Hacker News Reader

Comment by abernard1 | Hacker News Reader

> On the other hand, if what they're asserting is crazy and unsupported by fact, what's the alternative?

How is this any different from the entirety of human history? America has gotten along quite fine without a central Ministry of Information directing what people should and should not believe is true. It is especially galling to think that some content moderators in the very narrow slice of society in Bay Area tech is qualified to do that job.

We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.

View on HN

> How is this any different from the entirety of human history? America has gotten along quite fine without a central Ministry of Information directing what people should and should not believe is true. It is especially galling to think that some content moderators in the very narrow slice of society in Bay Area tech is qualified to do that job.

I agree that information being concentrated in a few platforms is harmful. But are you saying that you are owed having your speech amplified by others?

Remember our founding fathers starting opposing media outfits to slander each other? I don't think they were willing to print each others' stories verbatim.

> We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.

Debating the merits and demerits of free speech surely has to fall within free speech. From what I've seen, free speech often gets raised as an unquestionable ideal and kills off sometimes uncomfortable discussion.

Karl Popper tells us about the paradox there...

Thanks for an interesting rabbit hole.

> central Ministry of Information

And there is no ministry of information. The 1st amendment protects us from governmental interference, not a private party discriminating based on content.

Deplatforming is happening because of cultural pressure and values, people still have the ability to create organizations with different values. The history of 1st amendment lawsuits is filled with examples of speech that was really offensive at the time, lawsuits were won because the government tried to restrict it.

Diversity in beliefs is valuable, but private parties should be able to have standards. I find an argument that companies should be forced allow speech that violates their standards because it is political dangerous.

> We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.

Not only that, but people like you and me who comment in defense of it are fading from the major platforms. For each of us who grew up with free speech as the cornerstone right in a free and just society, there seem to be many others who did not ever care about this, or actively seek to destroy it for the benefit of their own group.

It's worth remembering just how many warnings that this would happen eventually we have been left historically. Centuries of being reminded that people would come for these rights if we did not defend them. I never thought it was going to have to be our generation, though.

I'm concerned about major platforms gaining in power as gatekeepers of everyday communication, but-- I don't believe any party should be compelled to repeat your speech. It wasn't that way in 1791 and it shouldn't be that way now.

I do think that Twitter and Facebook need to be exceptionally careful and use their powers more sparingly, but there's absolutely no reason that they should have to repeat people literally coordinating and normalizing shooting elected officials, like many threads on Parler are at the moment--- speech that almost everyone agrees is not protected by the First Amendment anyways.

< I don't believe any party should be compelled to repeat your speech

Freedom of speech shouldn’t necessarily be compelled by law to be allowed by online platforms. But freedom of speech is not just a legal principle and individual right, but considered by many of us to be a core American cultural value. It seems reasonable for there to be public outcry and negative response to a company suppressing free speech. Free speech doesn’t include provable lies or inciting imminent violence which unfortunately I believe occurred this week.

> but considered by many of us to be a core American cultural value

Free speech includes being able to -not- utter things of your choice, too. No one will join me in decrying that my local paper will not publish my 30 page treatise on Flat Earth.

Yes-- power concentrating with a few gatekeepers of speech in tech is troublesome. That's what makes their moderation decisions so worrisome: that they're so empowered.

> Free speech doesn’t include provable lies

I think most provable lies are included in free speech, actually.

> or inciting imminent violence

Yup. But we kicked all the people off the mainstream platforms for things that were less than this, so now those platforms have less power to suppress the cries for violence.

where's is the line drawn between incitement of violence and thought crime? If i write a short story calling for the murder of my neighbors but claimed it as a work of fiction is that ok?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com