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Comment by corty | Hacker News Reader

The hypocrisy of the political class is even deeper, at least in Germany. Just recently, laws were passed to make platforms like Facebook filter, censor and rapidly delete content that might be against some law. Not after a court decision or at least an official order, no no, nothing so formal. A user complaint is sufficient to trigger the need to check within a few hours, have the platform decide to delete and report. No due process, nothing.

Penalties for insufficient reaction by the platform are steep and of course set after the fact. Therefore platforms will err on the side of caution and delete far more than they would have to.

And people like Merkel who are responsible for that law have the gall to complain when something their censorship law stipulated is done to a fellow politician...

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-germany-twitter/ge...

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I don't agree with her but her only argument is the government should make these calls rather then private companies. She probably even agrees with what they did just doesn't think anyone except the government should have that power.

Actually, the worst possible party to limit your free speech is government. The government holds an exclusive monopoly on violence and killing. Almost every government that has obtained power over speech uses their violence monopoly to enforce it.

The best party to limit speech that is considered bad is private individuals and companies in their own venues. If I own a comedy theater, I should be able to kick out obnoxious patrons or comics. They can always go somewhere else. The same principle applies online, only it is much easier for someone who is not welcome in one community to go somewhere else or start their own.

Never give the government control over what is acceptable speech, let each business cater to the crowd they want.

A functioning democratic government is accountable to its people, while a private corporation is only accountable to its shareholders. Depending what you believe politically either, none or both could be true. Ultimately free markets can work against societal good just as much as an overly stringent and unaccountable government.

Maximally accountable government and a moderately and fairly regulated market seems to be best of both worlds, but as we know it’s difficult. We’re looking at the extremes now in terms of speech - Parler has people literally planning attacks on the government in the open, that’s probably bad in terms of societal good.

Finally a reminder that the ultimate point of corporations existing is for societal good. As is our government.

The difference between a government and a corporation is that people can stop buying at any time and you can have plenty of choices.

A democratic government is elected every X years and you have a very limited set of choices. It's plenty of time to forget about mistakes and that's too little choice to have accountable candidates.

I don't think most people can stop buying comcast if they want internet, as a counterexample.

I would say this - there's a good argument that our representatives are WAY WAY out of touch, simply because we don't have enough of them. In 1790 there was 1 congressperson per 33,000 people, and now it is per 800,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap...

If you had a congressperson with 1/20th of the constituents, they'd probably pay a lot more attention to you.

Politicians are only accountable as much as they are subject to competitive pressure from other politicians. The same goes for corporations.

Just as you can have a healthy democracy, you can have a healthy, regulated market.

But unlike corporations, you can't really break up the government's monopoly on lawmaking and law enforcement. Governments can be some of the least accountable entities despite elections because they are natural monopolies that regulate themselves.

The accountability goes out the window when the government exerts influences over mass media and the "votes" are made based on a disinformation campaign.

I disagree, I'd rather have my own government decide what is acceptable rather than an American multi national projecting their own rapidly shifting cultural norms.

I found Merkel's comment interesting, because it really shows the cultural difference between the US and Europe:

-EU: Only governments should be allowed to censor speech, not private companies!

vs.

- US: Only private companies should be allowed to censor speech, not governments!

I think a big part is that the companies doing the censorship are American themselves, and can thus -if need be- be held accountable under American law.

For Europeans this is a lot harder, the companies are still American and mostly project their own cultural norms regarding violence, race, sex, etc, without being accountable to European governments.

If a private party can use their monopoly on the limiting of free speech to control the government how is that any different than those private parties _being_ the government, and by extension enjoying the monopoly on violence?

If a handful of companies can influence the election of a government to such a degree then they would enjoy the best of both worlds: the freedom to censor as they please (because they aren't beholden to 1st Amendment / Free Speech), and monopoly of violence as they control who the government is (who gets more positive coverage in their algorithms, pagerank etc.)

I think a lot of people are worried that companies (Facebook, Twitter, Google) _do_ hold that kind of power over governments, and not just the American government.

> monopoly on the limiting of free speech

No private party actually has such a monopoly, so it's not a real current issue.

They are if they act in concert. That is what is really scary.

You'd need quite a long list of companies to work together at the social network level for that to be true.

If you go lower in the stack, like ISP's it becomes much easier.

What's the point of arguing if companies are able to limit free speech in theory when they just did so in practice?

> What’s the point of arguing if companies are able to limit free speech in theory when they just did so in practice?

Whether what they actually did is “limiting free speech” or not is, in fact, part of what is in dispute.

Obviously, if one grants the argument that that accurately describes the events that occurred, it becomes indefensible to argue that it is not within the power of corporations to do it. But that is very much not a point of consensus.

True, it might not be a monopoly, or even a duopoly, but I'm not sure it's much better. Do you think if a politician is banned from Facebook, Twitter, and Google they have even a small chance of being elected?

It wouldn't even take all 3. If Google decided to heavily promote pro-Trump articles in their SEO, and heavily downplay pro-Biden articles leading up to the election, do you think it would have gone the way it did? And if not, do you think that's OK?

Of course they can do what they like, it's their platform. And if Biden supporters didn't like it they could boycott and tell everyone to use Bing or DDG. But I'm not sure that's a realistic solution.

I'm not making any strong claims here, I certainly don't know the right answer or if this is as much of a problem as it seems to me. I'm just worried that a handful of companies control a significant amount of the discourse in not just their own countries, but internationally. It might not be a current issue, but I could see it being a future one.

Or I could be completely wrong, I'm just musing.

This ignores the ordoliberal[0] perspective, which IMHO deserves som attention if we are discussing the German approach to these questions (which I believe differs/diverges from the principled view of these questions from the anglo-american/common-law PoV)

From my perspective, the real danger is the collaboration of state power and private capital power, because it inevitably leads to the death of any notion of democracy. Whether that happens in free market/social democratic/neoliberal/ordoliberal societies is irrelevant, when the result is a consolidation of the power of private capital and state mandated power. (We used to call this corruption, but the term feels irrelevant.)

I believe a healthy society (under our current paradigms) deeply requires an antagonistic relationship between state power and private capital.

(Just to be clear, I believe these are emergent issues, and I absolutely do not claim to possess any complete truth)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism

Ah yes, let’s just let open Holocaust-denial or Hitler-worshipping or white supremacy all be absolutely fine. Or what about doxxing or a focused effort to destroy a business online through lies and slander, on a social network that doesn’t have any rules? Is that allowed? It’s my free speech to tell lies of course.

Free speech without restrictions is a silly liberal dream that never works. It’s like capitalism in that it holds it own downfall within its internal logic.

You do realise that Hitler was the government when all the atrocities were committed? The road to hell is paved with best intentions (of the supporters of these governments)

It's not about what happens when Hitler 2 is in power, but to prevent that from happening.

For me the challenge becomes "which government?" Should 200 different national governments be able to decide how the platform is run in their country? Should different sub-regions be able to decide?

Makes me wonder what global governance would look like for this or even platform-specific governance could be. Maybe there's a play for users of specific platforms to unite and demand more representation over how a platform is governed, as workers united for more representation in companies.

There is a due process if the creator of whatever was complained about decides to do something about it.

Additionally, this is only a flagging process for plainly illegal content, it can (and is on FB and other platforms) be a separate process from normal reports.

100%.

Germany is so wrong about this, and this is not the way we should go.

We Americans needs to grow thicker skin and cherish our free speech more. If we don't, we're going to slip into a world with less liberty.

Libel, slander, and "yelling fire" are sufficient limits on free speech. Seeing or hearing people say things you don't like isn't going to kill you. Society already has the tools to shun those who act egregiously.

We have other legal mechanisms to quell the events that happened last week. Prosecute for politicians inciting violence, fine trusted news organizations spreading misinformation, jail those who destroy property, trespass, or assault another person.

We have ways to stop radicalization too: being better to one another and making sure people have their needs met.

I vehemently disagree with Voat, Parler, thedonald.win, /r/sino, J. K. Rowling, and many other communities and persons. But they have a right to carry on, and we shouldn't deplatform them.

If we didn't have free speech, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today. I'd rather live in America than a country that has less free speech.

>Libel, slander, and "yelling fire" are sufficient limits on free speech.

>fine trusted news organizations spreading misinformation

How do these two statements go together at all? The government fining news organizations for reporting what it decides is misinformation seems like a huge overreach even to me, and I'm more on the pro-censorship side.

I was originally thinking that if people were upset at corporations for all the damage they do in the thirst for profit, we could take free speech rights away from corporate entities and enshrine those same limits as rights for the people.

But I think you're right. That's ridiculous and results in less freedom, and we should strive for 100% free speech across the board.

The way to fix hate is to make sure everyone's rights are protected and strive to meet everyone's needs. Hate arises from fear and discomfort. It's not an easy problem to solve.

That boat has long sailed once Big Tech banned Parler and everyone cheered it. America is no longer a country where free speech is paramount. Atleast in other democratic countries Censorship happens through the elected Government. As a citizen you can always remove the elected representatives if you don't like the Censorship implemented by your elected representatives for whatever reason. You can't remove/vote out Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon et all because of the powerful grasp they have over digital communications and media.

The very fact that Parler was banned by Big Tech and not by US Congress puts a very bad light on America. Why would any Government trust American Government's word if a Private Company can undo it or act unilaterally without Congress approval? What does it convey to the World leaders? Is there 1 power center in America or 2? We used to mock Pakistan for having dual power centers (the elected Government and the military since their military doesn't come under the control of the elected Government). It caused a lot of confusion for World powers to interact with Pakistan as no one knew who the controller was. Was it the elected Government or the military? I'm seeing the same thing happening in America. Why should my Government take US Government seriously if a private company can ban/censor US Government communications?

Deleting a sitting US President's account is not going to be respected by any Government. Period.

> The very fact that Parler was banned by Big Tech and not by US Congress puts a very bad light on America.

That you think a private company being shunned by other private companies, is worse for free speech than a private company being banned by the government, shows you don't really understand the american definition of free speech.

True, though the bad light is not that some companies and groups in US are limiting Free Speech, but because US government has lost monopoly on violence, judging others and dealing punishment. All they key components that holds together any state - with or without Free Speech(which exists only few centuries or so).

We do not know with whom we have to deal with - US government that is represented by People - including ELECTED President, or Thing that is not controlled by law and does not need to abide to it and can do as it wishes - just like terrorists. Essentially at this point US does not exist - when the Thing, that will arise in place in US will start to abide to law and make agreements with others, then others will be more relaxed, but currently Democracy citadel of the whole World has ended. No one is going to take US as an example anymore and it would take a lot of work to gain that position where US once was and usually there is no way to climb back after such actions.

Not to mention what this all is causing to current World Order, where no one is going to seriously take US - all the doors that are now opened for all the shit to pour out.

Parler banned Parler. They refused to take down material that was obviously detrimental to society. We would not put up with television stations planning to kidnap senators either. You don’t get to yell fire in a theatre. They were warned. They didn’t do anything. They banned themselves.

Why stop there? I'll add more to the list of Parler transgressions:

1. They live streamed NZ Mosque Shooter. https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/444349-christchurch-shoote...

2. They helped ISIS in propagating terror material for 2 full years. They allowed ISIS to post beheading videos and threaten the then President of the United States Barack Obama. They even got sued for it but took protection behind Section 230: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-isis-lawsuit-idUS... and https://money.cnn.com/2016/12/20/technology/twitter-facebook... and https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/war-goe...

3. It was used to incite Genocide of an ethnic group causing mass migrations: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

4. They were party to toppling of foreign Governments: https://www.smh.com.au/technology/can-social-networking-over...

5. They were used by foreign Governments to censor Citizens and Oppositon: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/7/16/it-exists-to-demobi...

> They banned themselves.

Oh yes they banned themselves. The proof I have given above validates your point. I am wrong, you are right! Congratulations!

Is your point that Facebook and Twitter are just as culpable as Parler but held to a different standard?

Exactly. Thanks for getting my point. Let us assume that the entire US Capitol plot was hatched in Parler. Even then that is just 1 transgression. Compare it to the history of social media enabling violence and that list runs into hundreds if not thousands (if you factor in the entire World). I haven't even covered threats of school shootings and other stuff that often gets overlooked.

When regime change happens in Middle Eastern countries Twitter was lauded for being a platform for voice of the oppressed. As long as it doesn't happen in America we should rejoice social media playing a pivotal role. The moment the same "Arab Spring" like situation strikes home all hell breaks loose.

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