[manifestsilence]

There has been a lot of mixing of concepts in this space lately. There is the legal question of government interference with speech, protected by the First Amendment in the US. Then there is the moral issue of deplatforming by corporations. Then there is the moral issue of groups of people bullying a dissenting viewpoint. These are different issues with different levels of severity and different solutions.

Anyone who has only been deplatformed and is complaining that the world is becoming authoritarian needs to realize that this has always been the way of the world. Forever. There has never been a time in history when someone could voice an unpopular view or be seen as an unpopular identity and not receive public ridicule, shame, or retribution of some kind, and where companies censored no content whatsoever.

What America, and other nations who value freedom, have is a protection against government interference. Let's keep it that way and accept that people are jerks to each other and not everyone wants to hear what you have to say.

[tunesmith]

I think there's a real difference in magnitude though. I have no data to back this up, but, it seems that the asymmetric impact of falsehood, trolling, and bullying is far greater than it has been in the past. I think we may have gone centuries with it being "worth the pain" and it's slowly turning into a much harder question.

Ultimately I think the answer is to have tools to make it easier and faster to identify and validate misinformation. Self-appointed "fact checking" organizations seems like an old-fashioned solution.

[banads]

>These are different issues with different levels of severity and different solutions.

All of these issues are rooted in the same principle, namely: allowing people to freely express themselves in the face of authority is a net good for human society.

[nostromo]

> What America, and other nations who value freedom, have is a protection against government interference.

This argument is super common, but also not correct.

Yes, the first amendment is about protecting speech from government censorship.

But freedom of speech is much broader, and predates the US Constitution by two millennia. If you look at the full history of the concept, it's not just about protection from government, but also protection from undue reprisal.

For example, in the larger view of the ideal of freedom of speech, it is indeed a violation to be fired from your job for holding an unrelated, unpopular political view.

[throwaway894345]

> Anyone who has only been deplatformed and is complaining that the world is becoming authoritarian needs to realize that this has always been the way of the world. Forever. There has never been a time in history when someone could voice an unpopular view or be seen as an unpopular identity and not receive public ridicule, shame, or retribution of some kind, and where companies censored no content whatsoever.

I generally agree that historically we haven't had totally free speech; however, we've been on an upward trend, and some of us are sad to see organizations at the helm of huge channels of speech using their power to prop up certain worldviews, especially somewhat extreme, fringe worldviews with questionable moral credentials (to put it charitably). We should keep the trend going; not reverse it to regress back to "the way things always have been".

> There has never been a time in history when someone could voice an unpopular view or be seen as an unpopular identity and not receive public ridicule, shame, or retribution of some kind, and where companies censored no content whatsoever.

No serious person is asking for the ability to express views without criticism, and regarding corporate censorship, utilities aren't allowed to censor speech--I support regulating social media companies as utilities. This doesn't mean social media has to be a dumb channel either; those companies could curate content so long as it's not on an explicitly ideological basis. For example, it would be fine for Twitter to promote content that is popular, so long as "popular" is determined purely by their users and not dependent upon Twitter's ideology.

> What America, and other nations who value freedom, have is a protection against government interference. Let's keep it that way and accept that people are jerks to each other and not everyone wants to hear what you have to say.

I think social media in its current state is represents a kind of threat to free speech that formerly could only be mustered by governments. Notably, there is a significant concern on both sides of the aisle that social media companies can be used to steer governments, including as an attack vector by foreign governments. These companies have unprecedented control over speech at this volume that it must be dealt with, in my humble opinion.

[bilbo0s]

>accept that people are jerks to each other and not everyone wants to hear what you have to say

That's exactly the sort of common sense observation that's been missing from public debate on this issue. Why is it so difficult for people to accept that, really very simple, reality?

Everyone has freedoms. That includes the freedom to ignore you or me. Or, indeed, the freedom to speak ill of you or me.

Why do people want to shut that down? Just seems weird, like they're saying, "In the name of Freedom of Speech, we have to take away your Freedom of Speech. Because you talked bad about me and told people to ignore me. When I had done nothing more than exercise my freedom of speech by talking bad about someone else."

In what bizzarro world does that make sense to people?