I can't help but recall the joyous cheers during the deplatforming era. "Freedom of speech doesn't apply to companies" is a particularly vivid memory.
It's urging/educating people to rely on Facebook as little as possible, since it is not committed to being a neutral platform.
If you support free speech, you should support facebook's right to express their own political views.
But that does not mean you have to support facebook's political views, or the way they exercise them!
When I see comments like this, I despair at how poorly people understand the basic concept of free speech. Hopefully you're just trolling.
Facebook is not a person. Facebook should not have "rights" nor "political views".
The silly idea of treating companies like persons and giving them any "rights" at all is what got us into this mess in the first place.
If companies as a legal concept didn't exist in their current form, then we wouldn't have this problem of one person, or more commonly many people, using them as a proxy to get away with a bunch of unethical stuff. Often way more unethical that whatever Facebook / Zuck is doing, such as destroying ecosystems, prioritizing profits over worker safety, etc.
But yes, I'd like to see the board of Facebook and the boards of many other companies being held liable for the actions of those companies. But for some reason, it's only ever "expedient" to grant companies the rights rightfully belonging to people, and never "expedient" to impose the same sorts of liabilities on them as on people. (Not that a non-physical entity such as a company could ever practically face the same penalties as a physical person anyway, which is another ("obvious" in your parlance) reason not to grant them those rights.)
If I was interested in going down the ad-hominem route I'd claim that you simply see the status quo as "obvious" because you lack the power of imagination to consider a more sensible alternative.
In fact, I think your argument is so backwards it actually supports my case. Why do I need to "imagine" that the owners of the company are using their rights to free speech as individuals (which is obviously not what is actually happening)? Why can't they just actually use those individual rights?
You don't like a trawling boat emptying out the lake in your village? Just imagine that the boat's captain is using a fishing rod to do the same, that's clearly a comparable situation!
In the USA, the supreme court has ruled a corporation DOES in fact have rights. Like the lawsuit of advertising medicine that a state banned-- the SC ruled that was infringing the rights of corporations to "express" their speech.
As someone from UK, I find this whole "Corporations have more rights than I do" very disturbing but thats how it is
What I'm seeing is an argument for, "I don't like Facebook's speech. I think you shouldn't like it either. So I think we should all walk away."
Suppression of misinformation during one era is suppression of protests in another era.
You're right that the reality of the current day is what TFA is about - but GP is mentioning that we built this reality.
There's clear moral valence to this issue. The popular (mis)understanding of freedom of speech as applied to corporations is in direct contradiction to the notional principles of western sociopolitical ideology. Resolving this conflict is only difficult because of our conditioning.
The left suppressing lies only opens the door to the right suppressing the truth, because the right was an enemy of truth and a spreader of lies from the beginning. The answer can't be "allow the lies so the truth has a chance to survive", that's just a compromise that brings us further from the truth.
Demanding neutrality on truthfulness in mass communication, especially during extreme political turbulence, is a terrible idea.
That is the whole point. if you add power while you're in office, you better believe that power will be used against you while you're not. It's not about good vs bad, it's about giving power to an organization that itself can be flipped good or bad by one election.
Of course "ours==good, theirs==bad" is a different, dangerous cognitive problem, but institutional power creep is orthogonal and needs to be fought regardless to protect all of us from that power being used against all of us. That is a prerequisite to civil society wherein we're forced to live with people with completely different world views.
Because right now, platforms can and do cave to government pressure, so they're just thin proxy enforcement arms against dissent.
It must be so nice to live in this imaginary world where the left does no wrong whatsoever but the right is the evil incarnate.
Furthermore, who decides what lies are and what truth is and who is responsible for enforcing this?
It leads them to become the very bigots they think they are fighting against.
98% of the time people are talking about the former, and the only ones confused are the people assuming they're talking about the latter and linking the face-palm-worthy "showing them the door" XKCD.
I'd say damn near 100% of those 98% will still cite the constitution, sometimes even crying "1st amendment!" in lieu of "free speech," so I'd say your overall point is wrong. They are basically saying both at the same time, with intent, while still not understanding it.
What do you feel would be the good-faith way to respond to such people?
Surely it's not by sidetracking into pedantry about the law, which at the end of the day both they and you know that's not what they're really fired up about.
If the explanation is that they feel that other people have an obligation to listen to them, then I don't care.
My freedom of speech includes the freedom to reject other people's speech. If they can't tell the difference between a disagreement and suppression of speech, then that's their problem. The generous interpretation is that they don't fully understand the issue. The realistic explanation is that many people value their own freedom of speech over the freedom of others to the extent that they view disagreement with their views as an attack on their right to hold their views.
Essentially, "freedom for me but not for thee", and I don't rightly care about what enemies of freedom are "fired up" about.
But at the end of the day, much of what conservative "free speech" protests against big tech have been about has been that big tech drew a line on things like violence and hatred of protected classes, and conservatives don't like being told that their ideas, while legally allowed, are not welcome in polite company.
EDIT: I just realized you were not responding to me... oops!
My point (less snarkily this time) was that their definition (it's only an issue when the government limits your speech) is really quite narrow.
As long as there are a litany of people like you who are totally comfortable with a double standard like this, the only option for conservatives is to exercise power and forcefully shove the shoe on the other foot until you change your mind.
I hate that, but I don't really see another way we'll ever get a culture of free speech, because people like you are completely comfortable exercising power towards a culture of, ironically, "free speech for me but not for thee"
How is it obviously not true (genuine question)? I am not an American myself, but used the American definition as it's the simplest (it's very absolutist, as per my understanding). But what definitions exist where it is not defined in terms of how the government can treat you? I'm from Canada. We have concessions against hate speech, for example (maybe the US does too, though? I'm not sure). But "free speech" doesn't mean you are free criticism from fellow citizens or even businesses based on what you say.
I agree with GP that the arguments one makes should reflect one's actual reasoning, e.g. "I believe it's wrong to say thing X and therefore I support deplatforming in that instace". But because "I support deplatforming in every instace" sounds stronger many people falsely claimed that to be their reasoning. And now they're forced to deal with the consequences, i.e. being called hypocrites.
I suspect that the argument you're referring to is more like "free speech does not imply that all deplatforming is unacceptable." Again, it is not the case that the only 2 consistent views are "all deplatforming is unacceptable" or "all deplatforming is acceptable."
And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.
I support the idea of inaelable rights, but tying it to divinity is problematic to say the least.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/hate
> There is no legal definition of "hate speech" under U.S. law, just as there is no legal definition for evil ideas, rudeness, unpatriotic speech, or any other kind of speech that people might condemn.
> In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear. (The Supreme Court's decision in Snyder v. Phelps provides an example of this legal reasoning.) Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group.
The reason to not platform hate speech is the same reason you're not allowed to yell fire in a theater or bomb in an airport without their being one. Or say you're going to kill the president. Even the US has limits on what can be said, including liability laws. You can't just defame your neighbor and not face legal repercussions if they take you to court.
One can imagine this argument during the Salem Witch trials. "She's a witch" wasn't just a joke back then. It could get someone burned at the stake.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that I have to tolerate a business platforming hate speech. Any platform that stands behind the "free speech" of neo-nazi groups, white supremacists, and violent nationalists deserves criticism for turning a blind eye to what they are enabling. The First Amendment wasn't built to protect citizens' speech from each other; it was built to protect us from government censorship. Facebook doesn't have a legal responsibility to protect that, and I as a consumer can expect them to take an ethical stand against things like ethnic cleansing.
And that is exactly the point the author here is making. Facebook, X (Twitter), even places like Fediverse instances and Bluesky/AtProto sites are privately run spaces with no obligation to respect your freedom of speech.
If you choose these spaces to organize your political cause, you put your movement into another person's hands. Stop doing that. Host your own infrastructure, make it easy to recover and migrate, and start organizing outside of corporate-controlled areas.
Turning to Facebook for political organizing "because everyone is there" is like doing your town-hall meetings at Walmart "because everyone shops there", and then wondering why small businesses don't feel represented in your town anymore.
It's easy to blame big tech, but you can also ask your local bar why they only advertise events through Mark Zuckerberg, and ask why their website is mostly just links to Mark Zuckerberg's websites. Ask them if they have considered that Mark Zuckerberg might not a good obligatory middleman between them and their customers. The core problem is that people have accepted the lie that these corporate-controlled spaces are "the public square", when they are the exact opposite.
In unrelated topic, each person decides how much to spend spend/borrow/save as it is private decision to make, but to control inflation government manipulates bond interest rates which force public to change their behaviour.
That's somewhat true currently.
If you ship mail or packages with UPS, FedEx, Etc they are allowed to open and inspect what you send. The USPS is not allowed to do that, not without a warrant. When people ship drugs via mail they use the USPS for that reason, that it's more difficult for them to obtain warrants to discover suspected drug shipments while a UPS or FedEx will happily open any package they suspect may not be legal to send.
First of all, there's a massive difference between transporting a private package from point A to point B vs hosting someone's speech on a privately owned platform and broadcasting that speech through a privately owned network, with wider consequences that do not come into play when dealing with private correspondences between parties.
Next, paying a fee to a private company to ship your package confers certain obligations about what you are entitled to, when you are utilizing a privately owned platform for free, you are not entitled to anything.
Finally, a private company is certainly within their rights to refuse to ship your package based on an any legal criteria they choose.
Factually wrong. Both when paying, and when using something "for free", there's a contract in place (terms & conditions, etc.), and that contract also needs to obey local laws. I don't know if you've ever heard of GDPR, but that's one example of things you are entitled to when using a "privately owned platform for free". Even the USA has laws regarding this, though less strong than GDPR (look it up).
> refuse to ship your package based on an any legal criteria they choose
The question here is what is a "legal criteria". And just because the law is a certain way today, doesn't mean that's the way it should be. It used to be legal to kick people out of restaurants because you didn't like the color of their skin, it's not today. It used to be legal to fire people because they were members of a union or other political group, it's not today. (All depending on your country's laws of course.)
Also, the point of an analogy, is to illustrate a point through a comparable situation. Pointing out that there's a "massive difference" but never explaining what the difference is and how it affects the validity of the comparison, is just a (very common) misunderstanding of what an analogy even is.
GDPR is not an "entitlement", its regulation governing how sites can operate with your data, it doesn't entitle you to service.
> The question here is what is a "legal criteria"
You don't have to agree with the legal criteria, but there is no question as to whether it's legal to arbitrarily ban users based on the content of their posts.
> Pointing out that there's a "massive difference" but never explaining what the difference is and how it affects the validity of the comparison
I went into great detail to explain why the analogy is bad, it's up to you if you want to acknowledge it. This isn't 2016, the absurd framing that tries to pretend that you are entitled access to social media platforms on the basis of free speech is tired and obviously wrong.
> a massive difference [what difference?]
> wider consequences [which consequences?]
> certain obligations [which ones?]
Okay dude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
> This isn't 2016
https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/come-on-its-2015-cu...
> GDPR is not an "entitlement"
Do you really want to get into the semantics of "entitlement" vs "right". Are you not entitled to a copy of "your" data according to GDPR? https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
What's even "your data"? Are the posts you write not "your data"?
The semantics doesn't matter because GDPR is just an example of the LAW regulating YOUR USAGE of a FREE PLATFORM. It's an EXAMPLE that disproves your false statement "when you are utilizing a privately owned platform for free, you are not entitled to anything"
> there is no question as to whether it's legal to arbitrarily ban users based on the content of their posts
I already told you: "just because the law is a certain way today, doesn't mean that's the way it should be. It used to be legal to kick people out of restaurants because you didn't like the color of their skin, it's not today. It used to be legal to fire people because they were members of a union or other political group, it's not today."
The differences are listed in detail in my first reply to you, plain as day for anyone to see. The rhetorical tactic of repeating "what differences" doesn't change that. I suggest you actually read what I wrote or work on your reading comprehension.
> Do you really want to get into the semantics of "entitlement" vs "right"
You're the one focusing on semantics in order to avoid acknowledging the substantive differences between personal data rights and guaranteed access to social media platforms.
> What's even "your data"? Are the posts you write not "your data
Correct. The posts you write are your data, but GDPR doesn't confer access to a social media platform, only control over your data. You are deliberately conflating data rights with impunity from being banned
> just because the law is a certain way today, doesn't mean that's the way it should be
Your personal opinion about what the law should be is irrelevant.
> there's a massive difference between transporting a private package from point A to point B vs hosting someone's speech on a privately owned platform and broadcasting that speech through a privately owned network, with wider consequences that do not come into play when dealing with private correspondences between parties.
If you think that this states what the difference and what the consequences are (in your mind), I don't know what to tell you except you have a vivid imagination. Sorry I'm not a mind reader. A tip for the future is actually stating what you mean, instead of some vague suggestion at it.
> but GDPR doesn't confer access
GDPR was given AS AN EXAMPLE. I never suggested it "confers access". That interpretation comes from your own inability to read what I have written three times now. I don't know how to be more clear with you. Perhaps you can give my comments to a LLM that can translate them into something more comprehensible for you, it seems English is neither your first nor second language.
> is irrelevant
For what? You know laws can change, don't you? Or do you just accept each and every law, in every country, as the way things should be?
I already told you: "just because the law is a certain way today, doesn't mean that's the way it should be. It used to be legal to kick people out of restaurants because you didn't like the color of their skin, it's not today. It used to be legal to fire people because they were members of a union or other political group, it's not today."
I'm satisfied with the reasoning as stated. If you can't grasp why a social media ban and refusing to ship a letter are two completely different scenarios with respect to free speech, I can't elucidate it any further. Perhaps you should take your own advice about using an LLM to understand the point.
> "GDPR was given AS AN EXAMPLE. I never suggested it "confers access
You gave it as an example of entitlements, but I pointed out that it doesn't entitle you to anything that you don't already own. Unlike your own data, you don't own a voice on a social media platform, hence why the example doesn't work.
> For what? You know laws can change, don't you?
It doesn't matter that the laws can change. You have no idea if or how they might change, so that observation does not contribute anything to the discussion.
> But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It came from Karl Popper, the guy better known for philosophy of science and using "falsifiability" as a primary criteria for what's science/not-science.
That the "free speech" crowd that said "we must allow all hateful and intolerant speech" sure does seem to quiet up when those advocating for open societies get silenced!
1,842 results (0.032 seconds)
1) popper was not a communist, quite the opposite
2) I am not a communist, quite the opposite
3) it's not an unquestionable gospel, it's something to be considered and carefully see it it applies, or is valid
4) I have literally never seen another person cite the Paradox of Tolerance, something that I learned about decades ago, so imagine my surprise at your sarcastic response.
If this is such a common response in your experience, why don't you have any critique of it, other than strawmen?
The search shows 34 pages of comments and that doesn't include [dead] comments. I'm surprised it's that few; I suspect there's a time cutoff even though the settings says there isn't.
But even if somebody had encounters it a lot, it certainly doesn't excuse illogical behavior if only attacking straw men, refusing to engage at all, and make up weird insults about communism.
I notice that you too have no counter to it!
In a society that wants to minimize violence in daily interactions, we still allow it to happen. Claiming that the desire to minimize something means a total ban is just a childish and simple way to approach the issue. The residual of others to engage with the idea further proves how little they have thought about it.
May I point out that I replied to your earlier post?
It should also be noted that [EDIT] the preceding sentence to Popper's quote is omitted: "In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise."
Popper was a serious philosopher, such a trivial and unserious engagement with the idea doesn't pass muster.
Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.
It seems like you’re trying to avoid dealing with the substance of the issue for some reason.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
These conversations often end up in some weird motte and bailey where you argue that you care about free speech, but it turns out that you actually just thought COVID was not real/not significant/not dangerous/not an emergency. So your issue ends up not being that they made a decision on it (free speech concern), but that you feel it was the wrong decision (content-specific concern).
So before we go back and forth on the intricacies of content moderation, can you briefly describe your beliefs on COVID?
Hate speech, porn, bullying, doxxing, disinformation, Islamist propaganda, violent imagery, revenge porn, animal abuse imagery, incitements to violence, criminal planning, drug dealing, arms dealing, gambling, fraud, etc
As a free speech maximalist, are you willing to defend all of those with the same vigor as the COVID case? Or do you too actually draw a content-based line somewhere (while pretending you don’t?)
bless your heart, and thank you for your time.
Classic HN to take a problem like this and just assert it’s easily solvable while proposing no such solutions. Even SCOTUS couldn’t define porn and you’re expecting content platforms to define (without discretion!) a far broader set of far squishier concepts at far higher scale.
Truly classic HN.
If you find this interpretation to be uncharitable, would you care to clarify what truths this interpretation overlooks?
(To be perfectly clear disrupting protests is also very bad!)
I agree this would be even more egregious if it was thought to be a real story, but even the tabloid that published it didn’t think so.
Pretty sure the link suppression was turned off within like a day, right?
It was absolutely reasonable to suspect (in the early hours) that a salacious, bombshell story involving stolen documents published on NYPost without a listed author could potentially have been an actual disinformation attack.
Under that set of facts, the “we should try to limit interference in the election” can reasonably yield the behavior that it did yield.
The same standard could be used to trivially censor literally any information from any outlet. Conservatives could censor all NYTimes articles because they have compelling evidence the NYTimes newsroom is taking money from foreign sources (they are), has a history of releasing false information (they do, all news outlets eventually do), and being biased against conservatives.
In fact, your standard would censor precisely the MOST important stories, because these are the most likely to influence elections.
But since you apparently have a better one, how about you propose a standard?
Is it that anyone can post anything?
> The goal of a responsible platform should be to not put its thumb (as a platform) on the scales of an election.
You earnestly believe censoring the laptop story was congruent with this principle?
I'm sorry but I just cannot believe that you are a real person. *Obviously* putting their thumb on the scale was the entire point of the censorship! I'm in serious disbelief that you wrote this and posted it.
If you disagree with the logic, then identify which part you disagree with. Here are your options:
1. Content moderation teams should not have been suspicious of an unsourced, anonymous story on NYPost based on allegedly stolen material
2. Content moderation teams should not impede content that they suspect are election interference attempts
Which is it?
Even if some speech is known to be false (insofar as your epistemology allows), it should be criticized and proven to be false by more speech, not silenced through censorship.
In any case, I'm still baffled by how you think you've articulated logic that can supports that they "didn't put their finger on the scale". Obviously they did, obviously they knew they did. What other reason could they have for doing it? If your principle were instead "they should put their finger on the scale when opposing actors intentionally spreading false information" at least you'd be consistent.
Though then the irony of this whole thing is that the story was true the whole time.
I'd much rather deal with information assymetries from individuals within the community than information assymetries from whoever happens to have control over the platforms, and is willing to use censorship.
I'd also like to add that a lot of these misinformation studies ironically wound up using information now accepted to be true or likely (such as that COVID most likely originated from a Chinese lab) as their "misinformation" - so in a way I'm glad that countering with "true" information didn't unilaterally work.
Ah this must be why you're confused. You think the hazard that platforms are trying to manage is from "individuals within the community" and not, for example, foreign intelligence services.
> information now accepted to be true or likely (such as that COVID most likely originated from a Chinese lab)
Lmao uh oh. The mark of the terminally-online has been revealed! Hilarious how many Twitterites have come to simply believe that COVID originated from a lab over the last year or two despite zero new evidence emerging in favor of that theory, and actually tons of evidence against it emerging since then. It's almost like if read false information enough times, you'll just presume it to be true... Curious ain't it?
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/reps/new-doc-drop-slack-m...
https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-departm...
You are (mistakenly) substantiating it though: there has not been new evidence in favor of the lab leak in several years! You're right!
Meanwhile, evidence in favor of a natural origin has continued to pile up.
It's telling that you refuse to just follow your own logic and rationale even just a single step further.
This is provably false, as in this is not how speech online functions.
The whole system of suppression today, is built around the idea of flooding the channels with more content than can be assessed and analyzed. A room full of people shouting and no one having the time to understand.
The boundaries around vanilla are certainly blurry, but I don’t think No Kings comes even remotely close to any of those blurry boundaries.
Most people haven’t spent any time moderating online communities, so they don’t have to test their beliefs against reality. This is fine, frankly you saved yourself being stuck in a fractal hell scape.
However holding to this idea that the “opposition” was deplatformed, is superstition.
I’ve seen communities start with 0 moderation, and become wastelands filled with hate speech, misogyny and harassment. Which then forces moderation to be introduced.
This happens so often, that this happened to the hate groups who were kicked off of Reddit.
Communities have celebrated the introduction of moderation, and celebrated the imposition of rules that mean you can’t be harassed, attacked and targeted.
they're saying to avoid the whole argument entirely by not using a platform that can deplatform at all
(I dislike Musk for many reasons but you cannot tell me there were 'no problems' with old Twitter or that every criticism was a 'nothingburger')
That's the root problem. If you want the websites of (some?) private companies treated as common carriers that's a reasonable position to take, but Twitter was/is working as designed.
(If I was king for a day I'd force all social media to only present you with posts from people you'd actively followed, and to present those posts most-recent-first. I think that single UX change to timelines would clear up many problems we currently have).