So in theory, people here may be "free speech absolutists", but in practice, we enjoy the environment that the moderation here enables. At some level, we know via experience that free speech absolutism is not where we want to live.
And yet, the "censorship" has a pretty light touch. It doesn't censor for viewpoint (in the ideal), but for false or misleading comments, or for personal attacks. (Yes, I know, HN doesn't always live up to that ideal.)
It could be that HN's theory is coming around into alignment with it's practice. We're seeing in the wider world that free speech absolutism can cause problems, and that heavy-handed censorship also causes problems. Speaking broadly, what HN is realizing is that we want a wider world that is more HN-like.
HN is a private space. It can have its own arbitrary acceptance rules, and that has nothing to do with free speech.
It's similar to a No Trespassing sign; you can picket on public property (free speech), but doing that on private property (when marked with a sign that fit certain criteria, in most states) might get you arrested and charged with a crime.
In the U.S., the rights of the individual generally trump "public interest".
All of the arguments for “free speech” against platform content policies are exactly arguing for consuming someone else's reseources against their expressed direction, so it's provably false that that is sufficient to prevent people from arguing for entitlement based on “free speech”.
Telecoms, yes, ISPs and Websites, no. FCC adopted regulations under statutory authority it saw as allowing, but not requiring, thatnfor ISPs, but later retracted them. Websites have liability protection for hosts for user content specifically to encourage host moderation of user content, rather than creating an entitlement against such moderation.
Twitter used to be "the free speech wing of the free speech party"[0]
The American left used to stand up and fight for free speech. Only eight years ago, the ACLU defended the KKK in court.[1]
0. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-still-free-speech-win...
1. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-em-defends-kkks-rig...
This happened recently in 2020 from Jan to May on the Coronavirus. The party of “no big deal” reoriented from left to right and many people reoriented with it.
Tribe beliefs on free speech have changed and those who align with those tribes have changed with it.
Is this really an opinion espoused here (in non-greyed-out downvoted comments) or is this a straw man / exaggeration? This is an actual question, not meant as a flame.
I would suggest that HN broadly is in fact more accepting of the idea that platform holders should somehow moderate their content than it used to be, but HN also remains (broadly) very skeptical of the platform holders' ability or will to execute such policies well or fairly.
The truth is that platform holders have de-facto moderation - that is, their algorithmic feeds that decide what to amplify and what to bury in the name of generating ad revenue. It seems to me personally that these approaches are failing us all, a fact that has only become really obvious in recent years. I would say this development has now opened up a lot of room for discussion.
- data driven manipulation by platforms reaching the majority of the population. Pushing the spiciest posts to the top to increase emotional interaction
- the emergence of new fascists under the guise of free speech. With the downfall of traditional gatekeepers in media, new gatekeepers have emerged - and they are not the benevolent kind.
I dont see these conversations as being anti free speech so much as “agreed, but what next?”
The real question is if people actually want to live in a society with absolute free speech. I think that’s a no.
Hate speech is protected as long as it doesn’t involve violence, but in practice, hate speech almost always leads to violence.
Something people never talk about is how the founding fathers thought that virtue was a necessary quality for a democracy. If we lived in a society that held virtue in high esteem, there would be no limits to speech. But we don’t, our society values fame over everything, even money.
Plus, we live in a post truth era. People hate truth-tellers here.
That’s why we can’t have free speech.
At some point people in general - and HN in particular - have to decide when to rein in bad actors crying wolf. Otherwise they take over - literally.
However, I'm not a US citizen so I don't follow the situation closely.
What are you trying to say anyway? Cool, so you don’t know what’s going on, and don’t particularly care. So what?
That update mechanism needs to have some friction, though, so that you don't make too many wrong updates.
Free speech is a mechanism that helps with the updates, and up until maybe 30 years ago we also had an effective form of friction on it.
That friction took the form of the cost of getting an audience. You could say or publish pretty much anything you wanted other than things that were outright illegal. But it cost money to get your speech to a wide audience. The bigger the audience, generally the more the cost.
If what you wanted to say was close to the current common truth, it was a lot cheaper. The farther from that you got, the harder it was to find someone who would pay to get you a large audience.
In those cases where what you wanted to say was far from the common truth and so you could not come up with the money to get a large audience, you'd have to resort to spreading your message on a small scale. You might even have to start out spreading it in person one on one or by writing letters to people one on one.
If what you were trying to spread was actually true, it would eventually overcome that friction. You'd slowly convince people, until you might have enough who would pay for your self-published book or subscribe to a newsletter. They might start spreading it. It might take a while but eventually you'll get there.
If what you were trying to promote was just flat out wrong and borderline insane, such as that California's large wildfires last summer were actually ignited by space lasers run by the jews, or that the elites are kidnapping children and drilling holes into their heads to harvest adrenochrome, you'd have a real hard time getting that message out. And if you did manage and it started to gain a little traction, debunkers would quickly get debunkings out which would spread faster, making it harder for your thing to spread.
With a lot of people getting almost all their information from social media, that form of friction has to a large extent gone away. It is a lot easier and cheaper to get a large audience.
Debunking takes time, and by the time a debunking is out there for the false stuff to have already taken root. On top of that, people are now exposed to a lot more information (both true and false), leaving much less time per item for evaluation. And it is much easier to create new false things than new true things. This means that even if a debunking of something does come around to your social media feed, you might miss it in the flood of new false stuff in there.
And on top of all that, its not just cranks and crackpots producing the false ideas now. First, you've got state sponsored entities doing it to try to harm rival states. Second, you've got content farms that make up sensationalistic stuff designed to generate clicks, so that they can run ads on it.
We need some mechanism to put friction back.
Some things just DONT need to be said. Racial slurs in the wrong context (attacks), holocaust denials, etc. these things have NO positive outcome. None. Nothing at all in the world will change if you ban these things.
We can have free speech while stopping extremism and getting rid of scum like Gab and parlor is the first step.
It’s not a black or white situation.