However, it shows a nonchalant willingness to redefine what free speech is. That’s scary.
No, we’re not curbing free speech because that’s not free speech. Just redefine the terms so you can do what you want.
Was there speech on Parler that was above board in the sense that it wasn’t people up to no good? I’m sure there was. It’s unrealistic to think that everyone there was advocating for a violent act to happen. Unfortunately, Apple and Amazon (Amazon documenting cases of threatened murder, rape, etc. that Parler wouldn’t remove) allegedly had been requesting that Parler clean up the more extreme content which allegedly they refused to/didn’t do. To Apple, that’s probably no different than an application being riddled in bugs and as such they don’t want it on their app store.
Do you think Blizzard banning WoW idiots yelling racial slurs is abrogating their right to free speech too?
Lemme guess, dang banning trolls here on HN is also a violation of free speech, and he should let people say whatever they want, whenever they want?
You realize how insane this stance sounds, right?
To someone like me, private corporations can kick people off their services at their pleasure -- and if that did become a problem (but not before), I'd suggest regulating them or building a public alternative. To someone like me, you also can't make false medical claims or falsely advertise your services or falsely label food.
To someone further away from free speech absolutism, private companies should have a department of censorship that responds to the government, the zeitgeist, whatever.
To someone like me, though, there's a lot of knobs and dials to turn on the "what amount of speech lets people thrive and not die" machine and I'm content to have society keep fiddling with them in various ways, as a process and not an end-point.
Apple isn't simply moderating misc examples of speech they don't condone, they're attempting to install your (incorrect) version of what free speech means. This is some serious 1984 stuff in action, and a lot of smart people are too ignorant to see what's happening in front of their eyes.
Cutting communication channels is historically an act of war.
I believe you are right - cutting communication channels of a sovereign state can be an act of war. But these are private channels. I don't think we are anywhere near classifying these platforms as public utilities, much less natural resources, at least in the United States.
Most of the people who are saying this never actually looked at the site, the reality is the majority of the content seen was no worse than that of Twitter, in some ways better and more politer (that's what you get with an echo chamber), but every argument leveraged against Parler could be leveraged 10x over against Twitter. So no matter what intentions are, the effect is the same. You can't in good faith argue Parler deserves to be taken down anymore than Twitter and many other sites. Twitter does not enforce many of its own rules, even when reported a lot of violent, hateful content stays up for days or weeks while very minor infractions will get enforced. So even what they do enforce is very inconsistently enforced.
Given how bad Twitter is and has been over the course of its history, you can't really argue in good faith this wasn't just a pretext from eliminating a competitor to the dominance of SV big tech from the market.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...
Twitters goal was never to weaponize freedom of speech. You can't blame twitter for being anti-free speech when the basis for kicking off Trump was violation of TOS. It was never a freedom of speech issue to begin with.
Parler on the other hand weaponizes freedom of speech does so in a very juvenile way to confuse people. The GOP runs with this too.
It's how conspiracy theorists thrive - they weaponize authority in every way - be it authority because of comprehensive study, understanding and scientific evidence or authority because of governance, speech, status quo.
It's pathetic really... and i have to laugh that you seem to suggest you have some pillar to stand on merely because you corrected what my iphone chose to autocorrect.
lol
His take is rather fascistic in that he just redefines what a thing is to avoid dealing with the unpleasant parts.
No, it’s not a sterilization campaign, it’s family planning.
The Supreme Court has granted corporations in the US at least a partial right to free speech and political speech in special. Even against protected minorities (Gay wedding cake decision).
Maybe Tim Cook could say that Apple is using it's free speech rights as a corporation when denying service.
The question is not if this particular speech is protected or not, because it does not apply to Apple at all.
The only question is if Apple has right. It has.