But we already know that Facebook excludes free speech: simply attempt to post a photograph containing bare female breasts on Facebook or a Facebook-owned property like Instagram, and it will swiftly be removed for violating “community guidelines”.
So Facebook themselves have clearly excluded themselves from the former.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitation...
I don’t believe there is any country in the world today for which “free speech” means that anything that can be said is legal and protected, but many people seem to think otherwise based on the name.
The latter one, being irreverent and speaking to power, is never guaranteed to be legal nor come without negative consequences or having your platform removed, so if that is the one being referred to, the feigned incredulity about Facebook taking it down is misplaced. It was always going to be taken down or fought against, if you’re going to say something they don’t like. In fact, the act is a provocation who’s goal is to stir the pot. The goal may be to shame or embarrass someone, or it might be to change policy and making things more fair, but a reaction is expected and desired.
For the other kind, legal Freedom of Speech protections, not all speech is protected. So, being incredulous about Facebook removing obscenity is misplaced here too, because removal of some kinds of things is completely within the bounds of Free Speech Protections.
Either way, in both cases, the speech is subject to community guidelines, and some kinds of speech will result in consequences you might not like. In particular, things that might be considered pornographic or obscene.
Note this is different from what Facebook might allow, and as far as I’m concerned they can make whatever rules they like and it doesn’t infringe on “free speech”. I’m making the separate point that Free Speech itself always comes with the same kind of limitations the GP comment was referring to.
This is a reflection of a larger point, which is that any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. Especially with the introduction of Libra, that's starting to sound less like a cliche and more like an axiom. This also (should) give the rest of us more input in how the company does business.
My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up, but social media remain unregulated, since a ban on lies only rewards the most skilled liars, whose statements can fool the evaluators.
This is pretty vague though. It also raises questions about why we don't limit the political proclivities of other types of companies that also deal in political speech (cable news, broadcast news, talk radio, public radio).
I also disagree with the idea that access to Facebook and similar platforms is fundamentally important; it's well known by now that these systems are engineered to be addictive and that heavy use of social media is associated with poor mental health, if anything we should make ad based social media platforms illegal altogether.
> My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up
Why? I am not opposed to the idea but I just don't see how it would improve the situation at all.
That's what people said about MySpace before Facebook. It's also what people said about IBM, Microsoft, AOL, Nokia, and Kodak.
Big companies have a hard time changing direction. They also tend to be more risk averse, causing them to coast on their brand and network effects. Eventually they're usurped by smaller companies that take more risks and innovate better.
Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet that is not used to justify a blanket ban on angry text.
> The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship
It is not obvious to me that these things are even separable; to pick but one obvious example, a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech.
More broadly, look at someone like Larry Flint. The pornagraphic is the political. The current hand-wringing over “censorship of political speech” seems terribly narrowly focused on but one fairly conservative form of speech, to the point that it’s a bit hard to take at face value.
I don’t really care what’s cost effective for Facebook’s lawyers; we don’t have to care about that, so we should stop enabling the lie that their main concern is enabling free speech.
Costs, playing nice with established powers, not scaring away advertisers by putting their ads too near a nipple — these are their concerns, and we should stop participating in the destruction of the meaning of “free speech” by calling “a narrow spectrum of speech compatible with our current corporate goals” “free speech”.
Which is what I’m doing?
I’m not clear what your issue is with me pointing out the inconsistency between their their new fluffy marketing and their actions, given what you just wrote.
Sure, but you can state the same opinion with words, and not get censored.
If certain opinions are forbidden from being expressed, it's a very different thing.
Sure, but that is in no sense what “free speech” means, so we should stop pretending that “free speech” is what Facebook is offering.