If you are reading a piece about free speech and content moderation on platforms like Twitter, look to see if it meaningfully engages with the concepts of spam and porn, which are both fully legal speech, and both heavily moderated with little controversy. (This piece does not.)
Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs. Our values and beliefs are integral to the way we each evaluate the content decisions of private parties like social platforms, publishers, and people.
No one values spam, so no one writes hand-wringing essays about whether it is ok to kick spam and spammers off social media. Most people recognize that porn, even if they like it, is not something that should be in everyone’s faces all the time, so there is little existential concern for free speech as a whole when porn is excluded or hidden from some contexts.
You cannot expect to make sense of free speech if you try to ignore other values.
Irrelevant speech is noise. Freedom of speech is freedom to speak to those who might want to hear, not to push ads and spam and porn on those who don't want it. There's no freedom of speech in a night club. If there's noise you can't speak.
It doesn't stop with porn, if you're on a social platform to connect with friends and all you see is political things you don't care about, that's noise too.
If a social media platform doesn't let you supress things you don't want to see, that's a problem with the platform.
If a social media platform doesn't let you supress speach you don't want others to hear, problem is with you.
If you're trying to muddle the waters of free speech with false narratives and strawman arguments like spam and porn, that's just cheap manipulation.
This has nothing to do with values, if someone doesn't want to see porn, he should be able to avoid it, and if someone wants to see porn he should be able to see it. Spam is by definition something nobody wants to see.
Only collectivists and authoritarians would start going off on "society" values as if their values are superior enough to warrant forcing.
There's a lot of porn on twitter, and the fact that so many people use porn as an example of something that twitter has to ban, not knowing that twitter doesn't ban porn and it nonetheless isn't in their face all the time, perfectly illustrates that banning things from a platform such as twitter is not necessary, that people are perfectly able to avoid things that are not banned.
The article explicitly makes the distinction between law and culture in free speech. Implicitly, that includes your concern about spam and porn, which are legally approved and culturally disapproved.
For example, the article points out that Apple could decide at any point to remove the Twitter app from their store for any reason. Such a reason could be that there is lots of porn on Twitter, and this could encourage Twitter to discourage porn on their platform, kind of like what happened with Tumblr.
As a consumer, I don't mind it if platforms censor spam and porn as long as there is a switch somewhere I can toggle that will let me opt out of it if I want to see spam and porn. That's just my personal preference and if enough other people express that preference then the culture around free speech will change.
I think about it in terms of pro- and anti-social speech. Free speech is about pro-social speech, not anti-social. The way I see it, people conflate the two types of speech.
Citizens arguing about ugly topics like identity politics, conspiracies, coverups, etc. are de-facto pro-social - they are trying to sway public opinion on political issues, ostensibly to make their society better. It becomes anti-social when those arguments are being pushed by outside parties (Russian/Chinese/corpo propaganda) or grifters.
Pro-social speech can also become anti-social when people get too heated and start attacking others based on their beliefs. It's difficult to deal with speech that is both pro- and anti-social, in terms of trying to convey a sincere argument while also being toxic to those who don't agree. In cases like that, "rules of engagement" or a code of conduct should be implemented.
Anti-social speech is to say things without the goal of construction/progress, but instead with the goal of destruction or abuse. Spam and porn are anti-social in certain contexts and are treated as such, the same way drug use and swearing is (or maybe used to be).
Assuming you believe in the thesis that free speech prevents social collapse and totalitarianism, then it doesn't matter whether you disagree with or even hate certain arguments/views, if they are sincere then they are pro-social and should be given some platform to be heard and interacted with in the mainstream.
Greg Lukianoff also suggested drawing the content moderation line at legal speech [1].
> Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs.
Saying this does not convince people who are concerned about hate speech. Such individuals imagine that the government or the platform will, or can be coerced, to simply remove whatever they do not like. These folks, who consider themselves among the majority, never imagine that they will one day be a minority, or that such power will then be used against them. The truth is that all of us are being moderated all the time on social media, but that's hard to demonstrate in all cases at all times, which is why the secrecy of such moderation tends to be effective for a period.
Drawing the line at legal speech is important is because words are not violent, and moving it anywhere else leads to more disagreement. Other people's words, which you may find offensive and which may cause real psychological harm, are still discretionary. Some may find them harmful, others will not. Laws aren't supposed to be subjectively interpreted. The exception for when speech can be punished by law is defined by Nadine Strossen as words that "in context, directly causes specific imminent serious harm" [2].
> No one values spam, so no one writes hand-wringing essays about whether it is ok to kick spam and spammers off social media.
That's not really what happens though. Spam is a useful mechanism to get platforms to build more tools that secretly remove content. I mention it in my talk at 28:00 [3]. These new censorship tools are mostly used to suppress speech from individuals, not spammers.
> Most people recognize that porn, even if they like it, is not something that should be in everyone’s faces all the time, so there is little existential concern for free speech as a whole when porn is excluded or hidden from some contexts.
That's not true, "obscenity" has always been under attack. Look up Anthony Comstock [4] [5], a largely successful crusader against all things he found obscene. He didn't stop at pornography, he went after literature describing contraceptives, abortion, and even people who just criticized him. It was just like how today's radical trans movement seeks to remove voices of detransitioners from social media [6]. It doesn't fit their world view, they find it offensive and they don't want you to see it. That said, there is broader agreement about keeping pornography away from children.
The vast amounts of censorship today, most often secretly done, cuts out the middle and enables both extremes to isolate themselves in their own bubbles. Instead of trying to baby-proof our world, we should be world-proofing ourselves [7]
> You cannot expect to make sense of free speech if you try to ignore other values.
Nobody's saying we should ignore other values. If you hold this view then you've misinterpreted the constitution, whose 9th amendment [8] states that rights are not to be held in conflict with each other.
What should be said here is, you cannot make sense of free speech if you do not examine its history and how it's been relentlessly defended, not just in the US, but everywhere possible for arguably the whole of human history, with varying degrees of success.
Porn’s sometimes less than legal if children are able/likely to view it, no? Your spam argument is spot-on though. Someone might argue that posting cooldowns paired with URL filters and a well-tuned voting system fairly and effectively combat spam though.
Might have a better argument with gore instead of porn.
> The popular radio program “On the Media” feared Musk’s support for free speech would lead to a free-for-all environment rife with child pornography. But that’s a strawman: child pornography is illegal.
This is itself a strawman.
No one thinks Musk will permit it on Twitter. The gutting of the moderation teams who tackle it is the concern. An underenforced rule is often not a very effective one.
All online platforms need to have moderators to prevent things like spam and illegal content. That doesn't mean that they can't also uphold the idea of free speech principles though.
Musk really went crazy with cutting staff, but I'm not sure if it was because he wrongly thought he needed to cut the moderation teams in order to support free speech or if he just did it because moderation is expensive.
NATALIE WYNN (the mind behind Control Points, a left wing YouTube channel)
I do think that looking at 8Chan is a pretty good case study in what happens when you create a "okay, let's just let people say anything." People are posting child pornography to this website on a fairly frequent basis.
I think you're right. "On the media" was just talking about how having an "anything goes" policy leads to a place where nobody wants to hang out, where people post illegal stuff even though its technically not allowed. Which I think is valid when Musk has previously said Twitter should allow anything legal.
It's been grimly entertaining to watch the Musk/Kanye cycle from inviting him back as a symbol of free speech to discovering that Kanye interpreted that as antisemitism was green lighted now, to banning him again.
I guess that's the context for today's free speech discussion.
> No one thinks Musk will permit it on Twitter. The gutting of the moderation teams who tackle it is the concern. An underenforced rule is often not a very effective one.
This isnt cause for concern because they've already caught some longstanding CPU. They are doing a better job now.
"I cannot contemplate human affairs, without laughing or crying. I choose to laugh. When People talk of the Freedom of Writing Speaking or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists: but I hope it will exist, But it must be hundreds of years after you and I Shall write and Speak no more."
Freedom of association captures the idea of freedom of speech better than freedom of speech itself, I think. Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with.
It’s weird to repeatedly see the argument that a corporation’s moderation of human individual’s speech is itself a form of protected speech, from a group of people who until recently mostly thought corporate speech wasn’t even broad enough to cover a corporation’s production and distribution of its own message in a political movie.
Like I think “corporations are people too, my friend” but corporate moderation as a form of protects speech or association takes Citizens United to the next level.
> Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with.
This is so true. The problem we have now is that online platforms are preventing us from making those choices for ourselves. We're being told we're not allowed to talk to certain types of people, often for ideological reasons.
Online platforms shouldn't limit our choices, they should empower us to find whatever content we want and block/remove content we aren't interested in.
Posting online consists of an individual speaking and a platform publishing it.
Social media is not a passive medium like a telephone; it acts as an editor, albeit algorithmically.
In my opinion, the fact that speech online has this dual nature is why there is so much debate about it. Here's a mock interaction...
Individual: "You shadowbanned me. Why?"
Platform: "We don't want to publish you 1 billion times on the internet"
Individual: "Then don't be an editor. Don't give people special treatment."
Platform: "We tried that at first; it did not go well. I can make my platform however I want to."
Individual: "But there are only handful of people making choices that affect billions."
Platform: "The vast majority of these people are not banned or censored"
Etc etc, the debate never ends, because the two sides have opposing financial interests and political opinions/values.
Exactly! I should be able to join or leave groups discussing any sort of topic or view point I like on social media platforms without having my options limited or my views censored.
If I don't want to associate with someone I can unfollow them, unsubscribe from their subreddit, block them etc.
What matters is that it's my choice to do that. We shouldn't have that choice made for us by the people running online platforms.
I think that the most virtuous third party platform is the one that allows it's users to associate with each other with the least intervention probably with some limit such as the explicit threat of violence being moderated away. Seeing where the dice land on each social media website, I'm almost always disappointed that the websites are too heavy-handed. I suppose that "4-chan-style chaos as a business strategy" is less profitable than what they currently practice though.
Freedom of speech exists in dozen of countries but "Free Speech (TM)" is a very US specific thing that seemingly generate an infinite amount of non-sense. People get lost in abstraction and start to think that giving a megaphone to fascists like Twitter did even before Musk is somehow good because the best way to defeat fascism, when you live on planet Mars, is on the "marketplace of ideas". On planet Earth this is not at all how it works, the rise of fascists correlates directly with diminishing freedoms, and to defeat fascists you need the Red Army.
Political speech, especially unpopular political speech, is among the speech that I think is most deserving of free speech protections.
I specifically want the political speech of the people most ideologically opposed to my point of view to be able to make their speech, free from government intrusion on it. I will almost surely not like it, but I will defend vigorously their right to say it.
This not only begs the question, it sets up a situation where expression is entirely controlled and curtailed by those at the levers of power. It is a recipe for an entirely unfree future, one where right and useful ideas will not be allowed to see the light of day because they will cost someone else money and/or power. That is not a future I would want to force on anyone. This is why so many oppose freedom — they're fearful of Bad Things, not realizing that while there will certainly be some negative consequences to freedom in speech or in living, squelching those will also destroy much more that is good and helpful.
And to defeat the Red Army you need lizards, to defeat the lizards you need Chinese needle snakes, to defeat those you need gorillas, and when winter comes around, those freeze to death!
Indeed, Twitter has a legal right to moderate how it pleases.
The question we should be asking is HOW content is being moderated. Shadow moderation, when a forum tricks authors into thinking their removed or demoted content is publicly visible, is an abridgement of free speech culture we should be addressing. I recently gave a talk on this [1] which led to some discussion on HN [2]. The wider public is generally unaware of the degree to which this happens— to all of us.
I'm pretty sure Twitter already shadow moderates content. My reply here [3] only shows up when directly linked, not under the parent tweet [4], and it wasn't hidden by FIRE.
This is openly admitted when platforms say "Free speech but not free reach" as in the case with Musk and Twitter, or when they talk about raising or reducing content as in the case of YouTube [5].
The "sides" of this argument have flipped. The pre-Musk arguments about Twitter's responsibility as a "public square" are now about how Twitter can do whatever they want as a private actor. And vice versa on the other side.
I wonder if the left will be able to take advantage of Texas' social media law[1] now that leftists accounts are being banned[2].
Children taught by the SS would send their parents to prison because their parents assumed free speech in a private setting.
Once you realize that these abuses are inherent to a system that doesn’t culturally accept free speech, then you see the danger of the current moment more clearly.
This controversy only exists because there's no "public square" of the internet. Every online venue for speech is private. It shouldn't be that way. We should have federal platforms that charge users at-cost and whose only rules are the laws of the US. Every account linked to the real identity of a citizen and violations of the law the same as those in real life: a visit from the cops. You deserve an e-mail address that can't be taken away from you without a court order.
> The White House is free to make the argument that Twitter should police “misinformation” and “hate speech” on its platform. But it has no legal basis to say that Twitter must do so.
False. Or, rather, it's false if you want Twitter to maintain its liability shield in Section 230 of the Cojmunications Decency Act [1], specifically 230(c)(2). Without this, Twitter becomes liable for any content. This is of course US-centric. Different countries have other requirements.
> Musk may not be the best — or most consistent — messenger for free speech. And you may not agree with his interpretation of free speech.
We all know what Musk means when he says "free speech". It's the same as when any conservative says "free speech". It means "hate speech". It means not wanting to get banned for spouting transphobia (in particular), homophobia, racist screeds, misogyny, etc.
> If we care about an America whose support for free expression goes beyond the law, we must support a culture of free expression.
No, we shouldn't. Every time some variant of free speech absolutism has been tried, the results are always the same: it fills up with Nazis. Everyone else leaves. Even 4chan has a ToS (basically "no CP"). That's the place for unhinged hate speech and conspiracy theories.
Platforms don't want to be known as being a Nazi hotbed. Advertisers flee. Beyond that however platforms should consider what's best for the total user base. Allowing a few extremists to spew hate speech in the name of some ideal of free speech culture at the expense of everyone else is narcissism personified.
I'll close with noting the paradox of tolerance [2].
I have a lot of respect for FIRE. Hell, I designed and built their website over a decade ago, when the organization was primarily focused on speech codes on college campuses. They were doing great and important work then, and continue to do now.
It's also nice to see them attempting to separate "free speech" into two buckets of meaning, the legal and the cultural. It's a point that gets muddled.
However, the article, like a lot of "free speech culture" defenses I see, fails to explain why "free speech culture" has to, essentially, be "one way". The freedom of someone to say something, but without the freedom for someone to speak against it. If the consequence of saying something is a lot of people mocking you for it, that can be, and often is, just as chilling as any specific action.
It also fails to discuss, at all, how actions and speech are somehow distinct things. If you're saying something I disagree with, am I morally obligated, within "free speech culture" to sit there and hear you say it? Am I morally obligated, within "free speech culture", to support businesses which publicly say things I disagree with, or things which specifically target me, or my family? If not, isn't then the monetary consequence of "free speech" potentially chilling?
And if people should/must be free to speak against speech they disagree with, and if people should/must be free to deny business to businesses they disagree with, then isn't the "free speech culture" defense just a disagreement over whether someone, or some group, is right in the speech they use, and actions they take? The argument isn't about broader principles.
Elon Musk took over Twitter and disagreed with speech, and actions, the previous owners took. He reversed course. He's "free" to do so. He also took issue with speech and actions the previous owners didn't take, and banned accounts whose speech he disagreed with. He's free to do so.
Individuals are free to speak against that. Individuals are free to take their business elsewhere because of that.
That is, as far as I can tell, what a "free speech culture" should/must mean.
Finally, I took note that their most compelling "you have to be for 'free speech culture'" cautionary tale in the article was explicitly not about private individuals, or companies, but a government's (CCP) ability to pressure private companies – something which is explicitly rebutted by "free speech law" as bounded by the author.
I'm curious why these discussions sidestep the fact that a company has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. It is understandable, from a shareholder perspective, to not want your investment's brand next to potentially unsavory content. It seems that there is a real and unresolved tension between a culture of free speech (which I wholeheartedly endorse) and modern-day capitalism.
I've heard this argument a few times and my response is that I don't think it's that simple in the case of Twitter. Abstractly I agree that the limit of a corporation's tolerance for unsavory content approaches the politically correct mean as time goes on. But I honestly feel that Twitter was nowhere near that mean and their moderation decisions were far to the left essentially excluding over 50% of the population. I don't believe that people pulling their ads are doing so because they think it's a good strategy or because they have issue with any content currently on Twitter. I honestly believe they've done so to their own detriment as part of the culture war that seems to surround Musk. In time the value of advertising will speak and the fears that Twitter will turn into a cesspool will prove unfounded and the fiduciary duty of the people who pulled their ads from Twitter to their own company shareholders will kick back in and they will return. If Twitter was say 40% agreeable under it's previous moderation team, I believe there's room for it to grow to 80% agreeable by tolerating more diversity of thought.
A publicly held corporation does have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, but managers often do things that they can argue might maximize shareholder value in opposition to what the shareholders believe. The managers almost always get their way, even when they turn out to have been wrong, or even when they never sincerely meant to maximize shareholder value. Sometimes shareholders rebel and sue. Sometimes the lawsuits work out in the shareholders' interests.
As to the specific matter here, Twitter is now a privately held corporation. It has no such fiduciary duty. The lenders can presumably call their loans if they think Musk will bankrupt the company. Musk can legitimately believe that his vision regarding free speech will maximize the company's value, and he could be right or wrong, or he could be making it all up as he goes and not be sincere about anything, and he gets to. I'm not a mind reader, so I won't hazard a guess as to what he thinks about freedom of speech and profitability.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|3 years ago|reply
Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs. Our values and beliefs are integral to the way we each evaluate the content decisions of private parties like social platforms, publishers, and people.
No one values spam, so no one writes hand-wringing essays about whether it is ok to kick spam and spammers off social media. Most people recognize that porn, even if they like it, is not something that should be in everyone’s faces all the time, so there is little existential concern for free speech as a whole when porn is excluded or hidden from some contexts.
You cannot expect to make sense of free speech if you try to ignore other values.
[+] [-] machina_ex_deus|3 years ago|reply
It doesn't stop with porn, if you're on a social platform to connect with friends and all you see is political things you don't care about, that's noise too.
If a social media platform doesn't let you supress things you don't want to see, that's a problem with the platform.
If a social media platform doesn't let you supress speach you don't want others to hear, problem is with you.
If you're trying to muddle the waters of free speech with false narratives and strawman arguments like spam and porn, that's just cheap manipulation.
This has nothing to do with values, if someone doesn't want to see porn, he should be able to avoid it, and if someone wants to see porn he should be able to see it. Spam is by definition something nobody wants to see.
Only collectivists and authoritarians would start going off on "society" values as if their values are superior enough to warrant forcing.
[+] [-] amadeuspagel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saint_fiasco|3 years ago|reply
For example, the article points out that Apple could decide at any point to remove the Twitter app from their store for any reason. Such a reason could be that there is lots of porn on Twitter, and this could encourage Twitter to discourage porn on their platform, kind of like what happened with Tumblr.
As a consumer, I don't mind it if platforms censor spam and porn as long as there is a switch somewhere I can toggle that will let me opt out of it if I want to see spam and porn. That's just my personal preference and if enough other people express that preference then the culture around free speech will change.
[+] [-] prohobo|3 years ago|reply
Citizens arguing about ugly topics like identity politics, conspiracies, coverups, etc. are de-facto pro-social - they are trying to sway public opinion on political issues, ostensibly to make their society better. It becomes anti-social when those arguments are being pushed by outside parties (Russian/Chinese/corpo propaganda) or grifters.
Pro-social speech can also become anti-social when people get too heated and start attacking others based on their beliefs. It's difficult to deal with speech that is both pro- and anti-social, in terms of trying to convey a sincere argument while also being toxic to those who don't agree. In cases like that, "rules of engagement" or a code of conduct should be implemented.
Anti-social speech is to say things without the goal of construction/progress, but instead with the goal of destruction or abuse. Spam and porn are anti-social in certain contexts and are treated as such, the same way drug use and swearing is (or maybe used to be).
Assuming you believe in the thesis that free speech prevents social collapse and totalitarianism, then it doesn't matter whether you disagree with or even hate certain arguments/views, if they are sincere then they are pro-social and should be given some platform to be heard and interacted with in the mainstream.
[+] [-] blacklion|3 years ago|reply
Ok, maybe spam can be defined more or less formally (but you will struggle to define "advertisement", I'm afraid, so, maybe spam has same problem).
But "pornography" is big can of worms. Each culture and each person have its own definition, and global platforms are, errr, global.
As result we can not post classical art to Facebook because these horrible woman nipples, you now. Pornography.
[+] [-] rhaksw|3 years ago|reply
> Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs.
Saying this does not convince people who are concerned about hate speech. Such individuals imagine that the government or the platform will, or can be coerced, to simply remove whatever they do not like. These folks, who consider themselves among the majority, never imagine that they will one day be a minority, or that such power will then be used against them. The truth is that all of us are being moderated all the time on social media, but that's hard to demonstrate in all cases at all times, which is why the secrecy of such moderation tends to be effective for a period.
Drawing the line at legal speech is important is because words are not violent, and moving it anywhere else leads to more disagreement. Other people's words, which you may find offensive and which may cause real psychological harm, are still discretionary. Some may find them harmful, others will not. Laws aren't supposed to be subjectively interpreted. The exception for when speech can be punished by law is defined by Nadine Strossen as words that "in context, directly causes specific imminent serious harm" [2].
> No one values spam, so no one writes hand-wringing essays about whether it is ok to kick spam and spammers off social media.
That's not really what happens though. Spam is a useful mechanism to get platforms to build more tools that secretly remove content. I mention it in my talk at 28:00 [3]. These new censorship tools are mostly used to suppress speech from individuals, not spammers.
> Most people recognize that porn, even if they like it, is not something that should be in everyone’s faces all the time, so there is little existential concern for free speech as a whole when porn is excluded or hidden from some contexts.
That's not true, "obscenity" has always been under attack. Look up Anthony Comstock [4] [5], a largely successful crusader against all things he found obscene. He didn't stop at pornography, he went after literature describing contraceptives, abortion, and even people who just criticized him. It was just like how today's radical trans movement seeks to remove voices of detransitioners from social media [6]. It doesn't fit their world view, they find it offensive and they don't want you to see it. That said, there is broader agreement about keeping pornography away from children.
The vast amounts of censorship today, most often secretly done, cuts out the middle and enables both extremes to isolate themselves in their own bubbles. Instead of trying to baby-proof our world, we should be world-proofing ourselves [7]
> You cannot expect to make sense of free speech if you try to ignore other values.
Nobody's saying we should ignore other values. If you hold this view then you've misinterpreted the constitution, whose 9th amendment [8] states that rights are not to be held in conflict with each other.
What should be said here is, you cannot make sense of free speech if you do not examine its history and how it's been relentlessly defended, not just in the US, but everywhere possible for arguably the whole of human history, with varying degrees of success.
[1] https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/op...
[2] https://books.google.com/books?&hl=en&id=whBQDwAAQBAJ&q=in+c...
[3] https://cantsayanything.win/2022-10-transparent-moderation/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Comstock
[5] https://play.google.com/store/books/details/The_Mind_of_the_...
[6] https://archive.ph/1NeiV#selection-1513.7-1513.57
[7] https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/76283/world-proof...
[8] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/?...
[+] [-] jimbob45|3 years ago|reply
Might have a better argument with gore instead of porn.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|3 years ago|reply
This is itself a strawman.
No one thinks Musk will permit it on Twitter. The gutting of the moderation teams who tackle it is the concern. An underenforced rule is often not a very effective one.
[+] [-] autoexec|3 years ago|reply
Musk really went crazy with cutting staff, but I'm not sure if it was because he wrongly thought he needed to cut the moderation teams in order to support free speech or if he just did it because moderation is expensive.
[+] [-] elpool2|3 years ago|reply
NATALIE WYNN (the mind behind Control Points, a left wing YouTube channel) I do think that looking at 8Chan is a pretty good case study in what happens when you create a "okay, let's just let people say anything." People are posting child pornography to this website on a fairly frequent basis.
I think you're right. "On the media" was just talking about how having an "anything goes" policy leads to a place where nobody wants to hang out, where people post illegal stuff even though its technically not allowed. Which I think is valid when Musk has previously said Twitter should allow anything legal.
[+] [-] pjc50|3 years ago|reply
I guess that's the context for today's free speech discussion.
[+] [-] nonethewiser|3 years ago|reply
This isnt cause for concern because they've already caught some longstanding CPU. They are doing a better job now.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] glyphosate|3 years ago|reply
-John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1817
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6790
[+] [-] mech765|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
Like I think “corporations are people too, my friend” but corporate moderation as a form of protects speech or association takes Citizens United to the next level.
[+] [-] autoexec|3 years ago|reply
This is so true. The problem we have now is that online platforms are preventing us from making those choices for ourselves. We're being told we're not allowed to talk to certain types of people, often for ideological reasons.
Online platforms shouldn't limit our choices, they should empower us to find whatever content we want and block/remove content we aren't interested in.
[+] [-] curtisblaine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quazar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abigail95|3 years ago|reply
What do you mean by some number of government constraints?
[+] [-] biophysboy|3 years ago|reply
In my opinion, the fact that speech online has this dual nature is why there is so much debate about it. Here's a mock interaction...
Individual: "You shadowbanned me. Why?"
Platform: "We don't want to publish you 1 billion times on the internet"
Individual: "Then don't be an editor. Don't give people special treatment."
Platform: "We tried that at first; it did not go well. I can make my platform however I want to."
Individual: "But there are only handful of people making choices that affect billions."
Platform: "The vast majority of these people are not banned or censored"
Etc etc, the debate never ends, because the two sides have opposing financial interests and political opinions/values.
[+] [-] deathanatos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autoexec|3 years ago|reply
If I don't want to associate with someone I can unfollow them, unsubscribe from their subreddit, block them etc.
What matters is that it's my choice to do that. We shouldn't have that choice made for us by the people running online platforms.
[+] [-] mech765|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] anonyme-honteux|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|3 years ago|reply
I specifically want the political speech of the people most ideologically opposed to my point of view to be able to make their speech, free from government intrusion on it. I will almost surely not like it, but I will defend vigorously their right to say it.
[+] [-] flenserboy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] actionfromafar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] someNameIG|3 years ago|reply
Isn't that every country? I'm not American but to my understanding speech calling for direct violence is illegal the US, where Twitter is based.
[+] [-] Gigachad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rhaksw|3 years ago|reply
The question we should be asking is HOW content is being moderated. Shadow moderation, when a forum tricks authors into thinking their removed or demoted content is publicly visible, is an abridgement of free speech culture we should be addressing. I recently gave a talk on this [1] which led to some discussion on HN [2]. The wider public is generally unaware of the degree to which this happens— to all of us.
I'm pretty sure Twitter already shadow moderates content. My reply here [3] only shows up when directly linked, not under the parent tweet [4], and it wasn't hidden by FIRE.
This is openly admitted when platforms say "Free speech but not free reach" as in the case with Musk and Twitter, or when they talk about raising or reducing content as in the case of YouTube [5].
[1] https://cantsayanything.win/2022-10-transparent-moderation/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475391
[3] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1594103021407195136
[4] https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1594078057895063553
[5] https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-four-rs-of-responsib...
[+] [-] guelo|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if the left will be able to take advantage of Texas' social media law[1] now that leftists accounts are being banned[2].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/technology/texas-social-m...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...
[+] [-] fruitpick|3 years ago|reply
The people advancing one arguement pre-Musk might be different to the purple advancing the argument the opposite way, even on the same political side.
But I agree that on aggregate, the same logic is now being applied to form opposite conclusions.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|3 years ago|reply
Once you realize that these abuses are inherent to a system that doesn’t culturally accept free speech, then you see the danger of the current moment more clearly.
[+] [-] causi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
False. Or, rather, it's false if you want Twitter to maintain its liability shield in Section 230 of the Cojmunications Decency Act [1], specifically 230(c)(2). Without this, Twitter becomes liable for any content. This is of course US-centric. Different countries have other requirements.
> Musk may not be the best — or most consistent — messenger for free speech. And you may not agree with his interpretation of free speech.
We all know what Musk means when he says "free speech". It's the same as when any conservative says "free speech". It means "hate speech". It means not wanting to get banned for spouting transphobia (in particular), homophobia, racist screeds, misogyny, etc.
> If we care about an America whose support for free expression goes beyond the law, we must support a culture of free expression.
No, we shouldn't. Every time some variant of free speech absolutism has been tried, the results are always the same: it fills up with Nazis. Everyone else leaves. Even 4chan has a ToS (basically "no CP"). That's the place for unhinged hate speech and conspiracy theories.
Platforms don't want to be known as being a Nazi hotbed. Advertisers flee. Beyond that however platforms should consider what's best for the total user base. Allowing a few extremists to spew hate speech in the name of some ideal of free speech culture at the expense of everyone else is narcissism personified.
I'll close with noting the paradox of tolerance [2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
[+] [-] etchalon|3 years ago|reply
It's also nice to see them attempting to separate "free speech" into two buckets of meaning, the legal and the cultural. It's a point that gets muddled.
However, the article, like a lot of "free speech culture" defenses I see, fails to explain why "free speech culture" has to, essentially, be "one way". The freedom of someone to say something, but without the freedom for someone to speak against it. If the consequence of saying something is a lot of people mocking you for it, that can be, and often is, just as chilling as any specific action.
It also fails to discuss, at all, how actions and speech are somehow distinct things. If you're saying something I disagree with, am I morally obligated, within "free speech culture" to sit there and hear you say it? Am I morally obligated, within "free speech culture", to support businesses which publicly say things I disagree with, or things which specifically target me, or my family? If not, isn't then the monetary consequence of "free speech" potentially chilling?
And if people should/must be free to speak against speech they disagree with, and if people should/must be free to deny business to businesses they disagree with, then isn't the "free speech culture" defense just a disagreement over whether someone, or some group, is right in the speech they use, and actions they take? The argument isn't about broader principles.
Elon Musk took over Twitter and disagreed with speech, and actions, the previous owners took. He reversed course. He's "free" to do so. He also took issue with speech and actions the previous owners didn't take, and banned accounts whose speech he disagreed with. He's free to do so.
Individuals are free to speak against that. Individuals are free to take their business elsewhere because of that.
That is, as far as I can tell, what a "free speech culture" should/must mean.
Finally, I took note that their most compelling "you have to be for 'free speech culture'" cautionary tale in the article was explicitly not about private individuals, or companies, but a government's (CCP) ability to pressure private companies – something which is explicitly rebutted by "free speech law" as bounded by the author.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] soheil|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sorin-panca|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomasmiller_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpelingBeeChamp|3 years ago|reply
See here, for one discussion: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
[+] [-] cryptonector|3 years ago|reply
As to the specific matter here, Twitter is now a privately held corporation. It has no such fiduciary duty. The lenders can presumably call their loans if they think Musk will bankrupt the company. Musk can legitimately believe that his vision regarding free speech will maximize the company's value, and he could be right or wrong, or he could be making it all up as he goes and not be sincere about anything, and he gets to. I'm not a mind reader, so I won't hazard a guess as to what he thinks about freedom of speech and profitability.
[+] [-] JetAlone|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JetAlone|3 years ago|reply