And while apologists may bring up the Yiannopolis case as an example of hypocrisy, let's keep in mind that Twitter is free to censor speech how it sees fit. The US government is explicitly not.
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/463074782205190144 https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/440339119239991296 https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/504060745026637825 https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/169001733417213952 https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755218642674020352
Your neighbor is Milo. Your printing press is Twitter.
Everyone is mutually addressable in meatspace. If you're in the same space, and someone else talks, you have no choice but to hear it or leave the premises (note that here, the people who don't like the speech must vacate, not the people speaking unpopular things). There's a great equalizing power in that.
In ye olden tyme, you could walk up to your neighbor and give him a copy of your paper. He could throw it away or refuse to talk to you, but there was no [legal] way to totally disappear/silence you.
As for corporations, if they didn't like you, all they could do is print their own counter-arguments. Now the corporate entity can effectively disappear you and cut you off not only from the larger world, but your personal social graph.
This is particularly insidious when it comes to the practice of shadowbanning (and I'm speaking in general -- not trying to start a debate as to whether Twitter engages in this or not).
And if they did agree to print your diatribe against the President of the day under an anonymous byline, they sure as hell would have claimed the right to not release your name to the government.
Newspapers were hawked by criers in the street, or sold at stands directly adjacent to competing newspapers, or delivered to your doorstep where the other guy could place his competing paper right next to it. All the conduct was in the real, person-to-person world where every physically able person has the same access.
That access is completely non-existent in cyberspace; the user pulls only what he wishes to receive. In the physical world, the user receives pushes from everything in his environment.
Twitter is not a publication, but a piece of telecom infrastructure. People do not go to Twitter to see what Twitter thinks. They go to Twitter because they believe Twitter will successfully carry the communication from the people they trust and want to listen to.
Is it equally OK for the phone company to kick you off and take your phone number because they didn't like what you said through "their" telephone infrastructure? What about your ISP kicking you off because they don't like what you're posting over "their" pipes? If you don't like it, you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right?
Not only were newspapers publications with a monolithic, easily attributable point of view, but newspapers did not have circulation that reached into the billions either (and if one newspaper did get that large, they'd have been broken up in antitrust).
Now, companies can alter or silence someone else's speech, and remove the entire audience, because ironically, the audience no longer needs to go into the real, physical world that exists behind the keyboard to find out what's happening. They implicitly trust these platforms to present the information they request.
There are many big differences between cyberspace and physical space. We've made a lot of short-sighted policy by pretending there's a 1:1 mapping. Let's not keep that habit up.
And why is it that Twitter has to carry that regulatory burden? At what point does a company/website become telecom infrastructure?
One of the issues with ISPs and other utilities is that they have been given local monopoly in exchange for regulation, so I would not say they are similar to Twitter. This is also why your statement "you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right?" is supposed to cut.
You're also not giving very much credit to the audience you speak of. The audience has always had to ensure their own information sources are good.
I'm not really proposing any specific regulation. While it is telecom infrastructure, I'm not suggesting they must be subject to exactly the same regulations as hard-line providers, and there are reasons to craft a different class of rules for them.
The point is that just saying "they're a private company, they can alter things and silence customers however they want" shouldn't work anymore.
>And why is it that Twitter has to carry that regulatory burden?
Because they're a massive communication platform that people depend on to accurately represent conversations. Why should Comcast or AT&T have to carry regulatory burden? Same reasons.
>At what point does a company/website become telecom infrastructure?
Whenever they act a carrier or intermediary in conversations not intended to go directly to/from them. If you're talking to someone else through something and trusting it to carry your communication, it's a telecommunication device.
Of course, there can be limits on when/where any potential restrictions should become effective.
>One of the issues with ISPs and other utilities is that they have been given local monopoly in exchange for regulation, so I would not say they are similar to Twitter. This is also why your statement "you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right?" is supposed to cut.
Whether the monopoly is imposed by fiat or occurs organically, it should still be recognized and addressed as a monopoly.
>You're also not giving very much credit to the audience you speak of. The audience has always had to ensure their own information sources are good.
Yes, but in the past, it was not really possible to shut everything else out. There was an opportunity for competitors to get their attention in the physical world where everyone in the same vicinity shares equal access. You couldn't get outside information whilst remaining cloistered up inside your house; you at least had to go to the doorstep or mailbox, where people could leave their own publications.
In cyberspace, you have a blank window until you explicitly request some content. There is no opportunity to present anything that the user doesn't explicitly pull, and then the user is pulling that data from platforms entirely under the control of a very small handful of corporations.
When at least 90% of people are getting their data from the same sources, it's reasonable for some controls to be in place.
This isn't new; until the early 00s, we had rules that prevented a single corporation from controlling too many media outlets in a specific market. Until the late 80s, we had the Fairness Doctrine to ensure that controversial public issues were presented fairly.
If those controls were needed to help control broadcasters whose range was 50 miles, how is it absurd to suggest similar things apply to Twitter/Facebook whose range is infinite and whose user base reaches into the billions, an appreciable percentage of all humanity?
For some reason, it seems like most people interpreted this the other way around.
You're free to move on to another platform to "express" yourself if you feel the need to. There is no shortage of sites dedicated to reprehensible content. A whole World Wide Web full of them! If you don't find one you can even start your own! You've never been able to go to someone else's property to express yourself in ways they don't agree with. They would throw you out. Nobody is forced to host unwanted guests.
IRL everyone censors themselves. I don't say what I think of my in-laws in front of them, I smile and nod and limit my exposure to them to a few hours less than once a year to keep face. Later I go to a friend's house to bitch about them. This is how a functional society works.
The idea you ever had some sort of right to use a private platform to broadcast any random garbage that comes to your head at the time is just absurd. We never put a cultural value on random mouth diarrhea. We are polite in some company and sometimes say controversial things in other company. That's a cultural value.
Having non-mainstream discussion in non-mainstream places and business restricting activity that's bad for their bottom line and/or interests is not an insult to culture, it's normal social interactions.
Personally I like moderation/censorship and it's even necessary for a functional community, otherwise all forums would degrade to the lowest common denominator, spam, memes, and shitposts, given enough time.
If a smoker tells you smoking is bad, is he wrong?
One of the oldest tricks when somebody does something you dont like is to point out what an awful hypocrite they are, even when its only tangetial, or unrelated entirely.
This is generally because there is some historical precedent showing that if you don't have such laws, some groups of people will treat other groups of people as less-than-human. Additionally, society believes that it is in the general best interest if such treatment is minimized.
You may disagree with what counts as discriminatory or which classes should be protected, but I hope this at least makes some general sense.
Anti-discrimination laws are built on a history of groups being excluded from access to housing, loans, schooling, contracts, etc. I don't think it is hard to see that depriving certain groups of access to the instruments of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness causes material harm.
Both sides agree that political speech is too censored. Agreeing is good - it gives us common ground where we can make progress instead of fighting forever.
Unless you're more interested in the act of fighting than making progress.