The slippery slope is real.
The power to veto anyone's speech is toxic. Entrusting it to anyone, particularly those in power, is the implicit agreement to forfeit liberty.
The power to veto anyone's speech is toxic. Entrusting it to anyone, particularly those in power, is the implicit agreement to forfeit liberty.
But here it's not what they choose to remove, not "moderation.. It's what those in power press them to remove, aka "censorship".
You don't have to support.
The government will take your support at gunpoint. This is the crux of the issue.
I'm not on either of those platforms, so they're not shipping me ads. I do what I can to be private, so that their data mining doesn't get me.
I have that choice. Unfortunately if I don't agree with what my government is doing, they'll still take my tax dollars and fight forever wars with them.
Censorship is the moderation of content that may be disturbing or cause painful thoughts or feelings. So a person leaking state secrets on Twitter, and the government asking Twitter to take the tweet down, is not censorship: it's protecting national security, or law enforcement. They're drastically different things being taken down for very different reasons.
You don't need an independent body to handle either type of request because we already have mechanisms for a company to handle both. What people are getting worked up over now is the potential for governments to abuse their legal right to remove illegal content, in order to censor. Since it's the govt doing it, the govt is not going to create an agency just to wave a big flag when it is doing something bad. That would be like creating a "National Agency Of We Don't Trust The Government".
There are both attempts of censorship and surveillance/espionage.
Moderators are literally censors, by definition. Look up the definition of "censor" if you don't believe me.
People need to stop playing word games to avoid the label of "censorship". Just accept that you're ok with some types of censorship and try to justify the types you support rigourously. That's the only way to avoid a slippery slope. Trying to tap dance around calling it censorship serves no one.
But as soon as the government requests takedowns and shadowbans, that's majorly crossing the line into infringement of free speech.
The whole reason we constitutionally limit the governmental repression of free speech is because we're all made to support it. If I could chose to pay my taxes to an alternative, then fine, but we're made to pay taxes to a government that now can take down speech critical of it.
Government is (in theory) elected by people, counter balanced by court.
Facebook is accountable to nobody, it don't even have any competitor in social network business.
Yes, exactly.
> Facebook is accountable to nobody
Except when I hop off their platform.
> it don't even have any competitor in social network business.
True-ish I like https://peakd.com/ and https://flote.app/.
They're not as popular just yet, but they're excellent distributed alternatives.
Further, and most importantly, I can withdraw my support from Facebook. I cannot withdraw my support from the US government.
Facebook is accountable to its users. It may not have much serious competition now, but there are myriad potential alternatives which could fulfill the same function, just as Facebook replaced its predecessors (most notably MySpace). Network effects are strong while they last, but notoriously fickle.
Either we can keep that corrupt view, or we can agree that huge corporations are inseparable from governments and reign in their freedoms in a similar manner.
The issue is when at gunpoint people take my money from me, then use that money to fund more guns to point at the Twitters et al. of the world.
If I don't like moderation on a forum, I just leave the forum. I don't _have_ to give my support to it.
I can't just not support the US government.
with that said, neither moderation nor censorship should be tolerated for (political) speech by any (large) organization or bureaucracy, because they are using outsized power to influence opinions unduly, and thereby stripping us of our independence (literally coercing conformation). we can otherwise quibble about drawing a small line at the very far end of the slope where child porn lives.
Using the word "censorship" for the latter but a milder word like "moderation" for the former seems like a perfectly reasonable way to convey this distinction in this context, even if a dictionary might provide a broader definition of "censor".
At what point are Facebook's "moderation" decisions "censorship"? You're effectively saying that it's only when moderation is driven by some kind of government policy, which completely erases the factors that actually matter in evaluating the danger of any given suppression decision, ie. understanding of harm, considerations of power and oppression, etc.
Strictly speaking, moderation is a subset of censorship. The key aspect of moderation is that it is generally done by community members (usually volunteers) and done to enforce standards agreed with by the community. Other forms of censorship generally come from outside a community to enforce some rules the community does not support.
Thus perspective and community identity are integral to the distinction but there is still a basis by which you can objectively view the powwr dynamics and distinguish moderation from other forms of censorship (such as corporate censorship or government censorship.)
I do think the term "moderation" is a misnomer when applied to Facebook and Google as their moderators are generally not part of the communities they censor.
Think of it this way. If AliBaba does something you know China the government is connected. Same goes true for Zoom.
America is no better. (as the Banana Republic example shows) The head of Apple can call the Speaker of the House directly on the phone whenever he wants and that person will answer. I can guarantee you that the same is true of Google. I am also sure if Jack Dorsey wanted to talk to someone with decision making power in the Whitehouse it could happen within the day. (probably slower than Google or Apple though)
BTW I like how HN allows for moderation that makes certain low-quality comments invisible, but there is a mode when you still can inspect them if you want to. It's like the "spam" folder that allows you to have a clean inbox, but also allows you not to miss something that was deemed spam by mistake.
If that's the case then "censorship" is not inherently wrong, since moderation is often times a good thing.
Their censorship is abhorrent, but shouldn't be illegal.
It's as important to be able to not speak as it is to speak.
Indeed. I don't know why more people don't see this; also note that recommendations are the speech of the person, algorithm, or company doing the recommending.
That's debatable. What twitter decides to promote, in feeds and other things via algorithms, certainly falls under their freedom of expression. But their "editorial control" currently also extends over hosting comments by others as well (which they can choose not to promote), and that is questionable and arguably could be made illegal. We had a recent discussion on an article by a legal scholar that argues for this distinction:
This article is specifically about the government asking Twitter to do so.
And the worst of all is the censorship of hate speech, because hate speech has become a malleable term used simply to eventually become an opinion I don't like.
Remember the whole "punch a Nazi", meme? Who doesn't think a Nazi deserves punching? But eventually, everyone becomes a Nazi, so any violence against them is justified.
This artificially constructed right not to be offended needs to die in a fire.
In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the results of the elections. He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power. This is the same President who attacked journalism, rescinded access to White House press events for news sources that were critical of Jim, and used the Justice department to seize records of journalists. Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever enforce.
> In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the results of the elections. He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power. This is the same President who attacked journalism, rescinded access to White House press events for news sources that were critical of Jim, and used the Justice department to seize records of journalists
A very significant fraction of the anti-censorship crowd are pro-Trump, or at least right-wing, and of course a characteristic of that is ignoring all these things that he actually did.
(edit: the irony of being downvoted into the grey by the angry "anti-censorship" faction)
Anti-government-censorship and anti-private-censorship. Myself and I'm guessing many don't actually care what Twitter does so long as the government isn't coercing it to do so.
Besides idle threats to "open up the libel laws" and temporarily blocking random journos from white house events, I don't see how this could possibly be true.
Two things can be bad at once. In measurable terms I'd say opaque, coordinated social media bans are the greater and more permanent of the evils here. We can't deflect to Trump forever.
I’m not saying social media censorship isn’t bad. Of course having a few tech companies control the information that most people see is problematic. What I’m saying is that allowing those platforms to act as a megaphone for misinformation is also a huge issue. Censorship and propaganda are both tools of abusive governments.
I don't have an answer. But we can't find a workable answer without recognizing both sides of the problem.
Because nobody trusts you or anyone else to classify "misinformation".
> In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the results of the elections.
> He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power.
He gave a lot of speeches and told his supporters to make their voices heard. Peacefully.
If you assume that he genuinely believes the election was marred with fraud, then none of what he said are lies.
> This is the same President who attacked journalism,
The same "journalists" that spent years spreading fake news that he was a Russian spy?
The same "journalists" that spent years falsely claiming he was referring to neo-Nazis as "fine people" when in fact he was saying the complete opposite? https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/26/joe-biden-...
The same "journalists" that claimed that Trump instructed Georgia Secretary of State to "find the fraud" but then completely retracted that he ever said that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/16/washingto...
> rescinded access to White House press events for news sources that were critical of Jim,
The only one I'm aware of that was revoked was Jim Acosta who refused to follow the rules of the press room and hand over the mic to the moderator: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/07/cnn-jim-acos...
That's not being a "brave reporter". It's just being a showboating dick to everyone else that's following the rules of the press room.
> and used the Justice department to seize records of journalists.
The only instance of this I could find was this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/trump-administration-p...
Though that does not go into too much specifics as to what or why.
> Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever enforce.
Trump was the most open and accessible President that we've ever had. He would literally spend hours standing in front of hostile reporters answering any questions that they have.
If you want to see the reverse of that, check out how Biden only calls on a preselected list of reporters that ask prescreened questions. They even include a wallet sized photo in case he can't read the reporters name: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/photos-biden-cheat-sheets-f...
Or how about snapping at reporters that ask questions about current events like the pull out from Afghanistan instead of "happy things" on July 4th? https://nypost.com/2021/07/02/joe-biden-cuts-off-questions-a...
That's what content moderation looks like.
I think that the problem is about concentration of power more than speech rights and the real takeaway is that allowing 3 or 4 companies to control such an overwhelming share of communications infrastructure is a mistake regardless of what rules there are.
The argument that we should lean on Twitter to maintain such nebulous concepts as "freedom" at the expense of their own profits is never going to convince me.
Monopolies have always had different rules. My electric utility is a private company but in my state they have to ask permission before raising prices.
I don't agree with censorship in other countries but I also think it's weird to expect transnational companies to push western laws and values in places where the ruling government doesn't want them.
I do not want any government to attempt to coerce a private company to censor private speech. That said, it's particularly egregious if a nation with a constitution limiting it participates in said coercion.
That said, regarding...
> I also think it's weird to expect transnational companies to push western laws and values in places where the ruling government doesn't want them.
I too find that weird. I don't expect Twitter to act in any particular way. My expectation is that my government doesn't act irresponsibly.
Is this not an incredibly powerful tool of censorship and propaganda? Imagine this in the hands of a dictator. We are sowing the seeds of our own oppression.
The precedent here is that printing presses also held a lot of power in their time to print, which is why the newspapers themselves owned their own printing presses: so they couldn’t silenced by a third party.
I don’t think you can expect to use someone else’s means of transmission freely and expect free reign of usage.
That just means we ought to explore ways to decentralize distribution systems like Twitter.
Twitter is going to do what the people in the government want it to do.
I know this is hard to believe, but there are people who actually hold principles instead of just performing them. It's not especially surprising that you don't have exposure to them, but the vast majority of people I personally know who complain about speech restrictions from the left also complained about restrictions from the right when they held more cultural power.
Obviously your counterparts also exist, who cheered rightwing restrictions and complain about leftwing ones. But both of you are the proglem: gleefully proclaiming that you have no actual beliefs is practically a non sequitur in a conversation among people with actual moral centers complaining about the underlying principle violation.
We get it, we know you (and your rightwing counterparts) exist, as much as we wish you didn't. You're exactly what we're complaining about.
That being said, we do need to be cautious of extending the (legal) definition of censorship out this far. You run the risk of defining censorship to include any sort of counter-speech, or making it impossible to legally moderate Internet platforms for any purpose. "Anyone who provides an Internet platform must be willing to host any and all speech whatsoever" just means nobody will want to host such forums.
Something like common-carriage for large social media platforms could work - though it won't give the right wing what they want. Most of them absolutely were violating those platforms rules, and common-carriage won't let them back on those platforms. The reason why I say common-carrier rules would be a good thing for large Internet platforms is because in practice companies like Twitter and Facebook adopted a policy of "let world leaders do what they want on our platform", up until January 2021. This is not at all a defensible policy. If you have a rule against doing something on your platform, why let people in power do it anyway?
I'm not sure exactly where the line should be drawn or exactly what the rule should be, but it seems clear that we need to do something here.
Isn't the government pressuring a private company to remove/censor a content violation of "Freedom of speech"? As a private company, Twitter can do whatever they want, but if Twitter is forced to remove and censor, wouldn't that be a violation?
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It prohibits Congress from restricting the press or individuals to speak freely via laws that Congress writes. The 1st amendment has nothing to do with Corporations restricting things in their purview. The 1st amendment doesn't apply to any social media or online commentary by people. It might apply to the "press" since online news is more pervasive than physical newspapers. What would be interesting is a clearer definition of press as it relates to social media accounts.
> The 1st amendment has nothing to do with Corporations restricting things
Sure, but it has everything to do with a corporation taking instruction from the government to restrict free speech.
I never said the philosophical idea about freedom of speech was only limited to 1st amendment, just my interpretation of the law as the commenter was asking (IANAL).
I believe there should be an independent (as in outside the company) review process for bans/reinstatement - something standardized across various social media platforms, maybe per country jurisdiction if necessary. That is an ideal whose implementation would be extremely hard.
This isn't a veto on speech. It is a veto on a particular means of speech, a particular avenue of expression. The fact that we now equate that with actual censorship shows how disconnected we are from true oppression. Being blocked from twitter is an inconvenience, a non-event. Real censorship comes from government, covers ideas rather than means, and normally ends with people in jail/dead. A loss of one's tweet privileges pales in comparison.
Our government isn't supposed to do this stuff. It's evil even if the initial intentions aren't.
Except that "our government" regularly does this. There are all sorts of speech that we censor (copyright violations, violence, porn, hate etc). We don't think of it as wrong that our laws restrict such speech. Other countries have different laws restricting different speech. Certainly some countries have greater restrictions than others, but absolute freedom of speech is not a practical reality anywhere. Real anger should pointed not at twitter but at the countries who implement restrictions with which we disagree.
I actually do think it's wrong. Culture and more speech is the solution to those issues.
For this particular comment thread, the issue people are discussing is a relatively recent and very dramatic shift in power over speech. Today, a handful of high-tech oligarchs are controlling and enforcing standards of speech with far more efficacy than governments. It gets even scarier when you realize that governments know this and are now pressuring these tech companies to do their bidding.
Good, then by extension leaving the person on Twitter is also a non-event. So it seems there is no need for censorship here!
2. Twitter deleting content, banning users, etc, is entirely within their rights and is in no way a violation of anyone's First Amendment Rights.
Twitter is not a government entity. Full stop.
I'm currently sitting on some downvotes, which I find kind of unusual for a topic like this. Here's the text of the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Which part, specifically, has Twitter violated?
That's exactly my point. You can violate the principles of liberty freely as long as you aren't "the government". And the beauty of it is that people will defend you while you do it.
We just had a president with significant business assets, but he owned hotels. The next one may own media companies.
The USA is a capitalist society. If there is a market for an "uncensored" social media platform, the invisible hand of the market will take care of it, right? Even so, you yourself are likely pro-censorship in some way. Surely you are against child porn being on Twitter, likely along with discussion about planning mass shootings, bombings, and things of that nature. We all have a line that is drawn between what is acceptable and what is not.
I don't see this happening and I think the premise is flawed. In fact it looks like the dominant players in the market ganged up on nascent competitors like Parler and shut them out of the ecosystems they created. In practical terms, when payment processors, server hosting companies, domain registrars, and app stores ban you, how are you even supposed to compete? Sure, you can theoretically bootstrap your own payment processor, cloud service provider, even your own smartphone ecosystem with gobs of cash, but we all know that's not going to happen.
"I'd also argue that a lot of people care about this "technicality". Businesses are not the government, end of story. The 1st amendment is quite succinct, and there's little room for misinterpreting it."
What is gained from focusing so intensely on this fact?
I feel frustrated because I believe that tyranny and infringements on the rights of man can come from both the public and private sector. I fully accept the 1st Amendment says "Congress shall pass no law...". But to me, the actual preservation of civil liberties depends on both domains. You can't have one without the other.
That's capitalism. Sorry?
> What is gained from focusing so intensely on this fact?
Because people (US citizens) complain that their free speech rights are being violated.
They're not, unless the US Government itself is restricting what they can say.
As it is right now, Twitter can do whatever the hell it wants with its platform and you're free to start your own if you feel so compelled.
>I feel frustrated because I believe that tyranny and infringements on the rights of man can come from both the public and private sector.
I think that there's some misunderstanding of what the "rights of man" are, and where they are set. Do you really want the government involved in your private interactions with a private company?
Who or what gives you these rights? As far as I can tell, it's only granted by the constitution and amendments.
The 9th amendment is somewhat of a grey area, I suppose. Even so, I don't think that "I deserve to tweet whatever I want without being banned" is an enumerable right. If you want to go further, an amendment would be needed.
I'm talking about the concept of Human Rights. You can say that we are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", if you'd like. There's also the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" passed by the UN.
>"Do you really want the government involved in your private interactions with a private company?"
Yes. The government already does this and it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this sort of thing is ubiquitous and quite tolerable.
>"What happens when 'the market' decides your personal liberties are problematic?" >"That's capitalism. Sorry?"
I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I dread the idea of my human and civil rights being dependent on Capitalism. And I'm a supporter of Capitalism! The exercise of civil liberties should not be dependent on their profitability.
Edit: We've been going back and forth for a while now and I think it's been a good and respectful discourse. I understand if you want to drop the subject and move on.
I'm glad to see this, a lot of the anti-censorship people are, surprisingly, anti-regulation. I'm not quite sure how they balance the two.
> I know we aren't going to agree on this, but I dread the idea of my human and civil rights being dependent on Capitalism. And I'm a supporter of Capitalism! The exercise of civil liberties should not be dependent on their profitability.
We actually agree here, and it sounds like you may be a bit less capitalist than you think you are. I'm definitely capitalist, but abhor things like price gouging, scalping, and predatory loans. They exist because there is a market for them, gained through what I would consider a lack of morals.
The free market is great, until it isn't.
As for censorship, it needs to exist in some form or fashion. The reason why platforms such as Parler failed was because they were unable to moderate their platform. If you have a bunch of people posting child porn, planning attacks, etc (edit: and you, as a platform, do nothing about it), you will become toxic and nobody's going to want to work with you. I think that the disagreement that you and I have is where that line should be drawn.
Agreed. And, I think another source of us not quite seeing eye-to-eye is the fact that I as an individual tend to lean a lot more on "I know it when I see it" kind of thinking when it comes to applying rules to the real world. Plenty of other people are a lot more "by the book" than I am.
Along those lines, I'm not an absolutist and there are plenty of cases where Twitter removed content and it was perfectly reasonable for them to do so. But I'm increasingly worried about them removing content that is merely controversial, or unorthodox, rather than truly wrong. You could say I'm more worried about "innocent men going to jail" than I am about "guilty men going free".
To give an example, if there are two situations, situation 1 is that the government comes to my house, and threatens me for speech that I made, and situation 2, is that the mob comes to my house, and threatens me for my speech, the thing that is on my mind is not "Well, situation 1 is a violation of my speech rights, and situation 2 isnt!".
Like, literally that does not matter. Nobody cares about that technically that you keep talking about. What matters is that I don't want someone coming to my house and threatening me, regardless if it is the government, or the mob.
This is akin to a private company only allowing men to vote in board meetings, and people saying that it's violating the 19th amendment. Is it wrong? Absolutely! But it's not violating the 19th amendment.
I'd also argue that a lot of people care about this "technicality". Businesses are not the government, end of story. The 1st amendment is quite succinct, and there's little room for misinterpreting it.
In the context of this discuss it is.
It doesn't matter because what people want is to not be censored. Thats the point of all of this.
And you are bringing something up that just isn't relevant at all, that nobody brought up, but yourself.
> But it's not violating the 19th amendment.
Its not violating the 3rd amendment either. But nobody brought that up. Nobody cares if the 3rd amendment was violated, in this context.
What people care about is the bad thing happening. And you are distracting from the conversation, by not focusing on the fact that it is bad, and instead focusing on something that nobody cares about, in the context of this discussion.
The original context of all of this, is that someone said "It seems to me that if you really want to be a despot, you should own the companies that control the flow of information".
They didn't bring up the 1st amendment. You did. And that distracts from the important conversation, which is, that if someone wants to censor a bunch of other people, then they can get around all these laws, by just having a private company do it instead.
Thats why you got downvotes. It is because your point about the 1st amendment comes off as a bad faith way, of ignoring what everyone was actually talking about, which is about how a despot can censor a bunch of people, and cause a lot of harm, and that they can do that without running into 1st amendment issues, by just getting a private company to do it.
The US Government can not demand Twitter remove content (of US citizens) without violating their rights, which was implied by the actual article given that a large percentage of these requests came from the US Government. Conversely, Twitter can remove whatever it feels like without violating the rights granted to every US citizen. If Twitter is succumbing to US government pressure then we have the legal means to push back. If it is Twitter moderating content on their own volition, there is currently no legal means to do anything about it.
> And you are bringing something up that just isn't relevant at all, that nobody brought up, but yourself.
It's all over this discussion, not just this thread.
You are ignoring the point that is being brought up.
You bringing up this other thing, makes it seem like you are trying to dismiss this other concern, by bringing up a fact that does not actually address their point.
Are you actually going to address the original point here, or are you going to keep ignoring it?
The fact that you refuse to actually talk about the issue, which is that a despot can get away with censoring things, by doing it through private companies, makes it seem like you don't actually have a response to that, and are trying to misdirect.
In the eyes of the law, Twitter has done nothing wrong by moderating their content.
So then you agree completely with what the other person was originally saying, got it. You have no disagreement with them.
So you should not have said "No". Instead, you should have said "Yes I agree with you".
> If you want to do that we're going to need another amendment
Actually, we could simply make a law. Such as by changing our existing, and uncontroversial, common carrier laws.
> In the eyes of the law
Literally you are agreeing with the other person. You are agreeing that a despot could cause huge amounts of harm to society, by just doing everything through private companies.
Yes. Thats the problem. You have correctly identified that someone could engage in mass censorship, that is as bad as other forms of censorship, by just doing it through private companies, although this can be fixed by changing the law.
> you have no rights.
Got it. So you agree completely with the other person, that mass censorship, and lots of very bad things could be done to society, and currently it is difficult to stop all of these extremely bad things from happening. (Which could be fixed by changing the law)
I am not sure why you keep stating things, in the way that you do, when in reality, you are agreeing completely with everyone else as to what the problem is, and you are agreeing that all of these very bad things could be done to lots of people, right now.
I'm an unaffiliated/independent voter and I've voted for both parties in the past (with varying levels of regret for both parties.)
It's not OK for Fox News & CNN to be political party propaganda machines. It's not OK for Twitter/Facebook/etc to censor only the right for their opinions. Having said that I think it's completely fair for them to kick them off their platform for perpetuating outright, destabilizing lies.
"No bank account, no ability to travel, no passport no benefits nothing."
I'm not condoning racism here. Racism is morally and ethically bankrupt. But I think that your objection to partiallypro's comment doesn't hold water.
We're going through a fascinating phase right now. If one is at all interested in philosophy, politics, religion & history there is a lot of discourse happening on Twitter and Substack, by extremely smart people. Look around, see for yourself who has the best arguments.
https://twitter.com/wmpolice/status/1282341956199350272?s=21
Either let the government make the rules on what speech is okay in their countries or let the platforms decide what's okay. You can't have both.