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Comment by WClayFerguson | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem that needs to be addressed by legislation is the "censorship" issue. Obviously if I'm some small shop the gov't shouldn't get involved in how my servers operate, but once you become a large public general purpose messaging company, like Twitter for example, with millions of users, you've crosses a threshold where you should be treated similar to a phone company insofar as your legal right to arbitrarily censor perfectly legal speech.

I urge anyone who disagrees to just watch Joe Rogan episode with Tim Pool and Jack Dorsey where it all comes out into the light.

If phone companies started terminating service or interfering in any way with communications, the courts would immediately intervene to stop it. The main epiphany all Americans need to have is that these Big Tech companies are identical to phone providers in every way that matters, when it comes to censorship rules.

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The notion that the American notion of free speech is in any way universal or desired is false. No European country subscribes to this view and they remain viable and vibrant Democracies.

I find it an interesting peculiarity that so many people here think there is major value in the broadcasting of known falsehoods and propaganda, and equally bizarre the notion that a random individual's free speech is in any way comparable to the power wielded by moneyed interests. In practical terms American free speech laws are really only for immunizing the rich and powerful, and their corporations, from any deleterious consequences to their false speech.

The problem with censorship is that you must elevate one person into a position of power over another, and give the censor dictatorial powers.

If what you were saying were sensible it would make sense to let AT&T disconnect phone service, or stop texting that goes against the political beliefs of the AT&T executives. That's insane. But yet it's what Twitter does.

I don't want Big Tech execs being dictators. And if they can censor then they are indeed dictators.

If Twitter can say: "We're in charge of speech, because we own the hardware", then so can AT&T (and that's absurd)

We have 20-somethings sitting in their Ivory Towers with the power to censor Presidents and Heads of State. It's got to stop. They're children. Presidents are getting censored by children today.

There is no legitimate value in false speech, despite its mythological value in American psyche. People want the current American president censored because he's spewing lies and falsehoods about every time he opens his mouth. His lies and propaganda have cost over 300000 American lives, and has caused a major deterioration of US' international reputation.

Again, no other country on earth (that I'm aware of) subscribes to the notion of unrestricted free speech. Speech that is intended to deceive, mislead, defame and/or slander others has legal consequences in Europe.

Even under US' rules, calling people out on false and/or hateful speech, and ostracizing them is exactly the "market of ideas" responding to such speech and suppressing it. You may say what you want, but if your speech is repugnant, we the public are fully entitled to ask you to go talk elsewhere (or not at all). It isn't censorship, it is that we all think you're an ass.

Note that actual censorship is already reality for most individuals in the US. For most, what they're allowed to say publicly is beholden to a corporation not minding what they say. If that corporation doesn't like what you said, you get fired and there goes your ability to earn your keep. And without a job, house, food, and healthcare are gone.

As mentioned earlier, unrestricted free speech is only a luxury for the rich and powerful to get away with lying for their own benefit without any checks and balances. I think we, the public, deserve a better.

You never addressed the central question of if you're in favor of censorship then who gets to decide who does the censoring? Who gets to decide what is true or false, or what is misleading v.s. true?

The issue is that different people disagree about what is true and what is lies, and that is the entire point of why we have free speech. Reasonable people can disagree. Who decides which reasonable party gets to forcibly muzzle the other?

A true patriot is someone who will give his life in the fight to protect free speech, and he will fight to protect even the speech he personally disagrees with. The people who are against free speech are the true fascists, even though they ignorantly think they're against fascism. The truth is they don't know how to fight fascism. Censorship ain't it. Censorship is nothing but a cornerstone of dictatorships.

EDIT: Another way to say it is that freedom of speech is required for healthy democracies, because an open debate about political ideas is how societies reach a consensus. The minute you give one person the ability to stop another person from speaking, you have created a dictatorship. Speech is a human right and the most basic of freedoms, and our Founding Fathers put it in our constitution to stop people like you from eroding our freedoms.

Nice jingoism, repetition of statements of faith (but not fact). This is clearly a waste of time.

Nobody is arguing against freedom of speech, what every other country objects to is is unrestricted freedom of speech, meaning protection of lies, propaganda, slander, calumny, defamation and inciting of violence as being acceptable forms of free speech.

I can explain it to you, I can't make you understand this: no other country in the world, no other people in the world, accept that unrestricted free speech is a good thing.

Moreover, those countries believe it so strongly that there are laws against it. European countries are functioning democracies. Clearly your point that unrestricted free speech is essential to democracy is false.

I'm not going to bother responding any further.

America already has restrictions on speech including slander laws, defamation, and inciting violence. So yes there is nuance to this issue like all others. Nuance seems to be something the left is incapable of comprehending lately.

If you try to make "lies" and "propaganda" also be illegal that' where the nuance begins and where your argument fails, for all the reasons I already gave, and will not bother repeating, except to say that reasonable people will disagree about what truth is and what is propaganda. So if you outlaw lies you must appoint some people to become the arbiters of truth, and you need to admit you have not answered how that can be done. All you've done is hurl insults and propaganda of your own, which according to you should've been censored.

How is the landscape different in EU? Are there specific laws about publishing falsehoods. Apart from libel I guess

Any trivial googling will show you. Eg:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

https://www.rcmediafreedom.eu/Publications/Reports/Criminal-...

And that’s how we end up with the situation the social medias are right now. People are more divided than ever because of outright lies not being “censored” for a long time.

The problem with censorship is choosing who gets to censor whom.

For example right now Youtube is threatening to censor anyone challenging the election results. Do you really want to live in a country where the media gets to say who can and who cannot discuss certain things about our political process?

That's a dictatorship my friend. And if you want people to do censoring, I say let the Republicans be the censors. Get my point? I'm sure you want Democrats doing censoring am I right?

if twitter blocks you, you can publish your stuff on myriad other services for free. i guess same with a phone company, if they cut you off you can just sign up with another provider ... is it censorship if the phone company cuts you off for non-payment?

If Twitter were acting strictly alone, that might be a reasonable point. In the case of Facebook, they possess monopoly power and their ability to censor speech is elevated above most of their peers (save for Google).

Twitter however did not act alone. The tech giants conspired together to mass censor speech they politically disagree with in the 2020 presidential election. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's not secret in any regard, they were openly and directly sharing block lists with eachother and acting against only the political party they consider their adversary (rather than equitably enforcing their terms of service, behavior that has been going on for years now).

Their executives should be in prison for that level of criminal collusion toward election interference given their extreme collective monopoly status. Merely breaking the companies into pieces is not enough.

Bravo! Well said. Unfortunately the execs doing the censoring in Big Tech are not currently breaking any laws, because their billionaire K-street lobbyists contribute enough funds to the legislators to stop them from taking action to make censorship illegal.

There's absolutely no reason to allow Twitter to censor, because it's become the modern version of the telephone system, and the world is relying on Twitter in today's world in an even more important way than telephone texting.

The only people arguing in favor of censorship right now are the Democrats, and it's SOLELY because Silicon Valley is reliably left leaning, and will only censor Republicans.

Never go full Trumptard.

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