"I took to facebook to post links to grey legal documents rather than hosting them myself because I wanted facebook to be liable; Im shocked when they told me they didn't appreciate the transfer of risk. It's literally censorship I tell you!"
Freedom of speech is not, and hopefully never will be,"freedom to post on other people's servers unmoderated".
It literally is. Most people would say that is justifiable given that Facebook owns the platform, but that dosen't change the fact that they're censoring what users say.
Those supporting censorship make basic references to it being okay because it is legal.
Those opposed to censorship make basic references to it being wrong because it is unethical.
Clearly, there is a tension between what is legal and what is ethical.
Trying to moderate "hate speech", which is highly subjective, is a losing proposition.
In this case, Facebook - presuming what they did was "follow the rules" - is following censorship rules.
So perhaps the thread should be about the US government forcing companies to censor free speech for them.
It's fairly easy to get people onboard with the idea of moderation, once you insist that that's censorship you now have a population that's "ok with censorship" which is exactly what the fascists trying to make the equality want.
Merely, this specific act of moderation was an implementation of censorship.
Moderation and censorship are two different things that are not mutually exclusive.
You are presenting a false dichotomy.
"First the came for the ..."
Imagine if some Saudi documents were leaked to journalists and the American government walked into the Times and forced them to destroy the documents at gunpoint.
This was clear and simple government censorship.
Not particularly unusual or remarkable for the UK.
They were at gunpoint.
If there was merely a legal risk, it would have been sorted out by the courts and with lawyers. Example: Pentagon Papers, NYT.
This was a no-disagreement, forced compliance situation. It's not like they debated with the armed guards and they came to mutual philosophical position.
And note that The Guardian _did_ disagree. They had no other option.
So the entire argument "They complied (when forced at gunpoint and under threat) -> therefore it must have been a legally gray thing for them to report on global surveillance documents" begs the question. And to that point, the argument would be thrown out of any courtroom on those grounds.
When strongarm governments exercise their authoritarian muscles, we don't need to apologize and make excuses for it.
I think that we do have a reasonable expectation that our employers and service providers won't interfere with our religious lives, that all employees and customers have equal rights and responsibilities, are entitled to due process during disputes, we have the right to not self-incriminate, to face our accusers, to defend ourselves against attack, to associate with whoever we please, and so on.
When a dominant platform for communication starts to exercise its own authority over what can be communicated on their platform, I think its only natural that we consider it to be an unethical abuse of power. Property rights are not absolute. As one party becomes more and more dominant, I think it is appropriate that we recognize the asymmetry in the relationship and restrict that party's ability to exert power over others.
The idea that they bind on Facebook is... aspirational.
I'm going to steal that phrase.
The Bill of Rights and later amendments enshrines the ideal that power should have limitations. Just because this ideal was first applied to government doesn't mean that we must stop there.
If you don't like the policies for Google, Facebook, others, make your own. Maybe like minded individuals will follow (most likely they won't). Once you no longer have this right then we can talk about censorship.
Facebook was a community platform where I could reach out to the people I knew and loved - my friends and family. That's the only reason I made Facebook posts.
Regarding moderation - do you agree that something can be both moderation and censorship at the same time?
To make this more clear, consider Facebook's relationship with the Turkish government. Facebook will moderate the content in Turkey to what is allowed speech in that country, including moderation to remove criticism of the government.
Is that moderation or censorship? Or is it both?
Consider for a second if some political position was banned by all privately owned mediums in the US. Say for example it was reported on the violence is Bangladesh. Every internet provider would stop transferring data if it detected any mention of it, every server hosting data in any format would immediately remove any mention of it, Microsoft, Google, and Apple pushed updates to their OS's that would terminate what you were doing if they detected it.
Would freedom of speech (not the First Amendment) have been attacked in such a far-fetched scenario? Yes, despite it only being private companies doing things they have the right to do. As such, we can conclude that in such a scenario, freedom of speech includes requiring private entities to support a message they wish to not support. Now, would that not also apply in a less far-fetched scenario? I see no reason it would not.
It's a regressive part of this epoch of human history that the opposite is true of free speech: companies are required by law to surveil and censor.
Clamping down on political speech and whistleblowing is the definition of censorship. If Facebook as a private party was not hosting any political content then it would be valid, but hosting other political content - for instance politicians and activists calling for ending Chinese censorship - while suppressing Snowden's leaks is a brazen act of political censorship and hypocrisy.
If this was a thread about China's dominant social media platform silencing whistleblowers there would be hundred percent agreement its wrong. It is untenable and duplicitous to demonize others for censorship while defending or hand waving this kind of 'moderation'. This makes a mockery of free speech and reduces it to jingoism.
It seems HN readership likes to stand up and defend these companies when they get rid of stuff we don’t like, like Nazis and Alex Jones rants. But if we woke up tomorrow and FB or YouTube started deleting content about progressive causes, we’d lose our minds and start sharpening the pitchforks. The double standard is evident. Either these guys should have editorial control of what they publish or not.
Increasingly, that's representative of the US population writ large.