazi group. DNS providers should do their technical job and not engage in censoring websites spreading views they don't like.
Yes, in the US, you can. Giving me an example of one site that was booted off a small set of providers does not disprove that.
I do completely agree with you that having e.g. Apple be the sole gatekeeper of what users can install on their platform is problematic, but I view this as somewhat orthogonal to the Twitter censorship question. IMHO Apple should be required to allow users to install apps downloaded from alternative sources, however I still don't feel they should be compelled to host apps in their own store.
I'm not sure there's a great way to map the above opinion to Twitter -- maybe something like forcing twitter to become federated/decentralized would be the closest. But I am not convinced that Twitter is of the same size as Apple where we should mandate that. I don't regularly use twitter and I don't feel that we, as a society, are nearly as dependent on it as we are on phone manufacturers.
if Musk takes over Twitter, we'll be able to see how much 'freedom' he tolerates when the topics are things he has personal interests in.
Maybe nobody is entitled to book publishers providing "free reach" of publishing your book, especially in thousands of copies. Yet something went wrong there. I don't have a catchy slogan for it, but sometimes the decisions to prevent reach are functionally antithetical to the purpose of free press.
it seems that the majority of people grossly underestimate corporation's level of involvement in our every day lives: if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything? isolation will cause more harm than incarceration, yet i am not recognized a right to trial. not that it would matter anyway, the decision would likely be made algorithmically, without any one human knowing why it's happened.
what i'm saying is: corporations have come to own the infrastructure of our modern society. the protections that freedom of speech gave were (and still are) valuable in the context in which they were made. they don't address the reality that communication is fundamentally different to how it was in the 19th century.
I honestly don't understand this argument at all.
To answer your question, you could:
- Use one of the thousands of other available email hosts/search engines/cloud providers/etc besides Google or Apple - Pick up the phone and talk to people to get things done - Leave your house to talk to people and do things - Find something enjoyable to do with all of the free time you've gained now that you're off of social media and HN
But more importantly, you're saying that without those companies you somehow can't live your life? In that case I just flat-out disagree. I believe that most people make social media out to be more important than it is, and this feels like the extreme of that style of argument.
when was the last time you sent (or received) an e-mail outside of the context of work, or to interact with a company?
> Pick up the phone
apple and google make the phones! my network provider is also a private company, too, they have no requirement to provide me a phone service.
> Leave your house to talk to people and do things
people no longer go to their friends front doors without calling ahead/planning first. millennials (my generation) aren't great at spontaneity in this regard. gen Z are even worse.
> Find something enjoyable to do with all of the free time you've gained now that you're off of social media and HN
i already don't use most social media. i don't go on facebook, twitter, tik tok, etc. i watch youtube videos and go on hacker news, and even then i rarely interact.
but if apple cut me off of icloud, facebook from whatsapp, etc. my life would be difficult enough. it would only take a couple of other companies to make it a nightmare. how many stories have landed on the HN front page about how a sudden dismissal from google has really screwed up someones online (and often real) life? and these are just the ones we here about..
private social media isn't the problem (although it is a problem). i'm saying that so much of our lives are very tightly embedded with a handful of private companies, and them having control over that isn't a great way to be.
This morning, a few hours ago.
> apple and google make the phones! my network provider is also a private company, too, they have no requirement to provide me a phone service.
No, there are plenty of other phone manufacturers besides Apple and Google. Just as there are plenty of phone service providers, both mobile and VoIP. If they are all blocking/refusing you service, that would be quite a story, and I might change my opinion, but I've never heard of that happening.
> millennials (my generation) aren't great at spontaneity in this regard. gen Z are even worse.
I'm a older/early millenial (Xennial to some people). I agree with you but I don't see how you'd ever be completely blocked from using a phone.
> private social media isn't the problem (although it is a problem). i'm saying that so much of our lives are very tightly embedded with a handful of private companies, and them having control over that isn't a great way to be.
I agree with you 100%. The way to regain control is not to use the government to force them to provide a platform to racists, it's to ensure that you disentangle yourself from their systems as much as you can. Make sure you have a plan for what to do if your Whatsapp or iCloud account is banned by an algorithm with no recourse.
Are irreversible algorithmic bans the best way for companies to operate? Clearly not, it sucks. And maybe there's room for legal solutions to mandate open appeals processes, etc. But the alternative of forcing companies to give everyone a platform is way worse, IMHO.
surely you must recognize that you are likely in the minority of e-mail users?
> Just as there are plenty of phone service providers
two or three, really. and many areas in the US are limited to one or two.
> If they are all blocking/refusing you service, that would be quite a story, and I might change my opinion, but I've never heard of that happening.
didn't trump's twitter platform get banned from all the common cloud providers? is it that much more ridiculous to think that they would be unable to colo with anyone?
to be clear, i'm personally happy that it doesn't exist, and this isn't the same thing. but just because i don't agree with it... i know it's not the same thing as what we're talking about, but i don't think you don't need to squint too hard to see the parallel and the precedent.
> but I don't see how you'd ever be completely blocked from using a phone
indeed, i'd still be able to use my nokia 3310, and predictive text my way around social life, but it would be an incomplete existence (these days).
in any case, you don't need to be blocked from using a phone. you need only be blocked from using the various platforms that people use today.
No, I don't recognize that. Citation needed.
> didn't trump's twitter platform get banned from all the common cloud providers? is it that much more ridiculous to think that they would be unable to colo with anyone?
I don't know, but as to your last question, yes, that's ridiculous, as there are thousands of datacenters out there.
Besides, Trump's twitter platform is not a person. It's a business with many more resources than the the vast majority of individuals have. It's dangerous to start from the principle that this organization should have the same rights as a natural person.
> two or three, really. and many areas in the US are limited to one or two.
You're talking about mobile providers. I specifically mentioned mobile and VoIP and you cut that part out. I'm done here as you don't seem to be willing to have an honest discussion.
fair enough. finding data wasn't easy. the best i could get that is somewhat related was this article from 2015 on teenage communication habits, which states that around 6% of teens use e-mail to communicate daily with their friends[1] (making it the least used form of communication). and this is pre-tiktok, so i'd expect this number to have decreased.
> Besides, Trump's twitter platform is not a person.
indeed, but the people using probably were. not that that's important: constitutionally, corporations have the same protections as people, indeed the US legal fiction of corporate personhood is practically a meme now. from [2]:
> Since the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, upholding the rights of corporations to make unlimited political expenditures under the First Amendment [...]
so it appears the supreme court agrees that free-speech protections apply to corporations.
> yes, that's ridiculous, as there are thousands of datacenters out there.
well then, where is the site now?
> I specifically mentioned mobile and VoIP and you cut that part out.
apologies, i presumed you understood that the IP in VoIP indicates that an internet connection is required for the voice to go over, and that without a mobile service provider, that could be.. logistically challenging :)
> I'm done here as you don't seem to be willing to have an honest discussion.
:/ ok then, i guess.
[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/08/06/teens-techno...
of course not. if you choose to block me, i am not prevented from communicating with others.
> What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people?
the algorithm is the problem: if you subscribe/follow, you should see all the content (this is how facebook used to be).
When you sign up for a service that moderates content that's what happens.
The thing that has historically made a company bound to free speech is whether or not the government requires them to specifically search for certain types of infringing content. Coincidentally, this is the current legal framework that makes reporting images of child abuse legal: companies can voluntarily choose to to either not scan for CSAM, or can choose to scan for CSAM and must report it to NCMEC if they find any, and Apple is a prime example of a company that doesn't scan for it[0].
If the government is asking a company to go searching for specific otherwise legal content, that would be pretty good evidence for a court case to be made.
0: "Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years!" https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NC...
Try it. The DNS providers will delist you, cloudfare will ban you, AWS etc etc. You’ll lose your bank accounts too.
This isn’t a game to the other side, we have freedom in theory but little in practice.
You are unwilling to confront the idea of Twitter censoring true things that you agree with but by your own principles you'd find this agreeable.
Please don't presume what I am or am not willing to do.
I am perfectly willing to confront the idea that Twitter is censoring true things that I agree with: it's fine with me. I'm not sure if they're already doing that, but they have every right to, just as I have every right to use (or create) an alternative platform.
Compuserve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#Legal_cases
Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
Legal Eagle video if you prefer his video format: https://youtu.be/eUWIi-Ppe5k?t=243
We choose moderation constantly in our lives, intentionally.
Interesting that you bring up that example, because private malls are absolutely required to follow certain public accommodations laws, depending on the jurisdiction.
So, just like private malls are forced to do certain things by the government, people are saying that a similar set of public accommodations, that we already force malls to do, should be extended to other platforms.
EX: https://www.aclusocal.org/en/know-your-rights/protesters
"Shopping malls must allow speech activity subject to reasonable time, place and manner rules— ask your local mall for their rules."
You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike.
In that case however I would also like the possibility to turn off any algorithms that recommend stuff to me. I want to see only things i put on my whitelist, otherwise i will have to constantly moderate and it will take up loads of my time.
As long as that doesn't happen I am more than happy to let others do the moderation based on some frameworks that I agreed on (ToS in Twitters case).
But I'm not sure how it could work without having users agree to a new ToS frequently, due to things like the Euphemism Treadmill: https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-t...
That’s fair. Twitter is far from the public square. To lazy journalists and addicts, sure. But plenty of discourse manages just fine without it.
Are you claiming that the _government_ is censoring Twitter?
1. Newspapers and Twitter should be able to and often censor themselves 2. The government shouldn't censor newspapers or Twitter.
I guess a common answer would be “you can move off Twitter, but you can’t leave your country” which is odd two ways: first, if you say you want hate and misinfo banned from Twitter (whatever those mean) shouldn’t you want that for all other big platforms? And it’s very possible to move abroad while not spreading hate and fake facts in the meantime, isn’t it?
He has no background with any org that works on protecting free speech. He hasn't done work with the ACLU.
Billionaires buying media companies has been great for broadcasting the billionaire perspective, but mixed at best on free speech.
A lot of people currently decrying moderation activities on US social media sites as being against free speech are the same people supporting bills, mostly in state governments, that limit free speech.
https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1009186716593393664
Contrast: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-our-new-aclu-11589...
This is why people tend to roll their eyes at the WSJ opinion section. (The journalism side, to be clear, is top-notch.)
Obviously the internment of Japanese folks during WWII was far more intrusive than the COVID restrictions. But that doesn't contradict the statement--they didn't say "the harshest restrictions" or "the most egregious restrictions", they said "the most sweeping restrictions". The word sweeping is an adjective meaning 'wide in range or effect'. It is simply a matter of fact that the COVID restrictions, which affected ~40 million people and resulted in the closure of 40,000 businesses, were a more sweeping restriction on liberty than the internment of 120,000 Japanese during the War.
The only comparably broad measure you've listed is wartime rationing. But the fact that wartime rationing was as broad in scope as the COVID restrictions hardly renders the WSJ's claim absurd.
The Sedition Acts variably restricted the First Amendment rights to criticize the government of anyone in the country.
How are these not broad?
Is it possible that you, like the WSG, enganged in a bit of hyperbole to tru to make a point?
To be clear, I think the WSG claim is hyperbole. However it is a claim that could be reasonably argued to be correct and is thus not literally "absurd". Thus I would class is as hyperbolic and your use of the word as figurative.
This is especially odd coming from the privacy maximalists at HN. How long would it take you to report a Twitter account that Tweeted out your live location daily? Be honest.
And then you use the word 'silence' which is far more ominous than saying that he offered the kid $5000 for what was about 15 minutes of python.
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-ci...
Which state government bills are you referring to?
(For the record, I am very far left, but from a time when true free speech was a sacred left value.)
What, exactly, is it saying the ACLU did? What, exactly, is it referring to? The only sentence that even attempts to answer that question is: “an ACLU official said it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.”
That statement is a fact. Hate speech is explicitly exempt from U.S. Free Speech protections. If you’re going to defend Free Speech, please read a little about the limitations on Free Speech, and some of the history that brought about those limitations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations
Limits on Free Speech is as much a conservative value as a liberal value. Framing this as a leftist takeover of “woke” values is a thinly veiled misinformation FUD campaign designed to confuse you about what U.S. values are and convince you liberals are attacking, while hypocritically doing all the attacking. Don’t let this junk work on you, stay curious and seek verifiable facts, not tribal opinion.
Your own link makes it clear that in the US, hate speech is protected speech.
"Hate speech is also protected by the First Amendment in the United States, as decided in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, (1992) in which the Supreme Court ruled that hate speech is permissible, except in the case of imminent violence"
The internal ACLU policy is apparently now to consider politics when deciding which speech to defend. As a private organization they're free to make those choices but it's disappointing to see them retreat from the values that I and other liberals hold dear.
https://fee.org/articles/the-aclu-is-no-longer-free-speechs-...
And I am perfectly well aware of what real US values are. Condescending advice from someone ignorant about basic Constitutional law is not helpful or appreciated.
That’s not true. The US restricts speech that incites imminent criminal behavior. That’s all.
The ACLU is famous for defend a Nazi rally through a Jewish town of Skokie, IL.
That ACLU is dead now.
In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, the ACLU and ACLU of Massachusetts argue that Boston’s denial of Camp Constitution’s request to display its flag violated the group’s free-speech rights
On March 2nd 2022. You made the claim the ACLU is dead , what evidence do you have to support that?
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/8/20/16167870/aclu-hat...
I would argue Starlink occupies that role.
Please do. What is Starlink doing to protect free speech?
That's on an order of magnitude difference than the world's richest meme-sharer purchasing the software company that provides the meme-sharing infrastructure.
It’s incredible how many smart people in the freest country in the world are asking to have their freedoms removed without considering who may inherit those rights.
Do you mean that, if I say "this war is bad!" I may be "arrested" and "tried" and then put in a jail for 15 years (or just vanish, or be dropped from a helicopter over the ocean).
Or do you mean if I tweet "I'll <wink wink> 2nd amendment those Hajis!" my tweet won't be seen by 12 million people rather than "promoted" by some algorithm?
Freedom of speech, as denoted in the United States Constitution, is a set of limits around the government behaviors. U.S. Government behaviors.
The dose makes the medicine.
You may say - "Well twitter is bigger" - There are competitors and you aren't forced to use it.
Or "I want to reach the largest audience" - Why should a private company spend its own resources to help you spread your message.
You came from a country without freedom of speech? How would it have helped if the government just kills its enemies or arrests them on bogus charges?
Certain subsets of population love to hijack discussions by forcing the latter meaning[0]—they break the phrase up into separate words and take them as absolutes. Yet the reality is that free speech in absolute sense doesn’t exist: a bit like free market, in a world where malicious actors exist at all, it has to be subject to limits (moreover, in any culture there are its own taboos defining additional unwritten constraints).
The first meaning is what “free speech” refers to in any meaningful political discussion about free speech. It is fundamentally vital in a democracy, and no sane person would qualify it as absolute.
Fine aspects of what conditional free speech actually implies could be a worthy topic. Off the top of my head, free speech is where you don’t need to censor yourself provided you are of sound mind and do not mean harm, but this is not very precise. How should we define the limits of free speech on a meta level? Is it their vagueness that causes distress? Once the terminological ambiguity is settled, meaningful debate becomes possible.
[0] I believe in most cases such individuals have their own agenda to push, and one would become equally opposed to absolute free speech as soon as their preferred agenda is implemented.
This isn’t the free speech of the 1900’s. Social media is a game changer and a possible weapon of mass destruction - imo.
Free speech to me doesn’t mean you get to say everything everywere. Try standing up in a restaurant and shout political propaganda - you’re gonna get thrown out.
Neither you nor the era in which you live are special enough to erode generations of protections for the ability to think freely, speak freely, and to do so without fear of repercussions.
Personally, I think he's just a troll with a ton of money. This is 'fun' for him.
Musk is the person who claimed that the SEC was violating his free speech rights for investigating him over market manipulation. I would argue the SEC was actually very light on Musk, and it’s clear here again Musk is manipulating the market. If Twitter denies his offer, he will sell after pumping the stock, and he already indicated that in his offer letter in order to soften claims of market manipulation. If Twitter accepts his offer, he gets massive control over his “free” speech.
The bias here is quite clear across all your comments
35 seconds in
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan
Sounds perfectly free to me!
A member of a far-right nationalist party was condemned to a 800£ fine for teaching his pet to do the Nazi salute when he hears "Sieg Heil" and also react to the phrase "gas the Jews", and post it on YouTube.
The trial seems to have been over less than a month after it was opened, but "hellish" is subjective enough that it might still apply.
The trial itself was fast, but he had two years of waiting with the charges (and potential jail time) hanging over his head.
In any case, would you support similar legal action against the creators of Father Ted?
It tends to be how they're most commonly described, so - independent of whether you think that's accurate - it is certainly not "strange"
I was simply going by Wikipedia's definition[0].
I don't know anything about your YouTube link.
This is one case where an equivalence argument is actually valid. To be blunt: your view is dangerous and ought to be regarded as reprehensible by anyone who actually values a free society.
Furthermore, it's a bullshit false equivalency that a Nazi, who wants to at the very least discriminate people, is somehow equal to a random person who would get discriminated against. Or a racist and any random person. Those are not the same, and don't deserve the same protections.
Let's call this the paradox of rationalization: those quickest to engage in the behavior tend to be those whose motives for doing so are the least genuine and trustworthy. And anyone with access to the levers of censorship must earn a high degree of trust.
It's not a bullshit false equivalency: every nazi is more or less just some random person with an opinion. Just like you and I are random persons expressing an opinion in this forum. At least, right up until they take action to commit violence--but that's a separate matter.
Hardly. Being a Jew is an immutable trait. Being a Nazi is a behavior choice.
Yes, absolutely, banning Nazism is 100% equivalent to killing Jews. Freedom of speech definitely depends on letting nazis spread their views. Declaring that nazis are bad for society is a dangerous view.
Totally normal things to say.
As is the steady stream of people who take every opportunity to point out how much America sucks.
We recognize the Founders for having the courage to throw off the yoke of an oppressor, and succeed. We honor them for then in the same lifetime laying out a blueprint of government that has reasonably withstood the test of time and managed to remain flexible in spite of some serious adversity.
Is it showing it's age? Probably, Is it long overdue for a strong reaffirmation? Probably also. Does it instill in any one particular dude the absolute unquestionable right to rule over anyone else? No. No it doesn't.
The American Experiment, though the institutions of today hedge more on the side of "we'll be the judge of whether you can do that" was fundamentally a novel effort at it's time. It enumerated the Governments specific powers and limits, then dumped the rest of the power in the people to do with as they will.
Completely different beasts.
I think you win the hottest take award with that one ;)
Here i can be jailed for advocating genocide, but cannot be fired from work for disagreeing with latest woke positions.
Who has better freedom of speech?
Also, when the woke people take over your government, there's no bright line rule that says, "You can't put people in jail for speech." Now you don't lose your job for disagreeing with the latest woke positions, you go to jail. In the US that bright line rule does exist, so they are limited to just trying to get you fired from your job.
It's obvious to me who has better freedom of speech.
It's not an exact analogy, and there are features like mute and block that are less severe than removing someone from a platform, but people generally don't want to individually deal with every person who decides that being miserable to others is the best use for social media.
In other words. If you get thrown out of hn, you can try reddit, but you may end up enjoing 4chan. If you go to jail, it will be because of something you did, not something you said.
In other words: It is all free speech, and we, the other people, have an equal right not to listen to you.
Not listening would be you choosing to ignore someone. You don't have the right to throw them to the curb for expressing an opinion.
Really, it's like HN has fallen three standard deviations on the IQ bell curve today.
I think many understand the consequences of highly restricted speech and how much benefit free speech has, including how censorship and tight control on speech has lead to undesirable government regimes historically. What people are really doing is reevaluating the costs side in the new environment where there's no longer a town square, information has the potential to spread to masses quickly, information is more difficult to separate from noise, and those with harmful intent can speak with more anonymity.
I'm a huge fan of free speech but the increasing potential damaging effects can't be completepy ignored. It's better if we can defend against such issues, in my opinion, and protect free speech, not ignore them and go on as is.
https://www.history.com/news/coffee-houses-revolutions
https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/Printed-illustra...
A multi-hundred-billionaire is bidding for a takeover of one of the largest internet public forums. How is this conducive to free speech?
He couldn't possibly be any worse than what we already have.
Twitter is very much an anti-free speech platform at the moment. He's a free speech absolutist. How is the purchase of a wildly biased and censorial platform by a free speech absolutist not conducive to free speech?
Fewer people think Elon has any predilection to locking down what can be said on Twitter.
(I don't know what will happen ultimately, but that's how it could be related.)
That has to do with changing the TOS for users of a private (after buyout) company.
I still fail to see where the "freedom" part enters into all this.
I just don't see the evidence to back this claim up.
Granted, if I really think about it, I am not directly harmed either way. The fact that this is one of our fiercer debates is probably a good sign of our decadence lol
Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.
We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.
Both are both. There is no country (AFAIK) in the world where there are no restrictions on speech.
I think another distinction needs to be drawn: Moderation of communities that is organized and controlled by the community is structurally different from externally imposed rules and standards.
There are structural power issues with the latter that need to be acknowledged and which should lead to to try to limit it where feasible.
I believe the proper solution here is social networks that are open, distributed, and federated. It is not for government or advertisers to decide what speech must, or must not, be discussed in the open.
Why is Twitter really important? This is really the crux of it for me. Ever since mass communications, the news was the arbitrator of opinion. It was common for journalists of prominent newspapers (like the NYT) to declare themselves "kingmakers" in elections, even presidential ones. How they portrayed a candidate directly affected his or her outcome in a significant way. If journalists at the NYT thought a candidate wasn't a "serious candidate", they wouldn't get much coverage, or that coverage would be intentionally unflattering. Social media breaks that barrier down because now the politicians can circumvent the news as a middleman of information and we can now have discussions of ideas on a fairly large scale without requiring the news to deliver that information.
Once Twitter becomes just another arbitrator of information, then we've regressed as a society back to the times where all our information was filtered by "kingmakers." Instead of a new world with much more available contact with our political class, we digress to the way it was before, the only difference is we have new arbitrators.
Slippery slope arguments are a slippery slope to never doing anything to improve anything.
It's always a balance between letting 20% of hateful crazy troll Nazis hijack all rational conversation, on the one hand, and blocking unpopular opinions on the other hand. Even HN moderates a lot.
Same applies to all the rights enumerated in the US Constitution, you have freedom of religion to the extent it doesn't infringe on the other important rights and provisions of the Constitution. Polygamy is banned. If your religion says servitude of women or Black people is God's will, you don't get to practice it. 2nd Amendment however broadly interpreted doesn't let you build a nuclear weapon in your backyard.
Also true, a lot of people want to block legitimate speech they don't want to hear and should be resisted. The first step toward fascism is indeed people not caring about free speech and thinking their personal discomfort is the most important thing, starting with the most powerful. Protesters get arrested and kettled, Colin Kaepernick loses his contracts. You're not going to stop the powerful from trying. It's never 'cancel culture' when state legislatures cancel women, minorities, gay or trans people, it's only 'cancel culture' when those people call out the powerful.
We need free speech, but letting liars and extremists run the public square and destroy all decency isn't the answer either. You need to protect free speech by having reasonable rules and norms.
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." - George Washington
When it comes to private vehicles for speech, the right to amplify or attenuate speech carried on these vehicles is itself a free speech right.
Newspapers can exercise editorial judgment. Forums can create policies. These policies can be regarding how discourse is conducted, they can even be topical. Your Math Professor can shut down your classmate's extemporaneous treatise about the gold standard taking up time in linear algebra class. Time, place, and manner matter.
Everyone has a right and a responsibility to curate conversation in a way that serves the discourse for their sphere of influence -- except the state itself.
Everyone also has the right and responsibility to create a new forum or sphere to discuss ideas they feel aren't being poorly served elsewhere. Or, if they wish, any ideas without limitation at all.
Uh, we already do that. Fraud, defamation, uttering threats, false advertising, perjury, filing a false report, etc.
At this point the distinction that matters is what we choose to protect from such ideas.
"Keira Knightly is anorexic" is an idea that is illegal -- https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/may/24/dailymail.pres...
"Climate change is fake" is, apparently, not one.
Sometimes I think "free speech" is a misnomer, and the common phrase should be "freedom of discourse."
Fraud, defamation, threats, perjury etc aren't really discourse. They don't serve ideas (and in fact, tend to do violence to ideas).
In any case, you're correct that 1st amendment and other free speech rights are not unlimited indulgences that excuse one from certain legal obligations to be truthful, or to not threaten. In spite of this, the US and most industrialized democracies remain remarkably supportive of freedom of discourse from a state perspective.
---
1) "I'm skeptical about climate change"
2) "Climate science is obviously very wrong, the Earth is changing on its own."
3) "Climate change is fake and it's a conspiracy"
4) "Climate change is fake because George Soros is trying to hurt America so his secret Jewish cabal can rule the world"
5) "Climate change is fake because George Soros is trying to hurt America so his secret Jewish cabal can rule the world and here are specific plans for the violence necessary to stop it"
---
We cross the line into "not truthful" at 2. Moderation doesn't take it seriously until 4. Law enforcement doesn't take it seriously until 5, if ever.
And there probably should be forums which have content standards based on truth according to the best efforts of those running the place to determine the truth. Perhaps not every forum should be that way, but some could be, and I think that's the standard that things like scientific journals aspire to.
#4/#5 -- I have questions about whether police/executive enforcement should be directly dealing with cases like this, but it certainly seems to me that people would be within their freedom of discourse rights to take someone making those statements to court. And courts are also places where questions of truth/fact are taken seriously along with questions of law, and obligation to be truthful solidly outweighs any freedom some might imagine they have to lie.
1 and 2 are opinions
3, 4, and 5 are false
An opinion can't be falsifiable
Namely, trust in the institutions.
How many facts that form the bedrock of your worldview have you, personally, verified? Have you, personally, walked down the chain of evidence for certain scientific (i.e. falsifiable) claims and personally attempted to falsify them?
I didn't think so.
Yeah right, saying me not listening to a screaming preacher on the street is the same as the state locking them away is why I don't listen to free speech absolutists. Me having a blocklist or using an app to construct one is not an impediment to your freedom anymore than me changing the channel on my TV is an impediment to the freedom of a random news anchor editorializing.
If you really want to support free speech then support the right to not listen. They go hand in hand. Stop trying to force people to be captive audiences then we might have a starting point.
Furthermore, because these behaviors nominally involve something that resembles an act of speech, people occasionally try to defend said acts on "free speech" grounds and call the curtailment of censorship acts itself a form of censorship. This is a mistake. Fringe extremists are not merely "spreading their ideas", they are chilling other people's speech. This is just as much of a danger to society as the banning of other people's views that you mentioned.
[0] auth-left inclusive, fuck tankies
Do you believe you should be able to walk into any television station and step in front of a camera?
Free speech is not free soapbox.
No, it all started with your citizens giving up on democracy. They probably chose safety or convenience or stability (economic, probably) or a mix of them.
That's how all democracies fail (barring ones invaded by other countries). People don't want them anymore.
Where people really want democracy, they fight for it.
It's that simple. Yet unbelievably hard to manage in practice.
We have freedom of speech in that the government cannot persecute us for what we say.
We do not have the right to commandeer other people’s resources without their permission to rebroadcast what we want to say.
Speech/information needs to be processed/filtered/analyzed. People may not be equipped to deal with certain information - hence we try to manage it externally and internally.
Suppressing from of information starts at early, at childhood. We try not bombard our children with all the information indiscriminately. We curate and provide age appropriate information to ensure optimal development and growth.
Once a person becomes adult they are supposed to gather and process information on their own. However, even as adults we are susceptible to deception. Our judgement can be fooled, feeling can override our logic.
In conclusion, I think there's a need for curation of the information/speech. Not forbidding it outright, but certainly to help humans discern facts from fiction, for example.
I think that's wrong. Speech is sending signals that are converted into information. The difference is, the information can be good or bad depending on what you already have. If we go with the usual Hitler example, Hitler's speech makes people take other people into concentration camps only if they are already inclined into doing it(i.e. if you air the Hitler speech in USA, Americans don't start putting the Jews on trains). Therefore, limiting Hitler's speech is like fighting infection with painkillers when you actually need antibiotics.
Twitter has nothing to do with freedom of speech though.
Or, to put it in a non-ambiguous way, Twitter is about freedom of speech as much as Coca-Cola is about "right to food, and its variations" [1].
But meanwhile, first world countries are significantly less likely to slip into full on authoritarianism and generally do better in that regards.
Was this the government restricting speech, or private enterprise?
if private businesses had to uphold the same standards the internet would very quickly devolve into every space becoming 4chan... you'd see people protesting inside of stores, it would be a mess
maybe there's a call to make a platform like twitter a public utility, that would possibly solve it, but what a thorny situation that would be... I imagine the rules would likely be more restrictive than they are now, despite censorship laws. I'd guess they'd want to strip anonymity as well.
This is such an oversimplification that it verges on being a straw man argument.
You talk about authoritarian take-overs. Your problem wasn’t limitations on free speech. It was that people who didn’t care about laws got into positions of power, and enough people in that country didn’t care enough when the law was ignored.
Authoritarians don’t care about precedents or laws. If a law is causing them problems they’ll change it. It happens all the time. And an ignorant or misinformed population can be easily distracted with red herrings like xenophobia and homophobia.
There’s been a rise in fringe extremists in the US. Many of them are ardent supporters of Donald Trump, who benefitted tremendously from the megaphone that Twitter provided, a company that isn’t even 20 years old and yet has come to represent freedom of speech somehow and arguably helped him get elected. This is the same man who launched an all out attack on elections, one of the tenets of the democracy; a man who also threatened to cut off access to White House press briefings to any news channel that attacked him; a man who sent the police on peaceful protesters in DC just so he could do a photo-op. All of those are serious attacks on democracy, and he has faced zero consequences, Twitter or no Twitter. Why? Because his zealot supporters are too busy trying to ban books, limiting abortion and bringing back an LGBT rights as a major political topic to care.
Extremism is dangerous too. Electing people who don’t care about the law is dangerous. Once those are allowed to fester and take over, democracy is already in grave danger and laws or precedents won’t provide much help.
As if that was just random ordering and not a statement in and of itself.
Ask somebody involved in a merger how "free" their speech is.
Or somebody involved in a court case.
At issue is what we choose to protect from harmful lies.
Wealthy people with good access to lawyers can sue for defamation. A courtroom is protected by perjury laws. Business is protected from fraud.
And yet the tools to fight the COVID pandemic are beneath protection? Minorities are beneath protection?
Look at the Americans -- half the country still thinks the election was stolen, and the only people facing consequences for that are the ones who lied about Dominion Voting Solutions because there a business had standing to show damages.
Free speech online has been tried, the end result is 4chan, which gave way to Qanon. When fascism takes hold in the first world, it will be "free speech" without any protection of truth that ushered it there.
If there is no limit to free speech is it not possible that lies and falsehoods are so potent that spreading them leads to an authoritarian fascist police state?
There is a line that has to be drawn, for me it is solidly on the free-speech end of the scale, but absolutely not "unlimited".
I hope enough people will recognize when an idea is moving a society from democracy to autocracy and in this case all options to stop the autocrat should be used, including shutting down their ideas.
Trump walked very close to the line with his big lie on the legitimacy of the last US presidential election.
I do believe that there need to be limits on free speech and we also need to have means of equalising speech because otherwise we end up in the situation that the person with the loudest voice (the biggest resources) can say whatever they want and nobody else gets heard.
He, and others like him, never lost their right to free speech. Nothing stops them from creating their own website (which he has), or saying anything they want on the numerous platforms that do support them. They just lost access to social media platforms which by gamified design make spreading information (and misinformation) to the masses incredibly easy, so easy that a group of people were actually convinced that they had a mandate to attack the capitol to stop a cabal of pedophiles from stealing the 2020 election, a mandate from a president who at any time was going to unleash a flurry of indictments that would expose and jail the leaders of the Democratic Party.
I don't know what the right answer is, but January 6th was an event that proved that something was truly out of control. The 1st amendment is not going anywhere, but I do support efforts to make it at least a little harder, or rather not so ridiculously easy, to spread lies that can ravage a country's democratic processes. I know that sounds anti-free speech, but again, the U.S. Capitol was sacked by a group of people inspired by lies on social media, and I think we need to acknowledge we live in a new world because of that.
I remember Trump being suppressed for many months on Twitter, his tweets censored, labelled as misinformation, and information damaging to his opponent was suppressed and labelled as 'disinformation'. By now, many of those claims have been proven to be false.
People cheering Trump's ban never ask themselves a question, what if this was a candidate they supported? They somehow magically think that no, they'll never be supporting such a horrible bad person so that the benevolent Twitter overlords would have to suppress. Yeah, that is absolutely impossible. Right. /s
Can you give a single example of a true statement being suppressed?
"Free speech absolutism"? Sounds more to me like ignorance that there are literally teams of data science monitoring social coordinated inauthentic behavior to nip mob violence in the bud. No I don't want Elon Musk anywhere near them.
[1] democracy is a system that only works if everyone thinks the same.
In practice, there is a tension. Absolute free speech is not necessarily safe - the Weimar Republic was a time of unprecedented freedom of expression and it ended badly. The freedom paradox is real: too much freedom can result in the death of freedom, by tolerating anti-freedom movements enough for them to snowball.
Also, you shouldn't assume that these "practical limits" on free speech are new, particularly for the US. In the second postwar period, airing leftist views often resulted in people being put under invasive surveillance - or worse.
There is always a tension in practice, and it's about finding an acceptable set of compromises. Germany is free but you can't print Hitler's works there, and that's just fine.
Just look how russia uses this free speech. Free speech is ok but not with unlimited range.
Internally they ban all opposition media, which is not free speech, it's only hearing from propaganda.
Considering the events of the last 2 months, has Russia really managed to turn the west pro Russia or anti Ukraine at all?
I literally don't understand what you are trying to say.
How well has what Russia done worked? Like how loved is Russia right now in the west? How many people agree with it?
(sidenote: the russia brexit involvement has been 100% disproven. The Trump russia thing has been 100% disproven. The hunter biden laptop was not russian disinformation)
It's unproven but that's not the same
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
Looks more like they tried but with minor effect at most.
How many people reject vaccines? How many belief the governments are controlled by a secret elite? Even flat earthers are linked to russian psyops.
Maybe nobody who greenlighted the licenses to those channels could believe that there are enough idiots domestically who would not recognize it as lies and propaganda? As recent history has proven, there are always enough idiots to believe anything.
If you have absolute free speech, you'll have to allow the media of other countries (China, NK, Russia, who have you) to disseminate propaganda to your citizens until something like Jan. 6th happens.
In other words, the Russian regimes free speech has given rise to authoritarians who would in all likelihood, limit free speech in other countries if or when they rise to power.
“Free speech for me, but not for thee.”
Not just the rise of authoritarian leaders, but promoting both extreme left and extreme right political opinions leading to questioning the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders and the destabilization of free societies.
They didn't use russia's free speech but ours to turn our people against us.
Twitter and Facebook are dangerous because they allow anything that gets them money. Political campaigns and foreign influence campaigns wield armies of bots to spew bullshit.
People of more libertarian bent tend to focus on some idealized vision of free speech. When those platforms enable fascists to overthrow democratic governments, you’ve won the battle and lost the war.
Whiners are free to demand companies to boycott Twitter ads when they see a tweet they don't like. The companies are free to stop buying ads from Twitter. Twitter is free to appease these whiners by moderating speech the way they want it, so they don't lose out on revenue. Elon Musk is free to disagree with that business strategy and buy 10% of Twitter.
Germany has had such a policy regarding holocaust denial for decades, and they don’t appear to be on the verge of tyranny to me. It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be.
From a Twitter / YouTube / Facebook standpoint - it's easier to just block bad content than fix the above problem.
Name a country where that isn’t true.
If you have a huge following and use Twitter to say without evidence "restaurant xyz uses rat meat don't go eat there, or 'Tim Cook has AIDS and will die in 3 months'", then that would be protected by free speech like the right-wingers want it.
But in the Western European model, you could be sued for making those claims and effectively hurting the restaurant, Tim Cook, and the Apple stock price.
I'd rather live in a society where that's not possible without dire consequences for the fraudulent "free speech" abuser.
There need to be equal repercussions for fraudulently claiming abuse, too. Search SLAPP to learn more about the current lack of repercussions against wealthy entities suing journalists.
Interestingly, if fined more than $2,000 (most libel fines are in $100,000's), you are no longer able to hold political office in Singapore. That's also true in the UK (no idea the threshold - I think it's a prison term?).
Interesting way to silence any opposition.
The problem with "Free Speech with consequences" arises when the consequences are increasingly policed by private corporations. Yes, host your own web server etc etc etc, but in reality, Twitter and Facebook really are the new town square.
ridiculous strawman. thats called defamation and you will be sued everywhere for it.
"Go lynch this man" is speech, but is not protected under the First Amendment. And the First Amendment gives much broader protection than most countries' legal systems do.
You've got more free speech if you've got more money.
Absolutism, almost without exception, is an oversimplification. It's easy and facile to defend, but also wrong, in that absolutism by definition ignores all edge cases.
And some of those edge cases can have extremely severe consequences, effectively crashing the system and killing large numbers of people.
YES — the constraints on the ways in which govt can limit free speech should themselves be extremely constrained, precisely because the dangers of government constraints rapidly escalate.
Yet the dangers of disinformation, algorithmically amplified to maximize 'engagement' are also to the level where the system can be crashed and result in mass killings.
The effects of both can be seen from Russia this week. Their massive disinformation campaigns and combined with effective near-total suppression of free speech has 60% to 80% support and almost total suppression of dissent [0][1]. The result here is hundreds of millions of people supporting a genocide in their neighboring country.
Yet completely free access to all media, and not only speech but amplified media platforms can also bring down democracies. The spread of Russian disinformation specifically to increase polarization in democracies is working. It already converted Hungary to an authoritarian state, and France is now very close to falling to an authoritarian party...
The ability to deliberately manipulate the public conversation with tens of thousands of fake accounts is not free speech, it is freely amplified lies [2].
The real problem is that if free speech is converted to free amplification of whatever disinformation any authoritarian state thinks is in its interest, the result will be not more free speech, but the end of democracy and imposition of a far tighter regime on free speech.
Again, look at Hungary - they had an open democracy, and free speech resulted in divisions, and an authoritarian took over. Now, free speech is severely curtailed in order to keep the authoritarian in power.
Is the solution to curtail free speech at the outset? Maybe a little, something like the old Equal Time requirements for broadcast TV, or on social media, accurate identification of the source.
Probably more important and effective than curtailing free speech is to actively and in real-time counter the disinformation. This actually worked in the Ukraine war, as Russian disinformation efforts were countered and called out as the lies that they were within hours, which denied the Russians the cover they had when such pretexts went unchallenged in 2014 as Crimea was invaded.
So, yes speech must be biased very strongly towards the FREE end, but requiring a private platform to amplify any particular speech is just as un-free. If you want an amplified platform for your views that most consider abhorrent, you are FREE to make your own competing platform.
[0] https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/03/11/russian-campaign-depi...
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-05/russian-support-for-p...
[2] https://theconversation.com/russian-embassy-in-canada-weapon...
EDIT: Additionally, it is not exactly a secret that Russia is running bot factories - it is openly mentioned on their mass media [3].
It is not individual speech that needs to be controlled, it is amplified govt and corporate speech abusing the agora that needs to be controlled.
We must understand the difference and apply different rules & repsonses.
[3] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/151442262800988160...
So your first example that springs to mind to prove the simplistic and facile nature of free speech absolutism is a disinformation campaign that expressly rests on the extensive control of free speech within a certain information venue in order to promote that disinformation? How does this make any sense whatsoever?
> It already converted Hungary to an authoritarian state, and France is now very close to falling to an authoritarian party...
And what, exactly, is the information which is not being censored which has resulted in what you claim are objectionable and dangerous results in Hungary and France?
> The ability to deliberately manipulate the public conversation with tens of thousands of fake accounts is not free speech, it is freely amplified lies [2].
So why equate it with free speech aside from to assemble a strawman which you then proceed to knockdown to make your case after just emphasizing yourself they're two different things.
What?
> requiring a private platform to amplify any particular speech is just as un-free.
Is that actually being proposed? Because I haven't seen anything like that?
> you are FREE to make your own competing platform.
This is observably false based on what happened to Parler and Gab. The truth of the matter is that big tech is very hostile to competition and will to the extent they are able outright forbid it. The only way to actually build competitive platforms that do not push their ideological agenda and circumvent their attempts to stop you is to do what Odysee has done, and even there, they're fighting a case against the SEC as we speak, so it's not like they're being left to simply go about their business.
That so many people are taking the position of authoritarians, but presenting it as though they are protecting democracy, is truly baffling to behold. Elon removing these authoritarians from twitter's leadership and employee base, and restoring free speech principles, will be the best thing we've seen for democracy in a long time.
The basic problem with the notion of "censoring misinformation" and even "fact checking" is that the "flat earth" stuff isn't really what anyone cares about. It's the debatable stuff that people have the desire and incentive to censor. That's always the way it works out.
https://www.france24.com/en/20170506-france-media-rules-proh...
Besides, I suppose, emphatically opposing the alternative? Could this be it? Perhaps the alternative side is somehow bad for their business?
I strongly feel this is would explain what you claim to see, something I do not.
What I actually see is that coercion is at the root of your philosophy. Your arguments, demand that you have freedom of action at the expense of others. Your issue is that you are unable to compel compliance. Unsurprising since that concept is at the root of your ideology. Quite transparently, and distastefully so.
Please stop using this quote…
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f...
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
Of course that whole argument was a ruse and I believe that was hypocrisy that will get naturally exposed.
We'll see.
Imagine some ideologue on the other extreme of the political spectrum were to take over (Musk is in my view, mildly libertarian) and suppressed talk about abortion rights, gender equality, police violence, drug liberalization, etc. That's what the extreme left is doing but obviously they have their own, different sacred cows.
What, Boris Johnson attended a party during Covid… hush!!! Trump talked to Putin. No, no, we can’t prove it’s true. Let’s wait till it all boils over and it becomes irrelevant then you can talk.
What is the purpose or turning #bidenflation to #inflation on Twitter?
Understand this: limits on free speech are far more dangerous to society than allowing fringe extremists to spread their ideas. Coming from a country that had made a transition from a (rather messy) democracy to an authoritarian fascist police state in just 15 years, I tell you this: it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.