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Comment by tomlockwood | Hacker News Reader

I think this article misses one big point which is how we - the people on this website - have actively constructed a world where advertisers can shift spend really quickly. Brand safety is a big reason for censorship - the idea of keeping ads for a company away from content that people might not like. YouTube demonetizes loads and loads of controversial topics across the political spectrum - and that's a Feature for advertisers. This milquetoast move to the middle of the road is just those advertising platforms we all built, working as intended.

ed: And Another Thing, that time when YouTube was free and people were free to post what they wanted? Yeah that was when the company was running out of runway and relying on VC-type money. The VCs didn't give a toss about brand safety.

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I agree with you, but I think an important point to add is, that this is why it is dangerous to have the most import forums be advertising driven. Stephen Douglas spoke from a literal podium (when he wasn't prevented from doing so by an angry mob). There were multiple newspapers in most cities, and each part of the political spectrum had one (prominent abolitionists were often editors).

By crafting a society wherein Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. are the primary forums for public discourse, given that they are all primarily ad-driven, it makes for a public discourse which is averse to anything that upsets people. This isn't an inevitable consequence of technology, but it may be an inevitable consequence of ad-driven public discourse where it is difficult to get a new one off the ground due to the network effect.

Yeah totally totally. But then, its very funny to me that some of the people who complain the most about the censorship of "Right Wing" content by leftist big tech, are also, violently, over-my-dead-body, opposed to many kinds of community/government/centrally-owned collectivist platforms that wouldn't be under the influence of advertising. The Libertarian platforms that we have are the way they are precisely because they're market-based.

The podium requires a public square and the public square is currently privately owned.

The government has a pretty bad history of free speech.

My preference would be many small communities that have different support models. Let some communities be ad driven, others pay to subscribe, others yet donation based. These all have pros and cons.

The mistake is thinking there is a single solution.

Not sure that's true. Isn't it the first amendment?

Private corporations have radically more control over what its members say and repeat, than the government does. Might be that other governments are different, depending.

The government has been on the losing side of a lot of free speech cases. Just because the first amendment exists doesn't mean the government respects it. Also the government is not a singular entity but many small ones.

See Cohen v California for a good example of this.

Yeah but what's the comparative case that respects free speech more than the government?

Small communities where you can shop for a community that aligns with your desire to speak freely, and where non-free communities have alternatives.

I don't feel like this response really answers the question. You're saying some of these small communities don't align with a desire to speak freely. I feel like the same can be said, of some government. I'm not seeing why this is better.

Shopping governments is not a thing. Shopping your online community is.

Speaking freely shouldn't involve changing your life, address, citizenship, passport, taxes, healthcare...

If you're a federalist, shopping governments supposedly, is possible.

So, in order of what you listed: Social media, Country clubs and Congress.

We have basically every social platform we could ever want and we even invent more all the time, just not one that is literally central to everyone’s lives, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say we probably don’t want that particular one.

I think the issue is that the "network effect" makes them intrinsically prone to becoming oligopolies. We know how to have a free market without getting oligopolies; you need to break up anything that gets too powerful. What we lack is the political will to do it.

Sorry, I'm not sure I really understand this angle. Usually not wanting to be associated with specific content, and not funding that content wouldn't be censorship. I would expect it exists in the same way in non digital mediums, advertisers can choose how they spend their money.

Its not just funding - content is often removed because its perceived as unpalatable to advertisers and payment processors. This is the way the modern web which we all made, works.

It's also removed because the content is abhorrible, or beginning to push the boundires to make the previous abhorrible content seem palatable.

The assumption that users cannot see or understand the slide towards abhorrent content is incorrect.

Or the content was fine when published and cultural norms have changed...

I don’t find a problem with a joe filtering out what he doesn’t want to hear, I however have a problem with some platform growing so big and establishing itself so that if you or your business isn’t on it, you may just as well not exist at all, and then booting people out on a whim.

Come to think of it, for an effective censorship to exist, you don’t really need a hostile government, if private entities that affect your life in a big way are just as big, if not bigger.

That’s not censorship, it’s editorial oversight.

Editors censor things!

No, editors choose not to have the organization they work for say things, censoring things is stopping other people and organizations from saying things, not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things.

This is just a bit strange on the internet, because so much of what we see is one organization exactly repeating what someone else said on their request, so it's the organization saying it, but it feels like maybe it isn't.

> not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things.

I think nations are organizations. That term is, very vague.

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