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Comment by dastx | Hacker News Reader

There is a big difference between governments, the people that are in theory employed by the people, silence individuals, compared to some company not wanting individuals' speech on their platform.

If a company banned me from saying x, I can in theory go to another platform and say the same thing. Failing that, I can build my own site. There are a handful of things I can do to say x. Failing a digital platform, I can always go out on the street and say it. The police won't stop me.

If a government does the same, they have the power to prevent me from saying such a thing on all platforms, but worse, I can't even go out on the streets to say it, because I can get arrested. I could face maximum prison times, or worse, in some countries I could face the death penalty.

There is a huge difference.

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We just witnessed that you actually cant do any of those things (build your own platform that has real reach), there is no free market. And now with where we are, what difference does it actually make when you think about it? In both scenarios its a handful of people dictating the speech of billions, on the private side they’re not even elected.

The ideal scenario is that there is a free market of social media who can do whatever moderation they want. But we witnessed a serious blow to the idea thats even possible recently.

>We just witnessed that you actually cant do any of those things (build your own platform that has real reach), there is no free market.

I am witnessing the reality that it’s never been easier and cheaper in the history of the world to reach almost everyone in the world within seconds.

It’s extremely easy to build a website, host it, have people type in a few letters and numbers, and “reach” each other. It’s never been easier, or cheaper. It’s as free market as it gets.

Insufficient amount of people may be interested in that, but that has nothing to do with the mechanisms in place that can allow you to reach people, which don’t need to include Amazon, Google, or any other host.

> I am witnessing the reality that it’s never been easier and cheaper in the history of the world to reach almost everyone in the world within seconds.

Only as long you don't have the wrong opinion.

> It’s extremely easy to build a website, host it, have people type in a few letters and numbers, and “reach” each other. It’s never been easier, or cheaper. It’s as free market as it gets.

And where do you find it? Google? Also the witch-hunt doesn't stop there. Next up is the hosting (looking at Parler). I can't wait to see when registrars are next and you have to type in a dynamic IP given by the ISP. But everyone could reach you, they just have to know the IP. If that really would be viable ISP would be the next logical step in the witch-hunt.

> Only as long you don't have the wrong opinion.

With "wrong opinion" do you mean inciting hatred and violence, and spreading misinformation?

Because by that logic, we should also allow ISIS, Al-Qaeda et al. to do their thing.

Outside of these "wrong" opinions, parent commenter is pretty accurate. I've seen and heard of people launching a website in less than a day.

Let's not forget that freedom of speech does not give you freedom from consequences. AWS, Twitter, Google, Apple and everyone else has no obligation to give you a platform, especially when it looks bad on them, or it goes against their ahem morals (or rather: the employee's morals). Just like I, as an equal citizen, have no reason to hear you out or to spread your message, if I don't like your message.

> With "wrong opinion" do you mean inciting hatred and violence, and spreading misinformation?

Hey, how about you show me where Parler incited violence or where Trump did that. I don't care about buzzwords like misinformation or hatred - Twitter cares neither - but I do care about inciting violence.

In exchange I show you tweets from Khamanei - ayatollah of Iran.

> Because by that logic, we should also allow ISIS, Al-Qaeda et al. to do their thing.

ISIS/Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra/Taliban whatever are terrorist groups; they don't only incite violence. Also putting misinformation and hatred in the same category as actual terror groups is really not wise.

> I am witnessing the reality that it’s never been easier and cheaper in the history of the world to reach almost everyone in the world within seconds.

Then please go ahead and build a website, make a statement on it and have, say, some 2 billion people read the statement.

That's just a fraction of the world's population, so it shouldn't be too hard. I'll wait.

2 billion people being able to read the statement is different than having 2 billion people read it. Nobody owes you the audience.

Bht the fact is, never in history has it been easier and cheaper to be ABLE to reach 2 billion people.

You don’t need thousands of employees, printing presses, lawyers and companies in multiple countries. You don’t even need to know different language. A single person has the ability to sit at their desk and make their ideas available to everyone that has access to the internet.

Im sorry to say this is a very naive view.

Yes, the original idea of free speech was much closer to building a printing press and distributing leaflets than access to other people’s platforms. The only place where that overlaps is broadcast TV due to bandwidth limitations.

IMO, forcing platforms to host content they disagree with is a free speech issue in the other direction.

> IMO, forcing platforms to host content they disagree with is a free speech issue in the other direction.

How do you figure? I don't know a person who believes that Twitter endorses all content that is found on Twitter. How is it a speech issue in the other direction when Twitter is not saying anything?

Further, about broadcast media, the US still has the equal time rule [0] and used to have a fairness doctrine which required broadcasters to present both sides of a debate [1]. It's worth mentioning that when the FCC (all Reagan appointees) removed the fairness doctrine, Congress acted to enshrine it in law and it was vetoed by Regan.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

> How is it a free speech issue in the other direction when Twitter is not saying anything?

Banning someone or something is them saying something. Endorsement of the debate between different political views doesn’t mean allowing every idea to be acceptable. Letting say the anti vaccination people on your site directly means more disease risk to the general population. However, realizing that doesn’t require you to act. You might decide that’s acceptable where allowing say militant groups planning an insurrection aren’t.

In other words, voluntarily not saying something doesn’t give up your right to free speech.

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