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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

> other fully private entities

While I agree, I think it's possible for those entities to become so massive that they become de facto public entities and ought to be regulated as such. The prominent example being social media: such a tiny handful of companies are responsible for such an enormous portion of our collective speech that they are de facto public squares. In such cases, these technically-private entities should be broken up or regulated appropriately. This social media example is particularly relevant since since it's often the subject of "freedom of association for private institution" arguments.

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>While I agree, I think it's possible for those entities to become so massive that they become de facto public entities and ought to be regulated as such.

FWIW I said "fully private" specifically with organization "quasi-government power" in mind since there is none of that involved here and I didn't think it worth getting into there. That said, I disagree with you that mere size at all makes a company quasi-governmental, and in particular disagree with your chosen example of social media. That's actually a really weird one to choose compared to classic natural monopolies like physical utilities, particularly when they are in fact directly leaning on government power (like wireless telecoms that have a government force backed monopoly on sections of the limited useful electromagnetic spectrum).

>such a tiny handful of companies are responsible for such an enormous portion of our collective speech

"Responsible"? Every single method of speech we had in 1791, 1891, or 1991 is still with us, far easier and cheaper than ever, along with a host more. I don't agree that expanding the venues of speech in a positive-sum way somehow turns a place into a public square at all. The TOS limits are very, very loose, but even if they weren't why should that be a matter for government to step in? Why should people not have to put a few bucks where their mouths are if they want to break other people's rules on other people's property?

I do think that quasi-government power is a thing, and agree with some of the older SCOTUS cases vs their more recent pruning back. But my concern would be more at the level of physical fiber connections or access to payment systems. With skill, effort and money people should be able to get put up their message without threat of violence, but I'm not at all convinced that needs to be in any specific private venue (disclaimer, I don't actually have a twitter, facebook, or any other such service account at all, never did, which may bias my view on how necessary they are).

> I disagree with you that mere size at all makes a company quasi-governmental and in particular disagree with your chosen example of social media.

It's not size, but power. Twitter's curation algorithms have massive unilateral influence on public opinion (reaching far beyond its own user-base) probably including the ability to sway national presidential elections. I'm not aware of any utility companies with such power.

> "Responsible"? Every single method of speech we had in 1791, 1891, or 1991 is still with us, far easier and cheaper than ever, along with a host more.

What proportion of your speech is by telegraph these days? I'm guessing it's a lot less than it would have been in 1891. For much of America, much of our speech especially our political speech takes place on social media, and thus "traditional" channels enjoy a much smaller proportion.

Moreover, social media introduces an entirely new dimension: it's multicast. Your telegraph or phone call conveyed information to 1 other party at a time. A Tweet can be seen by millions or more. The volume of communication on social media dwarfs that of other channels.

> It's not size, but power. Twitter's curation algorithms have massive unilateral influence on public opinion (reaching far beyond its own user-base) probably including the ability to sway national presidential elections. I'm not aware of any utility companies with such power.

And most of the cases I'm aware of where they've used that power is to suppress viral lies, which is a good thing. Even then they were late pulling the trigger.

> Moreover, social media introduces an entirely new dimension: it's multicast. Your telegraph or phone call conveyed information to 1 other party at a time. A Tweet can be seen by millions or more. The volume of communication on social media dwarfs that of other channels.

And that's what's dangerous about them: the filter got removed from broadcasting. People like to talk about filters like they're bad things, but that's not true. They're in fact a vitally necessary function to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (for instance: what is peer review? Answer: a filter). when you don't have filters, ideas spread in proportion to how quickly they can multiply, which isn't a good thing, because a lot of fast-spreading ideas are akin to cancer, and do nothing except weaken or kill the host.

If Twitter's to avoid killing its host, it needs an immune system to filter out those cancerous ideas.

> And most of the cases I'm aware of where they've used that power is to suppress viral lies, which is a good thing. Even then they were late pulling the trigger.

Why on earth would you suspect that the handful of incidents that they advertise are a remotely representative sample? Of course the highest profile censorship is going to be agreeable, but we have no idea what lurks below the surface because we have no transparency.

> And that's what's dangerous about them: the filter got removed from broadcasting. People like to talk about filters like they're bad things, but that's not true. They're in fact a vitally necessary function to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (for instance: what is peer review? Answer: a filter). when you don't have filters, ideas spread in proportion to how quickly they can multiply, which isn't a good thing, because a lot of fast-spreading ideas are akin to cancer, and do nothing except weaken or kill the host.

I certainly don't dispute that filters can be good things. I have an issue with such an important filter being operated by a single entity (or a small handful of entities with aligned interests and who act in concert, for those inclined toward pedantry) who is not beholden to the public. Note that "peer review" isn't one guy determining what is going to be considered "science" this year; rather, it's distributed by its very nature. We should strive for social filters that are similarly robust, and distributing the curation among many smaller parties is the most obvious way to go.

> If Twitter's to avoid killing its host, it needs an immune system to filter out those cancerous ideas.

Or we kill Twitter. :) I say this half in-jest, but some people who are positively terrified about the collapse of democracy seem to take it as an article of faith that Twitter deserves to exist. I think there's some happy medium but if we fail to find it dispatching Twitter seems better than where we're heading.

>> And most of the cases I'm aware of where they've used that power is to suppress viral lies, which is a good thing. Even then they were late pulling the trigger.

> Why on earth would you suspect that the handful of incidents that they advertise are a remotely representative sample? Of course the highest profile censorship is going to be agreeable, but we have no idea what lurks below the surface because we have no transparency.

I'm not so concerned about that, because it's far from the most pressing issue. My impression is that the people who typically complain bitterly about Twitter's "censorship" are complaining about the stuff you call "agreeable censorship" (e.g. driving out Bugaloo Bois, QAnon, COVID misinformation, "stop the steal" cranks, etc.). For instance: the exodus from Twitter to Parler wasn't triggered so much by account closures/tweet deletions, but rather the labeling of election misinformation tweets.

> Or we kill Twitter. :) I say this half in-jest, but some people who are positively terrified about the collapse of democracy seem to take it as an article of faith that Twitter deserves to exist. I think there's some happy medium but if we fail to find it dispatching Twitter seems better than where we're heading.

I agree with this. Social media may be a technology that society should chose to abandon, Amish-style.

> I'm not so concerned about that, because it's far from the most pressing issue. My impression is that the people who typically complain bitterly about Twitter's "censorship" are complaining about the stuff you call "agreeable censorship" (e.g. driving out Bugaloo Bois, QAnon, COVID misinformation, "stop the steal" cranks, etc.). For instance: the exodus from Twitter to Parler wasn't triggered so much by account closures/tweet deletions, but rather the labeling of election misinformation tweets.

There's no reason to believe that this is going to do any good with respect to reducing far-right speech or preventing far-right violence; to the contrary it's going to push them out of public view into increasingly difficult-to-monitor places and fuel a persecution narrative. But much worse than that, we're embracing a precedent that it's okay for a corporation to hold dominion over a significant volume of our collective speech, unregulated. If you would have told me ten years ago that this would be a popular progressive opinion I would have laughed.

>It's not size, but power. Twitter's curation algorithms have massive unilateral influence on public opinion (reaching far beyond its own user-base) probably including the ability to sway national presidential elections.

Yes, and? "The ability to sway national presidential elections" (or any other elections) was of course one of the founding points of free speech in America. You just described major newspapers and publishers throughout the history of our nation, even before the advent of broadcast radio and television. Fox News also has massive unilateral influence on public opinion, as does CNN. That doesn't make them quasi-government at all

>I'm not aware of any utility companies with such power.

Then I must assume you aren't aware of any utility companies. It's not particularly challenging to imagine utility companies getting together and just deciding to cut off Republicans or Democrats. Like, literally just denying them any access to the electric grid, water/sewage, or data transfer beyond what they could then jury rig together themselves in regions where that's possible. You think that's less power then fucking Twitter? Are you for real?

>What proportion of your speech is by telegraph these days? I'm guessing it's a lot less than it would have been in 1891. For much of America, much of our speech especially our political speech takes place on social media, and thus "traditional" channels enjoy a much smaller proportion.

So what? It's not like we're forced to do that, and indeed I do not.

>Moreover, social media introduces an entirely new dimension: it's multicast. Your telegraph or phone call conveyed information to 1 other party at a time. A Tweet can be seen by millions or more.

I seem to vaguely recall these things, like way back in the day when we rode dinosaurs to work, called "newspapers", "books", "radio", "TV", and "web sites". All seemed somehow to have the ability to "broadcast" the ideas of individual people to large numbers of the public at a time. We seemed to do ok. And indeed that more recent one, the "web site" (I won't try to break your mind with "email", "IRC", or "newsgroups", baby steps), let you put out whatever you like to the world. It was lightweight and quite possible to host even on computing power of the level we now have in cereal box gadgets. It could All seemed to predate social media by a bit.

Oh wait we've still those? You can still use them? Oh.

What was your point again?

I think I was perfectly clear, and yet you still seemed to miss each and every one of my points and by a large margin. I’m not sure if you’re being willfully obtuse or not, but in either case I don’t see anything good coming from further discussion.

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