And yet. There's a certain "side" that wants to have that both ways
Private companies can't censor "bad opinions"
But private companies can also arbitrarily refuse service for say, making a "gay wedding cake"
How is this disconnect rationalized?
Private companies can't censor "bad opinions"
But private companies can also arbitrarily refuse service for say, making a "gay wedding cake"
How is this disconnect rationalized?
Hypocrites are not limited to specific groups, they're universal.
People were fine when they were deleting spam and had a limited content restriction policies against things like directly promoting violence or posting gore/cp and other obvious tier stuff.
I haven't heard many people pushing for governments to force Google et al to not be able to delete things from their platforms either - outside of some tiny fringes who don't understand how the internet works.
Which is therefore still consistently pro-freedom. Likewise compelled speech + censorship of an arbitrary and ever expanding list of wrongthink is consistently authoritarian.
I really don't see the contradiction in either of these worldviews.
It's the classic centralized top-down puppet-mastery of individuals choices vs embracing the chaos of freedom of individual choice (within some limited boundaries). This battle has been waged for as long as society has been around and is a natural side-effect of power structures.
Both situations boil down to freedom of speech. Both have extra, specific laws that deal with their situations. Without a well thought out justification, a mismatch between the position on those is likely hypocritical, no matter which you are for or against. A well thought out positions may not be, but I don't think most people actually have a well thought out opinion on the intricacies of how these intersect, and what it means, and instead fall back on what they would like to be able to do in that situation, or on their impression based on the way it was presented to them (I think it far more likely contextual presentation is to blame for some of this than actual reasoning). It does little good to point out the hypocrisy of some group on a specific issue when that form of hypocrisy is widespread and rampant. We should also point out the cause of the hypocrisy itself.
The cake example specifically is more subtle (legally), since there's an argument that the cake is custom. I think this gets very tricky legally, but on the broader point, it isn't hypocritical to say censorship based on concept is okay, but based on speaker is not.
I don't know. I think that depends on how acceptable you think it is to censor based on the Islamic religion, or the idea of homosexuality, even if you think censoring Muslims and homosexuality is not. At what point does censoring discussing about homosexuality become censoring homosexuals? I'm sure some people would say immediately, and to them, there's no difference between censorship based on show they are and what they feel or believe?
That's why I say it requires a very well thought out argument. I can be convinced that it isn't hypocritical to distinguish these (I'm exploring my thoughts on this subject, I don't have extremely held opinions on it, other than that it's complicated), but nobody has to be satisfaction yet.
Let me give you an example: It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam. It is not acceptable to enforce that Muslim individuals cannot hold positions in government.
The first is discrimination based on content, the second is discrimination based on, let's call it character.
> It is acceptable to enforce the rule that laws cannot favor Islam.
That's not even about censorship, so I'm not sure how it applies.
Again, this is why I think it's important to have a well thought out argument, otherwise it may be hypocritical. I'm not even pushing a different side, I'm just trying to get you to articulate specifically why these two things are different, and pointing to examples doesn't do that at all. It's just a list of value judgements that you assume someone else will agree with without providing the rational behind those judgements (presumably believing it's self evident).
If someone cannot distinguish why two separate situations are different but states as fact that they are, then they are being hypocritical, whether those situation are different or not. Nobody should be stating things as fact that they can't explain. Being hypocritical has nothing to do with the truth, it has to do with knowledge, actions and beliefs.
I'd argue that political action is a form of speech, so laws that prevent certain kinds of political action are speech. How do you draw the distinction between a law, which you're arguing isn't speech, and political donations which are, at least under the law today, a form of speech. I'm claiming these are all the same thing, because you can't draw a non-arbitrary line between a congressperson addressing congress and a congressperson drafting a bill and me asking a congressperson to draft a bill. They're all speech. You're free to disagree with that framing, but that is how I view speech. It's for this reason that I also don't agree with the common-in-the US excuse of "it's just speech so it can't hurt anyone", or similar. The only difference between your "just speech" and a law is who is willing to listen to the speaker.
Now, you can claim that we're talking about government representatives, so things are different, which may or may not be true, but I'll accept that. Perhaps people who have more authority should be given less freedom, an interesting tradeoff. But let's ignore the government entirely and just discuss what makes the two situations distinct.
So, it clearly isn't okay to censor Muslims, because that rule cannot be fair/equally applied. It will, by definition, be discriminatory against individuals, which seems to be the bad thing we want to avoid (or maybe I'm wrong and you're okay with discriminating against individuals?). However, censoring certain topics may be done without discriminating against individuals. It applies equally, for example, to a Muslim person wanting to extoll Islam and to a Christian wanting to demonize it.
If we bring this full circle: preventing Muslims from speaking ensures that they will not be represented [in the discourse, in the government, whatever]. This can, realistically, only be harmful to them. Banning discussion of Islam certainly has the capacity to be harmful to them, but also has the capacity to not be harmful to them (for example if the discourse is full of demonization of Islam, perhaps banning discussion of Islam is a net-gain for individual Muslim people).
Obviously this requires, like, an actual fair moderator, and it raises a bunch of tricky questions (like is the meta-discussion of whether it should be acceptable to discuss Islam, itself an acceptable discussion?), but it isn't, call it, implicitly harmful.
tl;dr: Removing people from discourse cannot be beneficial to those people. Removing concepts from discourse depends.
> How do you draw the distinction between a law, which you're arguing isn't speech, and political donations which are, at least under the law today, a form of speech.
No, it's not about censorship because it's not preventing speech, it's about ensuring equality. It's fundamentally different in the same way a law that gives a right is different than a law that prevents an action. There's a fundamental difference between reduction of something (or the increase of other things to match) and the elimination of something.
> discriminatory against individuals, which seems to be the bad thing we want to avoid (or maybe I'm wrong and you're okay with discriminating against individuals?).
Well, I did just say in the prior comment "We can agree it's not okay to censor based on an individual", so I'm not sure why it needs to be a question...
> However, censoring certain topics may be done without discriminating against individuals.
And censoring the types of cake you make may not affect individuals either, if it's over something like your dislike for dogs. Let's assume both cases affect individuals. If you think it fundamentally changes what the argument is to restrict the web services side to items that affect individuals, then that points towards some ambiguity in the phrasing of the things being compared on one or both sides. That's progress.
> for example if the discourse is full of demonization of Islam, perhaps banning discussion of Islam is a net-gain for individual Muslim people
I think we're on shakier ground if we're justifying specific actions based on perceived public opinion and actions, because that's extremely subjective. What one person views as fair and rational discourse on a topic another views as lies and slander (dog whistles are a thing, as is being accused of dog whistling when honestly requesting information).
> Obviously this requires, like, an actual fair moderator
That doesn't exist. By the nature of the items we're discussing, I think there's a good chance it might be impossible to exist. The fair moderator of today is the one seen as blatantly biased in the discussions of tomorrow. Social mores change.
> tl;dr: Removing people from discourse cannot be beneficial to those people. Removing concepts from discourse depends.
Does it? What's a concept that being removed from discourse is beneficial? I think this is a very subjective point, and can't be taken at face value. There are some people that believe no concept should be entirely taboo. Those people actually wrote our Bill of Rights.
While I agree that removing a subgroup of people from discourse is generally not beneficial to those people, I will note it's generally agreed that it's sometimes beneficial for society. That's what we do with criminals. It may be that it being okay for some groups and not others means the way you group (the attributes that make the protected classes) matters most here.
Why would you ever want to ignore Google in this situation? Unless you don't want to earnestly debate the real topic?
Their size, control, and the fact they run massive platforms for publishers to post content, whose consumers often can post their own content, with multiple centrally controlled areas for control for hundreds of millions of people at any moment, makes it pointless to ignore such important context and semantics.
Debating the role of these major gatekeepers at a cultural, rational, and moral level - in the context of the position which they actually hold in society - is an entirely valid, and essential to any useful arguments.
Just because there are some weak analogies to governmental constitutions, or small business's/independent publisher's/individuals website's freedom to choose what people post directly on their site/app, doesn't mean it's a useful position to judge what self-imposed limitations should be employed by major monopolistic companies who run entire portions of the internet.
Great power requires great responsibility.
The difference here is basic common sense.
The fact people keep resorting to these reductionist analogies, ignoring critical context and arguing from positions of fundamentally different levels of power/responsibility, in order to push some pro-censorship and expansive moderation of speech, shows the weakness in these arguments.
If you need to ignore significant amounts of context to make your points then you're being deceitful, whether intentionally or not.
I'd go even further to argue this intentional ignorance of context and semantics is a fundamental tactic used by pro-censorship activists - despite the fact context and intention are fundamental to almost all human communication, verbal or otherwise.
At a more local level it's commonplace for these activists to ignore the obvious intention and context of the speaker, and critically the tastes and tolerances of the specific audience itself - who are entirely voluntary consumers. Making whole words, phrases, and concepts totally off limits, regardless if it was used in intentionally and rationally derogatory or offensive ways.
It's basically intentionally missing the forest for the trees. All for some vague greater good. No matter how many false-positives, unintended side-effects, misunderstandings, or wasteful side-shows it creates.
Because presumably Google isn't special and doesn't lave laws and ethics that apply only to them? I'm trying to distill the issue to its essence.
> The fact people keep resorting to these reductionist analogies, ignoring critical context and arguing from positions of fundamentally different levels of power/responsibility, in order to push some pro-censorship and expansive moderation of speech, shows the weakness in these arguments.
If you think I'm doing that then you're making a lot of assumptions about what I was trying to communicate and why I commented, and you're way off base.
I'll make it clear, just because I pointed out a fault I see in a position doesn't mean I subscribe to the traditionally opposed opinion, it just means I'm willing to point out faults as I see them.
Additionally, hypocrisy doesn't care how correct one argument is over another. It's entirely possibly for someone to be a hypocrite and correct. We have a situation where some people believe A is okay and B is not, and some people believe A is not okay but B is okay. Unless they can actually distinguish why A and B are different, both groups of people are hypocrites, because they're either regurgitating someone else's opinion, or they're speaking before they understand what they're talking about. Whether one side or the other is "right" doesn't matter, hypocrisy isn't about correctness, it's about using the same knowledge and convictions to come to the same desired outcome with similar facts. Without the knowledge to distinguish between situations, how can someone be so sure that they differ?
And that's before we even go to the fact that there's actually four possible combinations of those attributes, not the two that have been presented so far (both negatively), and that the "right" way to view this is one of those.
Now, I'd boycott the hell out of such an establishment, but as an abstract argument, I think compelled expression is a bad idea. It's really not that huge a step from compelled expression to re-education camps.
Twitter's service isn't that they write 140 character prose for you, and YouTube's service isn't that they create videos to your specification. It would be hypocritical to demand that YouTube be forced to create a custom video to your specifications (or a ghost writer forced to write a book for someone with whom they disagree) and yet the cake shop shouldn't be forced to write two same-gendered names on a cake. These people arguing against forced cake lettering aren't arguing for forced book creation or forced video creation.
Once again, refusing to make a gay wedding cake makes you a jerk and worthy of boycotting, but there is a consistent argument to be made simultaneously against forced expression and against forced silence.
The difference is in the legal definition of protected class. It is illegal to discriminate against someone based on their membership of a protected class -- ethnicity or disability for instance.
Removing an opinion or banning a user based on violation of an agreed upon term of service is not the same thing. Having an opinion does not make you a member of a protected class, and a private corporation is free to allow you or disallow you from use of their services to broadcast that opinion. Newspapers have been doing this since the dawn of print. Google could not, for example, ban someone for being Jewish.
You can argue about whether sexual orientation deserves status as a protected class, but it is disingenuous to claim that the two are the same thing under the law. It is a false equivalency.
Let's maybe spell out separately whether or not these two situations are equivalent or not a) legally, b) ethically, c) in principle.
a) As I stated in the argument about the difference between discrimination against protected classes versus hosting content on a private server, I'd say that legally, these are not equivalent.
b) Ethically is an interesting question. Since the ethics of denying someone service based on their sexual orientation is largely viewed as reprehensible, maybe a better question would be whether or not (freed from questions of protected class) the baker would decorate a Nazi themed cake versus allowing federated apps that are largely used for the dissemination of white supremacist ideology to be hosted?
c) In principle, I'd say they are not equivalent for the following reason: selling and decorating a cake is a business transaction between two entities. The cake (decorated or not) ownership moves from producer to consumer. The consumer is purchasing a physical cake. If the cake is ever made public, it is at the behest of the purchasers of the cake, and any consequences of that public display will be suffered by the purchaser. Essentially, the baker's name is not on the cake, and no one needs to know.
Hosting apps or other contents affects the reputation of the hosting company, and damages to their business reputation fall on it. Think about Facebook being recognized as a conduit for foreign interference in U.S. elections, or whether or not the New York Times will accept ad content from an adult video company. The name on the masthead is the entity that suffers the damage first.
Have you ever heard the term "strawman"?
A social liberal could argue on the point of protecting the rights of a marginalized minority. By censoring (for example) calls for violence, social liberals are protecting the safety of the targeted group. By requiring a cake shop to serve gay couples (or interracial couples, to throw in another example), social liberals are protecting a marginalized minority's access to services.
Are we talking normal wedding cakes, that you can buy from nearly any baker, with some ordinary decorations, that just have two men's names instead of one men's name and one woman's name after the "Congratulations", and have two mass-produced little plastic men on top instead of one little plastic man and one little plastic woman?
Or are we talking something you'd get from a baker like Duff Goldman, which is a custom designed and made unique work of art specifically for you that captures the artist's interpretation of your wedding, and inherently is an act of speech on the part of the artist?
I don't believe he has a problem selling cakes to anyone, just that he refused to design cakes with themes.
If [large social media platform] doesn't want that kind of content, it's not unreasonable to simply make one to soak up that "ignored" market segment. Reddit can't shut you down for hosting your own internet forum for instance
I get why one might want to do that, but I don’t think it’s the right precedent to set.
he's ineffective with the power he has, can't get the homeless off the streets, can't build housing or make it affordable, can't improve educational outcomes, can't reduce unemployment and underemployment, has no real empathy for regular people (despite his emotion-laden language, and spanish!), and yet he wants to reach into our private lives and coerce behavior at the margin (saying this despite wholly agreeing that house parties are a terrible idea right now, but let's persuade, not force, and have a dialogue).
the irony is that angelenos have been an exceedingly compliant group to his orders, adhering to both lockdown and _outdoor_ mask mandates at upwards of 95%. even if some of that is social signaling, that's startlingly high, making any a dictator proud. and yet he wants more.
I've thought about this statement for about a half hour now. What does it mean? That punishing individuals for ignoring public health mandates is a precedent we don't want? Or is it just the 'utility' being used that is problematic for you?
I don't get it.
It would be cruel and unusual to deprive a prisoner of water because they have no other means of attaining it when you withhold it. Turning off city water service to a property is different. The property owner has other options they can take to get the water they need to stay alive.
This also strikes me as abuse of power, one must not suffer arbitrary and random punishments. Whats bext, we will start cutting internet access to everyone who swears on the street, disabling electriciry to anyone who protests?
This is true enough for Reddit. It's far less true of the Play Store, because the platform (controlled by the same people as the store) throws up scary warnings if you try to install any other store so that almost nobody uses them, and on the only other major phone platform third party stores are prohibited outright. Which means to get your users to follow you, you don't just have to get them to visit a different website, you have to get them to replace their phone with one from a different hardware vendor, switch operating systems, and replace all of their other apps -- if that's even possible for them.
And what when the only two platforms both do the same thing? It's obviously not feasible for an individual app developer to create their own phone platform and hardware and get everyone to switch to it.
couldn't agree more. it's so frustrating seeing this everywhere online. this isn't twitter, you can write as much as you want. I read comments online to try and understand other viewpoints, and I can't do that without substance.
The first hypocrisy is the defense of the right of a business to make arbitrary decisions w.r.t. service (not bake the cake), while simultaneously demanding that the business not have the power to refuse service (condemning private censorship).
The reverse position is not hypocritical in the same way, because condemning discrimination against customers on LGBT grounds is not at odds with censoring discriminatory speech - in fact, the two positions are aligned.
You could try to argue that private censorship is itself a form of discrimination, but most people who hold the second position would not concede that the people who practice hate speech are a minority worthy of protection - so for them, no discrimination is occurring.
Allowing speech on your speech platform is not the same thing as compelling others to speech.
The basic thesis of my analogy was "you want 'free speech' forced upon private companies, but also want to allow them the freedom to dictate what content they allow under their 'brand'"
Likewise, if you say you're a webhost, you host websites.
If there's a legal issue, you report it. That's it.
Google is arguably in a monopolist situation. If they block your app or opinion, you're silenced.