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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

These tech companies were strated by idealistic young men who were initially all about free speech. They just got ground down from years of mainstream press criticism (who love taking potshots at tech companies), the outrage and 'activist' brigade (who now target their campaigns at platforms and advertisers), advertisers who now freak out over individual tweets and even the new tech elite class (e.g. Kara Swisher of Re/code has been on a personal crusade to get YouTube and Facebook to get adhere to her standards of content).

It's a new world. It's no longer the internet of the 90s and early 2000s.

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The sad thing is they seem to be oblivious to the fact that they are potentially the dominant media being attacked by the legacy media because their idealism worked and they are gaining market-share, but they keep walking away from what made them so successful.

It's because they're beholden to advertisers rather than their users.

The advertisers are the consumers, the users are the product.

The media companies may have killed Napster, but that had no long term effect on piracy.

1 provider falls and 5 more grow from the ashes, less vulnerable than their predecessor.

It plays out the same way every time.

The web still exists very much as it was. You could set up your own site and host any kind of weapons content you wanted assuming it fits with your local legislation. YouTube has no obligation to host your content. It's annoying that the best/most popular/easiest to use video service won't support you/these weapons channels but I don't think it really impacts on _free speech_. Plus, isn't the free speech crowd usually about letting private companies do what they want?

You missed my point. I'm saying companies like YouTube and Reddit wanted to be those kinds of neutral platforms. They just got beaten down and that's kind of sad.

> The web still exists very much as it was.

As a collection of standards, yes. However, trying to find a host for the content that is perceived to be wrong or questionable by the mainstream is now much more difficult. The submission is a case in point. youtube bans gun-related videos not because it is directly bad for their business (on the contrary -- it seems to have an active following), but because lawmakers and media are putting pressure on it to do so. This, in my book, is wrong.

Free speech means arguing against messages one disagrees with, or ignoring them, but not trying to suppress them.

"Free speech means arguing against messages one disagrees with, or ignoring them, but not trying to suppress them."

Agreed, but "I won't provide a platform for this speech" is not "suppressing". If I put up a bulletin board in my front yard and encourage my neighbors to post things there, in general it's eminently reasonable for me to decide that certain things can't be posted - even if my bulletin board becomes the most popular one in town.

(But if it's made "the official town news source" and local government makes certain posting certain things illegal, that's an entirely different kettle of fish.)

Tangentially, there's a 4th option you don't mention for messages one disagrees with - censuring them. (As in "actively and visibly disapproving" - not "censoring"!) For some types of message, the most appropriate response is a firm, unmistakable "That isn't welcome here" / "That's a terrible thing to say" followed by no discussion whatsoever. (Eg: when arguing lends a platform / legitimacy, but ignoring implies acquiescence.)

Your fourth option is perfectly acceptable to me: exercising free speech right to say that original post is a terrible thing to say. However, we should not enforce the "no discussion whatsoever": if either the original speaker or another person wants to argue that it was not in fact a terrible thing to say, let them.

Free speech means arguing against messages one disagrees with, or ignoring them, but not trying to suppress them.

No. Free speech refers to protection from the government censoring or jailing for speech they don't want said. If you're relying on a private company, especially one who retains the rights to take down your video at any time for any reason, to disseminate your speech and you're worried about them doing something with that speech, you're speaking wrong.

I know you mention lawmakers are "pressuring" them to make this change, and if that's true, then yes, this would encroach on our freedom of speech. However, I'm having a hard time finding anything that backs up that claim, and "pressuring" is still very different from a government outright telling YT what may or may not be on the platform.

The US Supreme Court has a different opinion.

They have ruled that private areas acting as public forums are still subject to the first amendment. See Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins [1]

> A state can prohibit the private owner of a shopping center from using state trespass law to exclude peaceful expressive activity in the open areas of the shopping center.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....

As the link you provided states, this decision applies to shopping centers in California, whose state supreme court has narrowed its applicability a few times over the years.

This simply doesn't apply to YouTube.

It’s easier to argue that YouTube, Twitter, etc. are public forums. So it seems to me that the argument would be even stronger.

Probably not. There's a reason why the decision was so narrow - they explicitly didn't want to set a widely applicable precedent.

Read the appeals cases. They curtailed spaces like Costco parking lots and strip malls without plazas or atriums, which are different than "common areas". Free speech in common areas was reaffirmed in 2012.

YouTube is clearly a common area.

> YouTube is clearly a common area.

YouTube isn't even an area, much less a common area. (Not to mention that the “common area” thing is not a federal Constitutional requirement but a judicial application of the positive rights in the California Constitution; it is not a First Amendment right.)

It's a publication in which user submissions that Google accepts will be published, possibly accompanied by ads from which revenue is shared with the submitter.

This is a weak argument, nitpicking semantics. Virtual spaces are protected, too. [1] Telephone systems and television cable systems are not technically "areas" either, yet have protections under the first amendment.

Furthermore, you contradict YouTube's own mission statement:

> Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.

> We believe people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities.

> We believe everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people—not gatekeepers—decide what’s popular.

[1] First Amendment Architecture, Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 2012, No. 1, 2012, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1791125

> Telephone systems and television cable systems are not technically "areas" either, yet have protections under the first amendment.

Users of telephone systems have free speech protections against the operator of those systems not because of the first amendment (and especially not because of applications of that to physical common areas against private property owners, which applications don't actually exist—the First Amendment has specifically and repeatedly been held not to apply even in that case against the property owner), but because of common carrier regulations.

> Furthermore, you contradict YouTube's own mission statement:

YouTube's PR has very little impact on how constitutional law applies to it.

You keep editing your comments, so not sure what I'm responding to anymore. Anyway, I think it's disingenuous to argue that YouTube is not a common space, given that's how they describe themselves and how any reasonable person would describe their platform. Then to argue that virtual spaces are not protected by the first amendment contradicts the principles of free speech, and recent case law.

> Then to argue that virtual spaces are not protected by the first amendment contradicts the principles of free speech, and recent case law.

Since the citation upthread notes that even physical privately-owned common spaces are not protected by the first amendment against regulation by the owner of the space [0], though the first amendment rights of the owner also do not prevent state constitutions (California's in particular) from creating free speech obligations which do bind certain private owners of an extremely narrow class of public spaces, I think it is impossible to argue that virtual spaces are somehow protected under the first amendment by analogy to private common spaces, since the latter aren't actually protected.

[0] there is, IIRC, a different line of cases applying narrowly to government's or individual government official's use of privately owned physical spaces as a quasi-official two-way channel which does create some first amendment protection in that narrow context, and these principles have been extended to online fora, but that's not germane here.

> They have ruled that private areas acting as public forums are still subject to the first amendment

No, they've ruled the opposite, as your own source explicitly states. Pruneyard permitted California to impose free speech obligations on property owners via the State Constitution that the Supreme Court had previously found were not required under the First Amendment. (In effect, it found that the federal First Amendment rights of the property owner did not extend to blocking the state action.)

You are describing the First Amendment, not the concept of free speech.

This is a tired argument. Pretty much everyone knows the legal definition of free speech, pointing it out isn't doing anyone a service on HN.

Free speech is not simply a law. It's a concept society must both value and uphold, or it is a right only the popular and powerful have. If I can't even speak up outside work about my unpopular political beliefs without the economic death penalty - do we really have free speech? I'd argue not really. I don't care too much that the government can't jail me for it - that's a pretty low bar.

While I do agree Youtube has the right to ban whatever they like on their platform, I don't have to think it's a good thing for society - and I will absolutely continue to call these things an erosion of my free speech in society.

Without citizens that vehemently uphold free speech policies, the entire concept folds as soon as we start carving out ever-longer lists of exceptions of those who do not have it.

> Plus, isn't the free speech crowd usually about letting private companies do what they want?

You can believe that a private company has the right to do something but also be opposed to them exercising that right.

There's a difference between free speech as a legal principle and free speech as a moral principle. I personally support both, so while I acknowledge that YouTube has a legal right to restrict speech, I still disagree with their use of that right in this case.

That seems like a missaligned view. The internet from the 90s and turn of the century is still around; hell the tools for creating federated communities and reaching niche groups are stronger than ever. The likes of Reddit, Youtube at least on the scale to which they pivoted to companies looking to make cash, were never really part of that set.

I'd go so far as to say the early communities of the internet were, as a rule, more moderated (either explicitly or implicitly) that even these new rules.

Whoever hosts the service (and as a corollary those that pay them) determines the moderation. The thing about "free speech" (taken to mean unmoderated speech) is that's not something you can build a healthy community on top of. No one got "torn down" by nebulous "mainstream" forces; it's just bad business. All hail the invisible hand of capitalism.

You want to start a personal crusade to change YouTube and Facebook’s standards, go ahead, that’s your first amendment right. Just don’t go taking sideswipes at others for exercising theirs.

I can't critize media personalities for their public viewpoints?

What kind of standard are you actually advocating for?

Sounds like they want you censored for asking questions.

If you can’t see the problem with criticising someone’s position on the basis that they’re not allowed to criticise other people’s positions there’s no helping you.

>on the basis that they’re not allowed to criticise other people’s positions

Where did I argue that?

Kara Swisher has the same right to her opinion as everyone else. I do stand by my statement that she's part of a new wave of tech 'elites' who are brown-beating tech companies into accepting certain kinds of ideologically-based standards of conduct. Nowhere did I even imply she doesn't have a right to do that, but I can certainly criticize her for it. Doubly-so because she's a public opinionator with a significant public platform.

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