Comment by KirinDave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KirinDave | Hacker News Reader

It's an extremely dangerous conflation of terms to suggest that private speech and private moderation are the same as censorship.

But forcing a "fairness" doctrine onto the tech world is exactly what the current political parties, who feel like reporting for them has had insufficient deference and whatabout-ism, want to do. Uniformly across the center of the political spectrum most of the US government represents.

Speech Rules enacted democratically by small communities are fine. Speech Rules imposed top down by the owners of infrastructure for communication are not great, but at least customers can make choices about them and it's not so unimaginable to find alternatives. Speech Rules enacted top-down by the executive are impossible to argue with and ultimately one of the most dangerous kinds of authoritarianism. The infosec community can tell you they've been fighting a slow, losing battle against going to jail for saying something that is not illegal to say out loud for some time now.

Private moderation is censorship. The definition of censorship is not restricted to government actors.

I regret to inform you the dictionary definition of censorship generally does not include tweets, so a literalist reading invalidates both our positions.

I don't know which dictionary definition you're referring to, since there are many. But most define it in terms of speech or communication, and tweets are most certainly both.

Colloquially, I think most people would agree that e.g. the Hollywood blacklist was an example of political censorship. And yet it was implemented entirely by private parties.

ACLU also refers to this sort of thing as censorship in general, while also drawing the distinction between government and private censorship, e.g.: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/facebo...

> I don't know which dictionary definition you're referring to, since there are many. But most define it in terms of speech or communication, and tweets are most certainly both.

Most don't, but sure.

> ...

I don't actually disagree with the ACLU's position in theory. However, in practice I know exactly what this is about and I don't see a need to play along with this. This is about the "fairness doctrine" and the desire to enforce it on more agencies to centralized control of internet communication under the government. That is not free speech, and attempts to paint it as such are worthy of ridicule.

I'd rather Facebook's editorial practice be Democratic rather than enforced top down. Then, I'd be fine with any degree of censorship. But since we can't have that in the modern legal framework we both need to content ourselves with consumer purchasing power as a proxy governor on their actions.

I was specifically addressing your claim that "it's an extremely dangerous conflation of terms to suggest that private speech and private moderation are the same as censorship" - the problem here is not the conflation of terms, since the terms are not misused. The problem is that they're trying to come up with a justification for government regulation of speech under the guise of preventing private regulation.

(There's a genuine but separate issue with conflation of private censorship and government censorship, especially in the context of the First Amendment.)

I'd rather Facebook's editorial practices be defined by the market, but this only works when the market is free (as in competitive, not as in laissez-faire), and that's not the case with social networks today. Government's job, though, is to ensure that the markets remain free through anti-trust, not to micromanage monopolies and oligopolies. Indeed, a private monopoly or oligopoly that is allowed to exist, but whose policy is partly dictated by the government in its interest, is the worst of both worlds.

You're editing your post after I reply. Grammatical corrections are one thing, but adding whole paragraphs after I'm sure you've seen my reply? It seems disingenuous.

I have not seen your reply when I edited it. Just had another point to add.

> It's an extremely dangerous conflation of terms to suggest that private speech and private moderation are the same as censorship.

It's extremely dangerous to continue to erode the spirit and meaning of free speech by narrowly defining it as a government only concept. We're collectively losing our ability to tolerate different views and have a level playing field of discussion. We need to get back to "I may not agree with what you say but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it". Both in spirit and in law. Tech companies and political parties have been attacking the spirit of free speech.

> It's extremely dangerous to continue to erode the spirit and meaning of free speech by narrowly defining it as a government only concept.

What spirit is that? No country in the world gives unrestricted speech as a right to citizens. That includes the US, which merely forbids government retaliation.

But what's more, this principle is applied very selectively. Why wasn't it free speech to be an openly gay scoutmaster in 2014? Well, for the same reason that Twitter can ban Nazi speech now: they own the platform and restrict membership as they see fit.

Similarly, you cannot demand the Washington Post print an arbitrary story. Nor can you force a radio station to broadcast your show. They get to make editorial and resourcing decisions for their content.

What's more, social media is not as restricted a space as these prior examples. It is a product. You can to buy it. You can elect to use Mindz and Gab if you want! YouTube is full of extremely bipartisan channels ranging from "Libertarian Socialist Rants" to its dual with "PragerU".

The only one attacking free speech is the folks who want to restrict editorial speech because it gets in the way of their ability to project their message onto people who don't want it. And being able to project yourself onto people actively avoiding you is not and will never be a reasonable definition of free speech.

> What spirit is that?

It’s the spirit of the audience to want all viewpoints available. I explicitly said I’m not talking about the government and I don’t know how your scoutmaster example has anything to do with what we’re talking about.

If you operate a platform, you are not a media company, you’re a utility and you shouldn’t interfere with content. If you’re part of the audience you should demand access to all content so you can make your own decisions. That is the spirit of free speech I’m talking about.

Edit: I explicitly stated I'm talking about the spirit of free speech and not the law. I'm not going to bother replying to comments that don't address that point.

> I explicitly said I’m not talking about the government and I don’t know how your scoutmaster example has anything to do with what we’re talking about.

Really? You really don't?

> If you operate a platform, you are not a media company, you’re a utility and you shouldn’t interfere with content.

This has never been true. It cannot be true in the American legal framework. What's more, that's not what this discussion or the Executive's survey is about. We can look at lawsuits brought by friends of this initiative and public complaints listed to see that their actual complaint is with heckling. Trump wants to suppress sources, Nunes wants to punish the operator of the "Devin Nunes's Cow" account. Heckling is the right of the audience to speak back to the speak and not be lectured to at gunpoint.

If you operate a business, you are not a utility. If Twitter is not a media company, then they are not subject to FCC or government regulation. Furthermore, you are not required to use Twitter, nor do you pay to do so.

The first amendment does not allow you to walk into Walmart with a blazing Tiki Torch yelling "Jews will not replace us".

If the "audience" does not get what they want they are free to move elsewhere and seek it.

Move to gab and speech away. Start a blog, post on Brietbart or the Daily Stormer or Fox News or the Blaze, or the Federalist or r/theDonals. Their comment sections are open, have at it.

No we don't. The meaning of free speech is clearly defined in the United States by the First Amendment. QED.

I explicitly stated I'm talking about the spirit of free speech.

The spirit of free speech is this. You have a right to say whatever the hell you want in public. That doesn't mean I have to let you do it in my home, my business, my private internet website. I am not required to give a platform to speech I disagree with. It also doesn't shield you from responsibility or the inevitable reaction from choosing free speech.

I disagree. The spirit of free speech is that everyone should want to at least have access to all thoughts and speech. You don't have to like them, you don't have to read them but you should have access to them. Otherwise you're letting someone else filter what you can and cannot see.

You can disagree all you want. It doesn't make you less wrong. You literally are limited by the nature of the universe and your physical body so reality is a filter. Time limits how much you can consume should you be able to bypass the physical limitations of your body. Your belief is fundamentally incongruous with the intent of free speech.

If I am forced to host your platform/speech/lewd gestures/etc. you're taking away my rights of free speech to not host your platform. No one is taking away access. What they are doing is kicking the drunk ass jerk out of the bar for harassing other people because they were warned to stop being such a dick and they continued on anyways. They can say whatever they want from someplace them own and no one is preventing access to them. They want a bar full of jerks, they can go right ahead and have no rules of decorum.

You're confusing unlimited speech with free speech. There has never been a right to access to all speech. Private conversations happen all the time and no one has a right to listen to those. So again, just because someone owns a billboard doesn't mean they are required to post your message. The courts have been pretty solid on this and it's why the baker won his case against the couple. You cannot force me to advocate for you if I don't believe in it.

Once again I'll repeat that I'm talking about the spirit of free speech not the law. I'm encouraging everyone to take up the attitude that having information filtered by someone else is inherently bad. Users should be demanding unfiltered access to all of the content on the platform. Just like on Reddit how some subs add a mod log so you can see what they're filtering.

This is the mentality of intellectual inquisitive people and needs to be promoted as it's currently under attack.

Let me try to bridge the gap between you two.

If I'm running a platform, I have the choice to make it a moderated platform or an unmoderated one. If I make it unmoderated, you can have your "free access to everything". [Edit: At the price of it becoming a cesspool that most people don't want to wallow in.] But if I make it moderated, you don't have the right to make me carry anything on it that I don't want to carry. You don't like it? Go run your own platform, and carry what you like.

And between all these different platforms - some unmoderated, and the moderated ones having a bunch of different standards of what they will and will not allow - people get to freely choose which ones they want to spend time on and contribute content to.

All that can work without the government forcing anybody to do anything.

> This is the mentality of intellectual inquisitive people and needs to be promoted as it's currently under attack.

It's weird you say this because it really seems more like the mentality of people who want a state sponsored megaphone to shout, "Debate me you cowards!" into.

This is an opinion about how people should feel about your speech, not an opinion about what rights people should have with regards to speech.

You're welcome to it, but it seems tangential. I certainly am not interested in you telling me how to feel.

By your definition, the spirit of free speech is perfectly fine in a company town where anyone criticizing their employer loses their livelihood.

Um, accept the gop has stated that’s their definition - an employer can require employees to act according to the employers religion.

Also in plenty of small towns that is already the case - people in coal country get ruined if they complain about coal, or the mining companies. Which is considered legal.

But let’s put up a very simple example: if I rent out a billboard on a building I own, should I be required to post advertisements from a political candidate I disagree with? Your interpretation of free speech says yes I should have no choice, likewise if I get a pro-hitler or pro Stalin, pro genocide, or pornography, I have no choice I just display it.

Actually here’s a very American example: during elections people stick the little plastic political boards in their front yard, in doing so they’ve declared that their front yard is a space for political ads - should Someone then be allowed to put opposition ads there as well?

This is your definition of free speech: if you publish any speech, you are required to publish all

Please don't pretend a problem doesn't exist, because you disagree with one of the possible solutions to it (or an extreme caricature of such a solution that you made up on the spot).

I didn't give a definition of free speech (neither its spirit nor the law establishing it). I merely gave an example illustrating how farcical it is to ignore all factors except the government, when evaluating the degree of freedom of speech that people enjoy.

It's precisely because speech is decriminalized that were ignoring it as a matter of law, though.

>The meaning of free speech is clearly defined in the United States by the First Amendment. QED.

No, it isn't.

Here is the text of the First Amendment, verbatim:

    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.

Freedom of speech (literally "the freedom of speech") is never defined in the First Amendment, merely referred to in the context of a list of freedoms that Congress is prohibited from abridging, the definitions for which are assumed to already be understood by the reader.

The first amendment specifically applies to the government bodies, and laws passed by them.

It very deliberately excludes private parties - otherwise and random wacko could force the nyt or fox to publish whatever they wanted.

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