I'm starting to think hacker news needs a temporary ban on these capital riot articles. They do nothing but devolve into flame wars filled with emotional responses. They seem to attract the most hostile commenters
I'm 29 and have a question for those older than me. Until about 10 years ago, I dont remember ever hearing anyone arguing that we should limit free speech. I remember being told that the only limit was that you couldnt tell "fire" in a movie theater unless there really was a fire. This was a common refrain. I remember people talking about how free speech was what made America different. Everyone on both sides of the political aisle was proud of the first amendment.
However, I was pretty young and my memory may be wrong. Has the discourse always been this way, or has it changed significantly in the past 10 years? If it changed, when did this start? After 9/11? After Trump?
The current discourse is crazy to me. We have to remember that free speech is literally the FIRST amendment. Our founding fathers thought that basically nothing was more important than this. So we should err on the side of caution. It's east to restrict freedom and almost impossible to win it back. Although if you want to go a little bit further, they also would have had, as individuals, a higher tolerance for violence in the event that people wanted to "petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Anyway, just curious to hear other people's opinions on when the importance of free speech started to diminish in our collective mind.
It changed with the rise of social media. The first thing to note is that moral policing is impotent without coordination between like-minded individuals. Pre-social media, the religious right was the single most coordinated effort at policing and shaping culture. Naturally, the kinds of things they were interested in ran counter to progressive movements. It followed that the standard response from those on the left was to defend an expanded notion of free speech. In the 2000's, the religious influence in this country waned and the rise of social media created new ways to organize like minded individuals. Progressives found that they had the loudest voice and now free speech is less valuable to them than being able to shape society as they see fit. It's the ebb and flow of social power.
If you mean talk about if/how FB, Twitter etc should control speech on their platform, that has always been going on, and has nothing to do with the first amendment (Congress shall pass no law)
I assume most internet geeks think technological restrictions are mostly futile (the internet routes around censorship), BTW.
"Falsely yelling fire in a theater" theory was a judge's analogy for protesting the Vietnam War.
The US passed the Alien and Sedition Acts centuries ago.
These debates are age-old.
Also, the First Amendment is less important than all the Articles of the Constitution, including the ones about the Electoral college. So by your theory (which is invalid because order of Amendment has nothing to do with relative importance, and you are a horrible person if you think free speech is more important than banning race-based slavery) peotectingt the Electoral College is more important than Free Speech
I remember that you couldn't have nudity or profanity on TV. You couldn't say certain things on the radio. If you wanted to publish something particularly inflammatory and demeaning, the only outlet was to find some fringe press or do it yourself, because it would simply be unacceptable anywhere else.
Free speech just means the government isn't going to prosecute you for saying something. That's it. Free speech doesn't mean Random House must publish your manifesto to all things awful. It also doesn't mean a private company is obligated to publish your derogatory tweet. Or for a company to host your website chock full of hateful language.
> The current discourse is crazy to me. We have to remember that free speech is literally the FIRST amendment.
Here's the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
"Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech."
It doesn't say "freedom of speech is a mechanism that leads to truth", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means you have to let someone come into your house and speak at you", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means, if you build a social media platform, you have to let fascists use it to spread disinformation with a rapidity and accuracy of targeting that founding fathers could never possibly have conceived of". It just says "Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech."
In the age of social media, we have seen the truly perverse impacts that viral spread of lies can have, like in Myanmar where months of anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook lead to the genocide of the Rohingya [0]. Another perverse impact is the fostering of echo chambers where participants could freely share conspiracy theories and convince themselves of truly crazy things, like that Hillary Clinton ran a cabal of pedophiles that worked out of the basement of Comet Pizza, or that tens of thousands of election workers across many states executed a perfect rigging of the US election. In the past, people susceptible to fringe beliefs would struggle to find likeminded people and would have been too embarrassed to freely exercise speech, but per Facebook's own research: "64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms. [1][2]. Free speech was unleashed in a way never possible before.
Last Wednesday, the elected Representatives and Senators of my country were in the process of certifying the results of my country's election, but they were violently interrupted by people who believe a set of lies that they've heard and read hundreds of times. Since this insurrection attempt, we've found a lot of footage indicating these people were looking to kill the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, the #2 and #3 people in the Presidential line of succession.
I don't know why people think the 1st amendment means private companies, who aren't Congress at all, should have to make the fruits of their labor accessible to terrorists, or why that's a good thing. But a lot of people here seem to consider that to be an article of faith. I truly have no idea why.
What current discourse ? The impeachment, and a lot of the current discourse is that Mr Trump did basically yell fire in a crowded theater (he told his supporters to march to the Capitol).
This is a post where the parent has already taken a very strong position/view, and is thinly veiling it in the form of a question (and not veiled very well either).
Is there a way to report these types of posts? Or better yet, to have HN remove all this incessant political commentary.
Perhaps I'll take the time to finally work on that custom Chrome extension project I've been meaning to tackle..
By "insurrection" you mean an actual deliberate years-long effort to replace everyone in positions of power with those loyal to you, repeatedly calling into doubt the outcome of a fair election, manipulating people into attacking your opposition, while preventing appropriate security measures then leaving them helpless for 4 hours when under assault.
Unlike Parler, Facebook hosts its own metal. Beyond that it even owns its own domain registrar, CDN, and CA authority. There's no feasible way to deplatform it. (A good thing IMO, I just wish that same rock solid resistance to censorship was available to everybody.)
> [Zuckerberg] knows better. And you know, from my perspective, I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.
You mean a site that enables event coordination and sharing as well as private conservative groups might be culpable alongside a site that has neither of those things? Color me shocked.
This Democrats vs Republicans story can go down to some low-level stuff. Some of the people "won" in recent decades. They typically live in city, having higher income, enjoying good life and the new technologies. And they have the view points that the others have never had.
Let's say, people in cities are more willing to use EV car. People in small city / rural area are less motivated because of weaker infrastructure. This is unfair to ask the people in small city to make this change if they are not provided enough help :-/
I am afraid people in two sides are getting more divided and more extreme. Don't forget based on the vote count, it is still a 50:50 but not 90:10 fight.
I feel like the real issue is that the President of the United States was giving them marching orders. The platform that they happened to use is secondary.
No shit. It wasn't some broken, barely adopted start up that created this mess. It was the largest social platform in the world where this insanity spread for years. Break up GAFA with antitrust laws.
Frankly, its time the coastal populations to start moving in-land and working remotely....amazing a what a small population shift could do for our politics
The most peaceful "insurrection" in history and Parler is the sacrificial lamb, because they're conservative and therefore an easy target. Twitter, Parler's direct competitor, gets away with de-platforming major figures like the President, though they keep the account of the head of Iran, a state that is at this moment on the verge of creating an atomic bomb with the stated purpose of annihilating one of our closest allies.
Apple and Google, with control over 99% of the app industry, ganged up and eliminated the Parler app. When a tiny number of companies collude to destroy the competition, it is known as a "trust", children. And colluding to destroy a company is known as "racketeering".
The Biden Administration is hiring several people from these companies: Jessica Hertz of Facebook and Emily Horne of Twitter.
It is highly unlikely he will turn around now and push the Justice Dept. to go after these companies. He's glad they banned Trump; it benefited him. Now he has to pay them back, if he knows what's good for him.
The important fact that this community is lost on, is the fact that it doesn't really matter what Facebook, Google or Twitter are actually responsible for.
The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels of popular support (search twitter on the fec.gov [1]) - and the Democratic Party is now responsible for regulating Silicon Valley makes it chilling when the demands for censorship by the Democratic Party are followed.
The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with.
1. Franklin Graham
2. Dan Bongino
3. Fox News
4. Ben Shapiro
5. Dan Bongino
6. Ben Shapiro
7. Dan Bongino
8. TWICE
9. The New York Times
10. Ben Shapiro
If FB was overwhelmingly left leaning, why are almost all of its most popular posts from right wing outlets?
You’re extrapolating a lot here. Silicon Valley employees support Democrats, therefore any censorship Silicon Valley firms do is at the orders of the Democratic Party? Show the evidence of that.
Ignoring what the (largely powerless) ground level employees of the tech giants do, the chief execs of these companies lobby both Democrats and Republicans. No matter who is in power, money talks. I suspect that’s why even though there’s a huge amount of evidence that folks like Ben Shapiro have violated FB rules for gaming the feed there has been no action taken. FB has spent the last four years courting Republicans, now they’ll court Democrats.
That’s the real problem but it’s certainly easier to pretend it’s a party-specific problem that would solved if only the other people were in charge.
> The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with.
Quite the hyperbole without any evidence. Where is the evidence that they have demanded for censorship? Or have done so in the past where a democrat has censored a social media website? Absolutely none.
There's overwhelming support in an irrational loyalty to a person or brand sense and then there's overwhelming support in the most people would choose a mediocre meal over eating poo sense.
The latter doesn't seem to be a problem and also looks to be the case here.
I think big tech is heading for a rough, dark time, once trump is out and vaccines are widely available I think a large majority of folks will not be glued to their screens consuming media. I know for myself I plan on taking a huge break from news. Expect netflix use to drop like a rock, along with amazon usage, people will be excited to go into stores again. Facebook is looking at antitrust issues regardless of what happens, (FTC, every state is suing it). Also I think you will have investors cycle money out of that sector, especially if the economy picks up and Biden/the Fed decide to raise rates.
[+] [-] tayo42|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 55555|5 years ago|reply
However, I was pretty young and my memory may be wrong. Has the discourse always been this way, or has it changed significantly in the past 10 years? If it changed, when did this start? After 9/11? After Trump?
The current discourse is crazy to me. We have to remember that free speech is literally the FIRST amendment. Our founding fathers thought that basically nothing was more important than this. So we should err on the side of caution. It's east to restrict freedom and almost impossible to win it back. Although if you want to go a little bit further, they also would have had, as individuals, a higher tolerance for violence in the event that people wanted to "petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Anyway, just curious to hear other people's opinions on when the importance of free speech started to diminish in our collective mind.
[+] [-] hackinthebochs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okaram|5 years ago|reply
I assume most internet geeks think technological restrictions are mostly futile (the internet routes around censorship), BTW.
[+] [-] lupire|5 years ago|reply
The US passed the Alien and Sedition Acts centuries ago.
These debates are age-old.
Also, the First Amendment is less important than all the Articles of the Constitution, including the ones about the Electoral college. So by your theory (which is invalid because order of Amendment has nothing to do with relative importance, and you are a horrible person if you think free speech is more important than banning race-based slavery) peotectingt the Electoral College is more important than Free Speech
[+] [-] asdff|5 years ago|reply
Free speech just means the government isn't going to prosecute you for saying something. That's it. Free speech doesn't mean Random House must publish your manifesto to all things awful. It also doesn't mean a private company is obligated to publish your derogatory tweet. Or for a company to host your website chock full of hateful language.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] modriano|5 years ago|reply
Here's the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
"Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech."
It doesn't say "freedom of speech is a mechanism that leads to truth", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means you have to let someone come into your house and speak at you", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means, if you build a social media platform, you have to let fascists use it to spread disinformation with a rapidity and accuracy of targeting that founding fathers could never possibly have conceived of". It just says "Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech."
In the age of social media, we have seen the truly perverse impacts that viral spread of lies can have, like in Myanmar where months of anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook lead to the genocide of the Rohingya [0]. Another perverse impact is the fostering of echo chambers where participants could freely share conspiracy theories and convince themselves of truly crazy things, like that Hillary Clinton ran a cabal of pedophiles that worked out of the basement of Comet Pizza, or that tens of thousands of election workers across many states executed a perfect rigging of the US election. In the past, people susceptible to fringe beliefs would struggle to find likeminded people and would have been too embarrassed to freely exercise speech, but per Facebook's own research: "64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms. [1][2]. Free speech was unleashed in a way never possible before.
Last Wednesday, the elected Representatives and Senators of my country were in the process of certifying the results of my country's election, but they were violently interrupted by people who believe a set of lies that they've heard and read hundreds of times. Since this insurrection attempt, we've found a lot of footage indicating these people were looking to kill the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, the #2 and #3 people in the Presidential line of succession.
I don't know why people think the 1st amendment means private companies, who aren't Congress at all, should have to make the fruits of their labor accessible to terrorists, or why that's a good thing. But a lot of people here seem to consider that to be an article of faith. I truly have no idea why.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-platforms-must-pay-for-t...
[+] [-] okaram|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pldr1234|5 years ago|reply
Is there a way to report these types of posts? Or better yet, to have HN remove all this incessant political commentary.
Perhaps I'll take the time to finally work on that custom Chrome extension project I've been meaning to tackle..
[+] [-] _-david-_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyxor|5 years ago|reply
The summer riots were freely advertised on all social media apps and WaPo. How is that not incitement of violence.
What’s happening is an unprecedented attack on free speech in disguise of silencing “insurrection”.
[+] [-] mhh__|5 years ago|reply
The police already have the power to deal with things like that, the vast majority of it was people protesting.
[+] [-] abandonliberty|5 years ago|reply
Do you really need the quotes?
[+] [-] gameswithgo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcolkitt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majormajor|5 years ago|reply
Here Biden talks about revoking Section 230 because it shields FB from liability for the stuff that it helps spread: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-b...
> [Zuckerberg] knows better. And you know, from my perspective, I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.
More discussion about the difference between the Democrat and Republican objections to 230 - but that they both have some - is here https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-joe-... among other places.
[+] [-] Spooky23|5 years ago|reply
Bernie was similar but didn’t have the appeal to the dumb and old.
[+] [-] atlgator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flying_sheep|5 years ago|reply
Let's say, people in cities are more willing to use EV car. People in small city / rural area are less motivated because of weaker infrastructure. This is unfair to ask the people in small city to make this change if they are not provided enough help :-/
I am afraid people in two sides are getting more divided and more extreme. Don't forget based on the vote count, it is still a 50:50 but not 90:10 fight.
[+] [-] bawolff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LordHumungous|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] meekmockmook|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creato|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] middleclick|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] SubiculumCode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|5 years ago|reply
Apple and Google, with control over 99% of the app industry, ganged up and eliminated the Parler app. When a tiny number of companies collude to destroy the competition, it is known as a "trust", children. And colluding to destroy a company is known as "racketeering".
The Biden Administration is hiring several people from these companies: Jessica Hertz of Facebook and Emily Horne of Twitter.
It is highly unlikely he will turn around now and push the Justice Dept. to go after these companies. He's glad they banned Trump; it benefited him. Now he has to pay them back, if he knows what's good for him.
[+] [-] justinzollars|5 years ago|reply
The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels of popular support (search twitter on the fec.gov [1]) - and the Democratic Party is now responsible for regulating Silicon Valley makes it chilling when the demands for censorship by the Democratic Party are followed.
The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with.
[1] https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/how-to-res...
[+] [-] birdyrooster|5 years ago|reply
Republicans have a duty to their nation to provide a counter balance of power and they cannot use dogmatism as an excuse for staying put.
[+] [-] afavour|5 years ago|reply
1. Franklin Graham 2. Dan Bongino 3. Fox News 4. Ben Shapiro 5. Dan Bongino 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Dan Bongino 8. TWICE 9. The New York Times 10. Ben Shapiro
Source: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/134939331795225395...
If FB was overwhelmingly left leaning, why are almost all of its most popular posts from right wing outlets?
You’re extrapolating a lot here. Silicon Valley employees support Democrats, therefore any censorship Silicon Valley firms do is at the orders of the Democratic Party? Show the evidence of that.
Ignoring what the (largely powerless) ground level employees of the tech giants do, the chief execs of these companies lobby both Democrats and Republicans. No matter who is in power, money talks. I suspect that’s why even though there’s a huge amount of evidence that folks like Ben Shapiro have violated FB rules for gaming the feed there has been no action taken. FB has spent the last four years courting Republicans, now they’ll court Democrats.
That’s the real problem but it’s certainly easier to pretend it’s a party-specific problem that would solved if only the other people were in charge.
[+] [-] middleclick|5 years ago|reply
Quite the hyperbole without any evidence. Where is the evidence that they have demanded for censorship? Or have done so in the past where a democrat has censored a social media website? Absolutely none.
[+] [-] austhrow743|5 years ago|reply
The latter doesn't seem to be a problem and also looks to be the case here.
[+] [-] JeremyBanks|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] subsubzero|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] belimawr|5 years ago|reply