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Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

>Ultimately we have a dictatorship of ideas

What an amazing way to phrase "others don't like what I am saying and don't want to associate with me". The government controlling social media platforms is vastly different from a collection of companies controlling social media platforms that they built.

There's an argument that can be made about companies needing to treat their platforms as public squares depending on if they get certain protections or subsidies from the government, but as it stands its currently their property and you don't have a right to force others to broadcast your opinions

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Madness of the crowds. It's also interesting that this phrase brings only search results from Douglas Murray, who has been widely attacked as far right (and thus untouchable). The social and psychological effect is much more meaningful and important.

https://ncase.me/crowds/

To be clear I don't oppose to what is being said. I'm opposed to how it's being said. If there's only one allowed dogma, there's no chance of correcting the course and logically it will always end in a disaster.

> The government controlling social media platforms is vastly different from a collection of companies controlling social media platforms that they built

If the difference is measured by the effect produced then in many cases it is zero, that is, there is no any difference. For example,we frequently see collective censorship which effectively means the absence of freedom of speech.

In fact, there exist also other interesting forms like collective (or democratic) racism or collective (democratic) totalitarism. For normal people, the origin of these rules does not really matter.

Freedom of speech is specifically freedom from the government interfering with your speech. Freedom of speech does not mean you can compel others into carrying your message forward.

Take your argument to its logical conclusion. Say I want everyone you come in contact with to hear my personal thoughts on government. Are you ok with being compelled to pass along a card with my diatribe on it to all of the people you interact with on a daily basis?

> Freedom of speech is specifically freedom from the government interfering with your speech

Yes, it is an important point but somewhat old. Nowadays it can be generalized: freedom of speech is a protection of the stage from monopolization by anyone (being it a government, company or private person). I would say, now it is more important and much more difficult to protect the communication channels from giant companies which are much stronger than most governments (and in many cases actually control the governments).

I agree in principle that corporations shouldn’t have the power to shut people up, but these social media companies also enable a much larger set of ideas to be broadcasted than when the principles of free speech were written into the constitution. How do we prevent the fascism and bigotry of yesteryear and even new forms of bigotry and fascism from being shared on these platforms as well?

that's fine, then it's time to slap most of big tech with massive anti-trust cases

Isn't it the same thing just obfuscated by two levels of indirection, Patriot Act/Op Choke Point -> VISA/Mastercard -> Social Medias

https://old.reddit.com/r/kotakuinaction2/comments/hi47ci/dic...

> The government controlling social media platforms is vastly different from a collection of companies controlling social media platforms that they built.

The difference is not particularly significant.

Yeah man I remember when Mark Zuckerberg came into my house and took my wife and kids for saying something on Facebook.

This is a facetious reply, but I don't think the government's punishment of free speech violations would have to be totalitarian to be highly concerning.

Likewise, I think allowing a handful of tech employees and billionaires to control what is and is not free speech -- without any democratic control or regulation -- is also highly concerning.

It blows my mind that the so-called left is advocating for the right of private, global, monopolistic corporations to act with impunity.

HN/Reddit ...

Good = Social media companies selectively controlling the platform they built

Bad = Telecom companies selectively controlling the platform they built

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