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>I also find it frustrating that some armchair psychologists have decided that people like me with more nuanced views simply want to repress and censor things that we disagree with which is not what it's about at all.

Well, you've got to draw the line somewhere, right? /s

But seriously, I think one can be a free speech advocate without being a free speech absolutist, and believe that we are heading in the wrong direction. In fact I think it's wrong to think of 'where to draw the line' at all, because what is acceptable discourse is not, and should not, be thought of as static.

I think a much better question is how 'the line' is shifting, as the amount of things we can't talk about is both a lagging indicator of institutional health (because being able to have uncomfortable conversations is a sign of emotional maturity), and a leading one (because public discourse is necessary to solving problems we don't understand or would rather not acknowledge).

US law defines the line as speech that incites imminent lawless action. The speech must not only be encouraging such action, it must be imminent and likely. This is in practice a pretty good line.

If you think that private companies should censor much more heavily, then you obviously don't really believe in free speech. There's no obvious reason why it's more acceptable because all the dominant communication platforms censor speech vs the government doing it.

you're forced to follow laws, you aren't forced to post memes on twitter.

When all your friends talk on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, then you cannot act like censorship through these platforms does not negatively effect the content of discourse available to the public. Especially in times of a forced lockdown, such as we were recently subjected to with the "quarantine".

> What free speech advocates ignore here is that even they generally draw a line somewhere. Death threats, defamation, pedophilia, sharing bomb making materials etc are usually accepted by everyone to not be acceptable.

Assuming we're talking about the abstract concept of free speech (as opposed to 1A, which dictates what the US government is allowed to censor), the "line" is around expression of ideas. A death threat isn't "expressing an idea", it's coercing someone with violence. Similarly "harassment" which you didn't mention, falls out of bounds of speech because it violates another's right of association (you have the right to speak, but you can't force me to listen). Pedophilia obviously isn't an expression of an idea, although pedophilic advocacy, while repugnant, is still in bounds of free speech by definition.

Whether platforms are obliged to adhere to a "free speech" standard is a different question. Personally, I think so much of our speech is flowing through a handful of these large platforms that they are the de facto public square, and should be regulated accordingly or broken up. Even if they could articulate a clear moderation policy and enforce it fairly, simply having that much power to determine who sees what content for so many citizens is concerning. Even if you're a liberal or progressive and thus largely enjoy the alleged bias in platforms' moderation policies/enforcement, recall that in 2016-2017 we were virtually certain that Russia was manipulating Twitter to influence the US presidential election--if you believe Russia can indirectly influence our elections via Twitter, then it necessarily follows that Twitter can directly influence our elections and surely that's too much power to give to a corporation.

> 'But those are different' is usually the argument here. But why though? Because they cause harm? Doesn't inciting racial hatred cause harm?

I think the issue is that many don't trust platforms to enforce their own policies consistently. On Twitter for example, one gets the impression that it's okay to incite racial hatred toward whites, Asians, Jews, and even "ideologically diverse" blacks/etc, which is to say that the policy is neutral but the enforcement is biased--and that biased enforcement constitutes harm. Of course, a racist might respond "Good, we should punish whites, Asians, and Jews for their race because historically other whites, Asians, and Jews have enjoyed various advantages because of their race", but presumably the goal is to minimize racism.

Compare:

"My followers, I order you to go out and kill this man"

vs

"I wonder if the world would be a better place if this man did not exist"

However you define free speech, anyone can order someone killed while being acceptable to your rules.

Defining free speech is easy, adjudicating it is sometimes hard. In this case, a threat requires the intent to compel (note that compulsion != persuasion). Determining whether "I wonder if the world would be a better place if this man did not exist" is intended to compel or not is harder.

But most free speech absolutists will be pretty content if we get to a point where the thrust of the free speech debate concerns itself with outlier cases like this one (rather than "is it 'hate speech' to criticize woke excesses?" or "to use a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English racial slur?").

> But most free speech absolutists will be pretty content if we get to a point where the thrust of the free speech debate concerns itself with outlier cases like this one (rather than "is it 'hate speech' to criticize woke excesses?" or "to use a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English racial slur?").

In your absolutist world how do you stop the trolls on the current incarnation of social media from flooding the medium with references to these outlier cases until it triggers censorship?

When those same trolls continue pentesting the medium until they trigger censorship on less direct references, you're going to be left with examples functionally equivalent to the ones you are comparing to above.

Won’t move the moderation line and you won’t have that slippery slope problem. At the boundary, use judgment. The law has the same problem and yet we still have tremendous speech liberties.

To be clear, I think moderating small communities is fine, but planet-scale social networks are de facto public squares.

Nobody is bound to that stance. Some people, myself included, believe that there is no line. You have the right to say anything.

I agree with this line of reasoning, but then we have to ask the question: are platforms obligated to host all speech that is not illegal (in whatever jurisdiction they reside in)? Should they be obligated? If I as a private citizen decide to create a platform to host discourse, do I have the freedom to decide what is permitted there?

If the answers to the followup questions are "yes", then we arrive to the status quo, where most of the big platforms heavily censor the content. This means that if you want to say something that'd be censored, you have the right to do so, but you don't have the means. I suppose you can walk out into the street and say to the people there, but there's a certain lack of reach in that approach :)

So there's also a practical aspect, where you may have full freedom of speech by law, and yet in reality you have no freedom because nobody will give you the possibility to actually communicate what you want to say. You may try to build your own platform, but then you run into second order problems where you'll find that no service provider will want to host your servers.

At one point, you may hit a barrier where you have no monetary means to build all the infrastructure necessary to be able to provide a truly free speech shelter.

I believe that common carrier applies to platforms, not just the infrastructure of wires. These platforms could not exist without the large privilege given to them I'm immunity to the illegal content they serve up.

The problem is that these platforms have it both ways. They can censor entire political parties, yet play dumb and cry immunity "we're just a platform" when there's literal illegal content that makes it's way to their public hosting.

Once they censor based on content, they should lose all until and be considered a publisher of that content. They're no longer a passthrough, they're now actively working to manipulate opinions

I hear this argument quite a bit, and I wonder if you have ever tried to use a discussion group that has been overrun with spam? Because that’s what you will get.

The reason why platforms are expected to host even the speech they don't agree with is the same why some bakers are forced to make cakes for homosexual weddings. If you compel to the latter, you should also compel to the former and vice-versa.

> 'But those are different' is usually the argument here. But why though?

Because we already agree they're different, so they form a Schelling point. We don't have to argue about them, and so there's no slippery slope.

However, I'd say even these examples are not as clear as they seem:

Death threats: I can see the need to punish credible death threats (and any credible threats of violence), but that does not actually imply a need to censor the death threats. Allow them to exist on the platform, but punish the threatener.

Defamation: This seems like a pointless holdover from honor culture. If we didn't have laws against it, people would simply demand evidence more often when hearing someone defame someone else. I don't see why the government needs to certify that my statement about someone else is true. Let my reputation do that.

Pedophilia: Have any children been saved by child pornography laws? It's possible banning and deleting it only encourages them to make more. And again, you can punish the creator of the pornography without also having to censor the content. The two are separate.

Sharing bomb making materials: This is the only example you gave where the actual information itself is dangerous. I support this being banned for sure. (You could say defamation is dangerous, but I'd say it's only harmful when the government is certifying our speech. Take away defamation laws, and defamation itself becomes less harmful, because we won't believe what others say at face value.)

> instead discuss _where exactly_ we draw the line then I think we are finally having a far more honest discussion

There doesn't have to be an agreement, on the contrary there cannot be an agreement because that depends on the community. But what we currently see is that people push into established communities that want their lines realized. So I see no advantage to discuss this topic.

These lines are subjective, even by culture, country, region, age, gender or whatever. There is no universal line.

> instead discuss _where exactly_ we draw the line then I think we are finally having a far more honest discussion

There doesn't have to be an agreement, on the contrary there cannot be an agreement because that depends on the community. But what we currently see is that people push into established communities that want their lines realized. So I see no advantage to discuss this topic.

You animosity towards free speech advocates already tells me that we probably don't share a common line at all.

>What free speech advocates ignore here is that even they generally draw a line somewhere.

The issue isn't where the line is drawn. The issue is that no singular entity can be trusted to draw that line.