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Comment by wbronitsky | Hacker News Reader

I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way. They are being removed from a private platform for not complying with the rules of the platform.

You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. Neither would you say that a man trying to convince kids to get into his van outside of McDonalds was being censored for being kicked out of the McDonalds. Both of those are private businesses regulating the behavior of their customers, and not in any way censorship.

> Randomly clicking on videos

The entire point is that people don't click on random videos, they click on videos they think are interesting. Call it "rage clicks", curiosity, or some people are just bad people and want to see bad things, just don't call it random, because thats obviously wrong.

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Why get tired of correct usage of a term?

You can simply reduce you complaint from ‘hate speech’ and ‘violent speech’ to ‘speech’ to reveal the nuanced perspective of grey thinkers.

Dismissing the societal effect of censorship by dominant public mediums because their profit structure is private is - regardless of your position on said censorship - a very incurious and unserious to adopt.

The contrived examples to support your position are unlikely to resonate with anyone who spends the briefest moment in consideration of all the game theoretic outcomes that are possible with your attitude.

I presume in your world it is okay for telecommunication companies to deny cell phone access to individuals based on arbitrary, internal and opaque reasons because they’re privately held.

Attempting to deny the reality of societal responsibilities when a service hits societal scale is just silly.

> Attempting to deny the reality of societal responsibilities when a service hits societal scale is just silly.

Indeed, especially when the primary purpose of the service is to be a platform for speech.

Hotels don't get to violate peoples rights just because they are private businesses.

An advertising platform that makes their money selling and targeting ads owns a video platform funded by advertising, but the purpose of the service is speech and not ads?

Hm. I see some obvious holes in that line of thought.

I feel that the answer to “why is this advertising company so much more interested in selling ads than promoting free speech?” is more obvious than some give credit for, as is the answer to “why isn’t this massive for profit advertiser not on board with my narrow absolutist view on speech?!”

Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.
We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.
Our values are based on four essential freedoms that define who we are.
Freedom of Expression
We believe people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities.
Freedom of Information
We believe everyone should have easy, open access to information and that video is a powerful force for education, building understanding, and documenting world events, big and small.
Freedom of Opportunity
We believe everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people—not gatekeepers—decide what’s popular.
Freedom to Belong

We believe everyone should be able to find communities of support, break down barriers, transcend borders and come together around shared interests and passions.

https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/

There’s no way this group of all groups of people takes mission statements and marketing seriously, unless of course it’s convenient.

It's what they promote themselves as to the public.

I don't get out of my obligations as a public accommodation just because my hotel makes money by also having billboards on the property.

Marketing isn’t an obligation, it’s bullshit believed by middle managers and gullible people. I don’t believe that you’re either, or that you make a habit out of buying into this kind of thing.

I’m at the point where dishonest discussions about “free speech” online are a non-starter (Having had an illuminating exchange on this very site two days ago). It’s not as though these anonymous chats matter in the slightest, they’re had in bad faith and most of all are intellectually stultifying. The only winning move is not to play. You won’t convince anyone of your position who has made the conscious choice to adopt a dynamic series of positions to support their unstated agenda. It’s like arguing with creationists, the best you can hope for is changing their declared position of the day. Meanwhile they win just by having an audience and the semblance of legitimacy, not to mention dominating and railroading ever comment section they can to quash reasonable debate.

This is setting aside issues with bots, trolls, and brigades. In real life with people you know and can talk to there can be value in these discussions, but never anonymously and never online. It’s pseudointellectual wank dressed up as reasonable talk. There is nothing wrong with simply saying, “I’m not interested in having this conversation with you, sorry.” and moving on.

In regards to free-speech you might be right, but I actually feel like HN is somewhat of an outlier with online debate/discussion, because I actually have changed my mind on things based on peoples' posts here (not even terribly long ago).

Do you really not accept that some people (many) may just actually believe in free speech and not be arguing in bad faith, be a bot, brigade...?

That was a pretty normal position to hold on the US until about 5 years ago and I’d say it still is.

The two posters before this are exactly why people are so riled up about censorship (calling it what it is. Just cuz someone dislikes the speech doesn't warrant removal of the right to speak.)

Basically you have people that demand others be censored. That they don't deserve to speak freely. And they'll come up with all these mental gymnastics as to why other people's speech isn't acceptable. And for most of us we understand that the first amendment is the most important and that's not acceptable.

Just look thru the last 2 years of left leaning websites. Anyone who claimed trump was innocent (clearly...) was a "bot, troll or brigader" and ought to be censored because it was "hate speech".

A world where we censor is a dark world. There's a reason free speech was right number one in this country.

Editorial discretion has always been a thing - you should absolutely be able to publish your own speech on your own terms, but I'm not convinced you should be able to force other private companies to host your content. The ability to publish widely is relatively new, before if you sent some long screed to the new york times they just wouldn't publish it (you could publish it yourself, but likely wouldn't have a huge audience).

This gets tricky though when you're talking about things like being blocked by a domain name registrar or something.

Even with speech you publish yourself there are some existing restrictions (libel laws, hate speech targeting individuals, etc.)

Moderation is also what allows communities like HN to exist and remain interesting places - I'd definitely prefer it to every website turning into 4chan.

The infringement of speech is only prevented for the federal government. The internet doesn't count. The internet is not beholden to physical barriers and there is more than enough room to start your own website. You have a right to speech, you don't have a right to a privately owned platform that isn't yours..

Furthermore, deplatforming has always been a thing. It basically happened to the dixie chicks after they spoke out against the Iraq war and GWB in England way back in the early 2000's. I don't think they have ever been on fox or a sinclair broadcasting station ever again.

No one is saying proclaiming trumps innocence is hate speech, that is an absurd claim, where are you getting that nonsense?

Nobody is talking about free speech as a matter of constitutional law in these instances (although even that applies to more than the federal government, i.e. state and local governments.) People are making a normative claim that it’s better for institutions like YouTube to have liberal speech policies than restrictive ones. If you want an example with opposite political valence think of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. The NFL can legally punish players for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights, but it nevertheless has a chilling effect.

I would submit that there is a difference between hosting speech, and amplifying it with your recommendation engine. If your recommendation engine does not promote something, I don't think that is the same as censorship.

>These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform.

I don't take this position seriously anymore, because I've seen time and time again that people who espouse it immediately flip 180 degrees when some large platform starts censoring content they want to post or see.

The opposite is also true. Some people who speak against censorship flip 180 degrees when they don't like some content. (Though a bit less often, it seems.)

My conclusion: before saying anything of this sort, you have to be able to present a clear general rule (that other people can apply without asking you) that distinguishes between cases of censorship you're okay with from other cases. That's the only way such conversation can start in a rational manner.

Realistically, very few people truly believe that big companies should be home free to delete anything they want, solely their own discretion (including content from human right activists, opposition parties, corporate whistle-blowers, scientists and critics of the platform in question).

> very few people truly believe that big companies should be home free to delete anything they want, solely their own discretion

Of course they are. If they start showing stuff that scares off advertisers, they will be out of business. Don't see a lot of porn on youtube, do you?

If you think that platforms like youtube, twitter, and facebook should be forced to show all legal content, I think you will find yourself to be in a very small minority position.

And it's a position there is no way the US Supreme Court will back you up on.

> I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way.

What exactly is "their own platform"?

If I post to a blog site, that's not my platform and can be censored.

If I host my own blogging software on a kubernetes service that's not my platform and I can be censured (AFAIK all providers have TOS on the type of content allowed and largely reserve the right to remove content for any reason).

If I host my own OS with blogging software on a IaaS provider again I may be shutdown/refused to do business with.

If I host my own hardware, with own OS with blogging software in a colocation datacenter it may also be removed for TOS violation.

Same for simply hosting it on my own computer connected to an ISP, the ISP has TOS for the types of content allowed through their networks.

So how exactly do I setup this (mythical?) "own platform" where I can post anything that I am constitutionally/legally allowed to and how do I make it available over the Internet?

I would say it should stop at the ISP level. ISPs are (or at least should be) a utility, and as a consequence completely non-disciminatory in who they host, similar to how phone lines are run.

So, in theory (at least in my perfect world), you could run a server in your basement and host your controversial views there.

No doubt someone at the founding of the US Constitution had the same ideals of such a perfect world, where criticism of Christianity would only be permitted from their basement.

Perhaps you missed the point I'm making. YouTube does not allow hate speech on it's platform. How well it polices and enforces those rules is a valuable point of discussion, but not the one that is at hand.

The concern is that people are able to click through to the extremes of what _is_ allowed on YouTube. My point is that this is not in and of itself a valuable thing to be concerned about. Even if YouTube actively tweaked their algorithms to push people towards the center, it'd still be possible to click through to the extremes - unless YouTube totally stops all recommendations that don't lead closer to the center.

I disagree. YouTube obviously allows hate speech and violent images on its platform. Did you follow their struggles in removing the NZ video? If they wanted to have systems to prevent what happened, they could have built them. It is not a stretch, in any way, to think that one day there would be a viral video that they HAD to remove for one reason or another. In fact, they do it every day for the RIAA.

Its not like YouTube is bound by some cosmic constant that makes it hard to police the content on their platform. They are Alphabet for god sakes, they have so much money they don't know what to do with it. They can, and should, solve these problems, and we can, and should, hold them to account until they do.

The "struggles" of tech companies blocking the NZ video is not giving them enough credit. I only know about Facebook's 80% preemptively blocked rate but to be frank, that figure is impressive. A new video, with millions of not tens of millions of people posting it, editing it, cropping it, flipping the image and doing everything they can to avoid the filtering algorithms and Facebook still managed to preemptively block 80% of attempted uploads. To me, that's an impressive feat and a sign of just how much investment the company had made to block bad content.

Copyright filtering isn't a good example IMO. Lots of people consistently claim that the content ID algorithms are crappy and have high rates of false positives.

> I only know about Facebook's 80% preemptively blocked rate but to be frank, that figure is impressive.

I read an article the other day about the Australian response to the New Zealand shooting, which had this choice gem:

'He said it remained online for 69 minutes. "That is a totally unreasonable period of time and represents a complete failure of Facebook's own systems," he said.' [0]

That was a very senior government minister and they are about to start legislating on the subject. That has to be one of the more breathtaking expectations out there - this is asking a media company to judge what the community standard is and deploy widespread containment measures in under 60 minutes. That is comparable to the response time of our emergency services (~10 minutes) in a life-or-death situation.

I can't really grasp what it is people think that Facebook is doing wrong here that requires a response of that precision; accidentally watching a video simply isn't comparable to having a heart attack or being on fire. I was hopeful that the response time would be something out of the ordinary and measured in hours or days, I'm doubly impressed that Facebook managed to respond in 70 minutes and surprised at how well developed filtering mechanism to control communication on their platform.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-29/social-media-executiv...

I'm not arguing with you any more. I'm a software engineer who works on web applications and I know for a fact what you are saying is bullshit. You are arguing in bad faith. These are the most profitable companies of all time. Your argument is unreasonable. Later days

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines so we don't have to ban you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm a software engineer working on web applications as well. My company handles data in the exabyte scale. I've spoken in depths with coworkers tasked with filtering illegal or prohibited content, and have done limited amount of work on this system (to be fair, mostly refactoring logging and other orthogonal tasks - I've never introduced new heuristics or changed the filtering logic itself).

It's easy to do when it's the same files or data trying to be uploaded, or when there's a way to consistently identify it as prohibited. It's hard when people are actively trying to evade the filtering algorithms. Here is one easy example: a lot of copyrighted work like to shows can be found on YouTube where the copyrighted video is displayed on a smaller section of the screen (e.g. a rectangle in a corner with some animated stuff around the rest of the screen). This is because such editing makes it harder to detect. Maybe YouTube has beaten this countermeasure by now - it's a cat and mouse dynamic by nature.

To be fair, this is just my perspective. If someone with greater authority on this subject can give me technical explanation as to why Facebook's 80% preemptively blocked rate is not good I'm happy to hear it. But from what I know, an 80% preemptive block rate on an hours-old video with a significant number of people actively trying to avoid the filtering logic is an impressive feat.

I have a similar background (worked about a year on some anti-abuse systems), and completely agree.

This is an incredibly hard problem space. Machine learning is already hard before you start introducing adversaries...

> These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform.

Let me know if this is free speech:

- I have an extreme view I want to share

- I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned

- So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me

- So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service

Do I still have free speech?

IMHO

> I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned

You still have free speech.

> So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me

You still have free speech

> So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service

Now you don't. Is that legal? If it is, we should consider regulating ISPs in the manner we do phone companies. Someone call Ajit pai.

I don't see why it wouldn't be legal, it's Comcast's infrastructure, right? If the public says "Hey Comcast, why are you letting extremists use your network to connect themselves to the world and transmit dangerous ideas?" I don't see why Comcast wouldn't be allowed to decide to cave under the pressure and disconnect me.

I think an interesting lens to view this issue through is that of Marsh vs Alabama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

Money quote:

> The State attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.

Another phrase I've heard recently is along the lines of "a company's ability to refuse to do business with you should be proportional to your ability to refuse to do business with them".

It's not too much of a stretch to liken some of the big platforms and service providers we have today to company towns. While, strictly speaking, one doesn't have to (live in a company town)|(subscribe to Comcast), for some large segments of the population who (live in economically disadvantaged regions where the only jobs are available via the Company)|(are forced to choose between dealing with Comcast and cutting themselves off from social and economic activity), that's not much of a choice in practice.

For the moment, I think that line of "inescapable enough to warrant restriction of property rights" falls to include infra providers (think cartel ISPs, some PAAS, DNS, maybe CloudFlare if you squint) but not platforms like YT/FB. That's probably down to my bias towards technical solutions over regulatory intervention - there's at least a reasonable hope of displacing YT/FB with decentralized platforms, but short of mesh radio you're SOL if your only ISP that offers >56k doesn't want you.

> it's Comcast's infrastructure, right?

Which was subsidized, made scarce, and then sold to Comcast by the government. There's a reason people are calling for broadband providers to be considered common carriers, because the market isn't "free" (as in competitive).

They call it censorship because that is the correct word for what the platforms are doing.

Censorship does not require it being done by the government or be morally or legally wrong.

Well sure, but in that case the Washington Post is performing censorship when it decides which "letters to the editor" it chooses to print. I suspect that is not what most people have in mind when they use the word "censorship".

I generally agree, but these networks are the conduit for so much speech that I'm sympathetic to the idea that it constitutes censorship, especially when we're not talking about "hateful views" but moderate views (e.g., advocating for tighter border control) which are deemed 'hateful' as an excuse to justify censoring/deplatforming/etc. Doubly so when bonafide hate speech ("cancel white men") goes unpunished altogether.

> You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave.

This seems like a bad analogy to me. No loud drunks are forcing anyone to listen to them on YouTube. Yet some people are angry that YouTube lets loud drunks post videos of themselves yelling hateful things, and angry that YouTube lets some people who want to listen that do so?

> These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform.

I think we're at a point (or fast approaching it) where these huge platforms are so integrated into our society that perhaps we _should_ consider them public platforms.

>You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave.

I don't think this analogy holds up because of the sheer magnitude of difference in size. These platforms are bigger than most countries. Countries have governments and laws that serve the citizens and keep society running. Imo, the users of these platforms should be treated like citizens of that platform.

I don't want to be a citizen of a dictatorship.

the act of censoring something can be done by private entities, not just the government. Is it their right to do so? absolutely.

Where in my comment did I say that YouTube doesn't have the right to ban content?

Nowhere. It always puzzles me why this response always crops up, even when I never even remotely try to claim that platforms have any legal obligation to host content.

I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. I have zero doubt that this is their right, but people and companies have the right to do plenty of things that aren't good for society. Saying that it's bad for society to implement a partisan recommendation algorithm is not at all the same thing as saying it is or should be illegal.

I sympathize with your frustration.

My theory of HN comments: People prefer to respond to familar arguments, rather than the arguments you make in your comments. People prefer to discuss topics that they are familiar or passionate about, rather than the specific topics addressed in the articles or parent comments.

Posting Fast and Slow

> I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society.

So who gets to decide what is good and bad for society?

I do because I'm stating my own personal views. You do as well, when you are stating your own views. Why do people keep trying to depict people stating their opinions as advocating some sort of government sponsored program forcing their opinions on others? Has discourse really gotten to the point where we just assume that when people state their views they are always implying that they want these views enforced on others?

It's entirely valid to say that tech companies' censorship or forms of manipulating views is bad while acknowledging that this is their legal right. This comment applies just as much to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19525998

> So who gets to decide what is good and bad for society?

Everyone does. Everyone makes their own decisions about what is right or wrong.

People say Jordan peterson is "hate speech". If you're tired of people defending speech then get pissed at the people who are abusing the concept of violent speech by slapping the label on everything they dislike.

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