Say you have a committee of 9 people? What's your cut-off? There isn't a clear answer - especially as norms change a bit and the committee members change.
It’s his company and he can do what he wants with it. Any rules can be changed at any time without recourse.
I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Well, it might be bad for Twitter the service, but as far as legal governance, it’s the way it works.
But any type of council should be considered advisory at best.
Of course, a corollary is that they should be able to filter content on a per country basis because, obviously, what's legal differs from country to country, but I think there is no escap8ng that for any platforms that claims to be global.
Frog's Law of Social Media: free speech or advertising revenue - choose one.
It's shocking that HN commenters could be so toxic, indeed.
Any content moderation needs to extend beyond "Legal? (Y/N)" unless your main goal is to drive any real community away.
It's a big regression from the heights of the enlightenment, or just the recent past, in my opinion.
Or r/conservative banning people who have posted on any one of a number of other subreddits, sometimes before they've even posted in r/conservative?
Edit:
Not only that but also transparently disingenuous. I don't know r/conservative (my comments are not about liberal vs conservative and I find odd that you and others immediately frame them that way) but a dedicated 'conservative' subreddit is obviously not the same as Twitter, which, again as become the de facto standard for most political and news communication.
What I'm asking you is if you think that those forums should also be required to say "Legal (Y/N)?" and if not, why not?
I think most reasonable people would reject the assertion that twitter is the de facto standard. It isn't even in the top 10 for social media platforms by active monthly users, and usage and value of a platform varies way too much depending on age and gender. While twitter is possibly the de facto standard for gen-x + millennials and certain career groups such as politicians and journalists, it certainly won't be for 18-25 year olds. Facebook still has nearly 10x the monthly active users of twitter, in fact Twitter barely beats out Quora.
Ignoring the argument about it being the de facto standard, Twitter is a business. I expect that Elon would like to make money off of his $44B investment. In the battle between the free market and free speech, the free market will almost always win. If twitter goes the extreme free speech route, users who are often targeted by loud jerks, trolls and harassers will leave the platform. It will create bad press both in the form of people complaining about harassment as well as other businesses pulling ads where their customers or potential customers were harassed.
I notice you didn't mention Parler, though. That one's a bit harder to dance around. The "Premier Global Free Speech App". Surely that should allow all legal speech, right?
This would obviously fall well within the protections of free speech for many countries, certainly those of the U.S. And if you really wanted to you can go much nastier than that.
But I don't think it should be allowed here, or even on Twitter. Even using as an example here already feels iffy, but I feel adding it makes the point clearer.
If Twitter is the de facto standard and akin to an utility why should they make decisions on what's allowed beyond lawfulness?
My point is that allowing "anything that's within the law" will lead to some pretty unpleasant stuff.
> If Twitter is the de facto standard and akin to an utility why should they make decisions on what's allowed beyond lawfulness?
I don't think Twitter is the "de-facto standard" or akin to an utility, and the problem is that by allowing such content you would drive away a lot of people who would rather not be buried with insults and nastiness every time they post something.
There are loads of places where speech is regulated in some way, and you can't just go off on a expletive-laden rant at any moment. If I go to a Biden or Trump Q&A townhall meeting and start shouting abuse at him I will be removed as well.
In addition, whether a certain moderation approach would "drive away people" is a strawman. This is not the question.
That was not my intention; I'm genuinely trying to engage constructively and in good faith.
You stated that "anything that's within the law should be allowed", and I'm trying to examine what that would mean and what effects it would have. With an extreme example, yes, but that is the sort of stuff that would be allowed under your proposed policy. Now, if you think that's an acceptable trade-off: fair enough, I can't argue with that. But I don't think it can merely be brushed aside with "that's extreme", because in my experience things like that will be posted, usually by a small (but very active) group of people.
> In addition, whether a certain moderation approach would "drive away people" is a strawman. This is not the question.
The question is what effect this policy would have. This is, in my opinion, one of them.
In the crazy clown world in which we live, Twitter could theoretically kick off all the advertisers and become Elon Musk's self-promotion platform (which it already is), but I doubt the other investors would go along with this.
So in this case, free speech and the free market are at odds.
Hmmm, if I had a laundry detergent company I'd totally support tailored ads for Pornhub. "Forgot to take your dress off before the bukkake scene? Don't worry! DirtBlaster Detergent can handle even the crustiest of stains!"
You've actually got me thinking about the viability of this across a spectrum of common consumer products.....
I think its fair to say the committee will end up being a scapegoat - but to be charitable to the idea in general its pretty clear that not 100% or even 75% of the population thinks that Babylon Bee should be banned. If you have a system where one voice on the committee can ban someone then most liberal comedians would be banned for played up reasons, too.