Society in general has been making chilling moves away from free speech, and this has been accelerated by the pandemic. I hope the pendulum will swing the other way, but it's also possible to cross a tipping point where we just lose our way.
In reality though, laws have been limiting speech for hundreds of years, and those laws and judgements are enforced by the government. The idea that it is sacrosanct and is (and should "continue" to be) unabated is already not what happens. The usual example is about shouting bomb in an airport or fire in a crowded movie theatre but those are more about mischief than any freedom to say a thing (you aren't punished for the words alone). However, Libel and Slander laws exist and have for a long long time and are limits on free speech.
I'm not in favor of draconian laws designed to chill debate but it's important to recognize that limits already exist and how we navigate where to draw the line is the key I think.
I have never seen ISIS propaganda. Plenty of "Fauci went to school with Bill Gates and was CEO of Moderna" memes, though.
Before they were terrorists they were "insurgents" of the "Arab Spring". Something that the administration and Twitter/SM were more than willing to lean into before they lost control of the situation.
>I have never seen ISIS propaganda. Plenty of "Fauci went to school with Bill Gates and was CEO of Moderna" memes, though.
That's more a function of your age and filter bubble not whether there was ISIS propaganda which is well documented.
The administration was openly showing support for the Arab Spring mobs and even built up a military coalition in its support. Lack of knowledge on current events isn't the same as taking a skeptical stance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/technology-once-used...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/07...
...
Social media companies actually had a hugely successful anti-ISIS recruiting and propoganda campaign. This was something that everyone wanted a bit of credit for, but was ultimately totally uncontroversial because terrorists bad and no one complains when companies deplatform them.
>Social media companies actually had a hugely successful anti-ISIS recruiting and propoganda campaign.
I question if that's the case. That's like closing the barn doors after the horses have already left. The networks were already in place. The damage already done.
Aggregators like r/syriancivilwar had no shortage of atrocities to share most of which directly from social media.
And well that's silly for two reasons. The first is that the social media landscape was very different 10 years (yeah really!) ago when the Arab Spring started, the companies didn't have "stop terrorism" on their radar.
The second is well until 2013 or 2014, ISIS wasn't really a thing (of note). So no one cared. For better or worse, denoting something as a terrorist organization matters. Countering terrorist propoganda sounds a lot better than countering propoganda put out by arab spring protestors agitating for more democratic governments.
And actually a third is that a lot of the initial arab spring was explicitly about pro-democratic and non-muslim or more secular governments. So this whole complaint doesn't make a lot of sense. Like yes, people were in favor of the use of social media for democratic organizing.
I'm just very confused, what point are you trying to convey.
The start of this thread is a comparative juxtaposition of anti-vaxxer and terrorist content. I think that's an interesting thought experiment but requires historical context with an emphasis on the roles social media and realpolitik played. Put bluntly, social media is socially corrosive, we are experiencing a non-partisan leadership vacuum, and all these polarizing events aren't as different as they seem.
>And well that's silly for two reasons. The first is that the social media landscape was very different 10 years (yeah really!) ago when the Arab Spring started, the companies didn't have "stop terrorism" on their radar.
10 years later and social media is still driven by polarizing engagement metrics and addictive anti-patterns. Banning content is an insufficient bandaid at best and scapegoat at worst. Fundamentally the same landscape.
>And actually a third is that a lot of the initial arab spring was explicitly about pro-democratic and non-muslim or more secular governments. So this whole complaint doesn't make a lot of sense. Like yes, people were in favor of the use of social media for democratic organizing.
It's not a given that it was about democracy any more it's a given antivaxxers are about safety/freedom. Are these the real issues, are they proxy issues, or is it layers of both?
Try it.
People did. You didn't hear about it because they were brushed aside as free speech extremists and wacko libertarians.
If they put as much energy into stifling human trafficking as they did dissenting covid opinions, we might make a dent in it.
For the later I wouldn't even erase such content from the internet. All I demand is a proper age verification system for viewers and the actors. More guarantees that the actresses aren't, in fact, being abused by their situation would be nice - what can I say, I dare to dream.
Why is it that I have never heard these laws cited outside the context of justifying additional restrictions on freedom of speech, and especially restrictions on political speech? Without digging for an example, when is the last time you personally encountered someone who was prosecuted for saying a naughty word in a movie theater or saying mean things about someone online?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682582
(Tesla suing people for defamation over social media posts)
This is the nature of the things we come to see as rights. Why is an X a 'right' and not just a nice idea? Because of a history of political entrepreneurs pushing, pushing, pushing against it -- it's just a reasonable tradeoff for this case, can't you see?
A right is a Schelling fence beyond which the 'reasonable' tradeoffs must face a much stronger presumption against them. Of course the world is complicated. One of the most salient complications is the ubiquity through history of clever people with justifications why they need power over others. When in this context you bring up the indisputable fact that no human question is 100% clear, the effect is to weaken the fence.
After all, there are laws that have existed to limit that right for hundreds of years. The death penalty.
My point is that just because there have been laws in the past, that changes nothing about if something should be a right or not.
That is of course also fundamentally contrary to your lapdog characterization.
Another thing that is not talked about enough is how small minority of people in Silicon Valley gets to dictate how the rest of the world sees information. Algorithms and things that Big Tech is doing behind the closed doors to influence the world. It doesn’t matter left or right, what matters is the unbelievable power of say 1000 people in SV that figured out content engagement algorithms at Google, Twitter, FB, Apple News, etc.
The most powerful people on earth are those that govern algorithms that preferentially show content to people. In China that’s their Big Tech fused with CCP, in the west it is SV Big Tech shunning anything that’s not woke. FB is an exception but even within FB there is a rout.
> small minority of people in Silicon Valley gets to dictate how the rest of the world sees information
Academia did indeed have quite a few Soviet sympathetic figure. Tbh, I'm not sure why the gp picked the 70's. The cold war was mostly thawing then as the failure of the USSR was becoming visible (though Reagan partly reignited it in 80s). The 1950s was a period where real and suspected sympathizers of the USSR were drummed out of their positions in academia, entertainment and elsewhere. The witch hunts died down in the 1960s as US society relaxed a bit itself.
Private companies in the US have always had the right to refuse a customer anytime, for any reason. No shirt, no shoes, no service. Should a social media company be treated differently?
McDonalds has more than 10X the revenue of its closest competitor (KFC). Should they be prohibited from kicking out a customer who is causing a nuisance?
We need careful consideration on both sides, and it's disingenuous to pretend that they're simply a private business and that we can treat them as if they aren't effectively virtual public squares that dwarf anything in the real world in scale and reach.
Recognized public squares (eg the National Mall) are protected by regulation. Is that really what people want for Youtube?