I think people outside the SV bubble (I grew up there, don't live there anymore) don't realize how hated and despised their censorship policies really are. Musk has his pulse on that, so I'm happy to see him step in and shake up the group think.
People care because censorship does affect how they build their real lives.
This may be true, but how many people in those church groups, meetup groups, etc are actually concerned about censorship? In my experience far more of them are worried about harassment- I know far more women who can't use social media because of their stalkers than I do people who were kicked out of social media for having bad opinions.
Many, in my experience. To the point that I get sick of hearing about it, and I'm not an alt-right Q-anon type or anywhere near it.
I think what you're missing is that most people don't want to run into vitriolic hate speech while they're going about trying to organize their neighborhood parties (and so on). We can talk about the idealism of free speech all we want; the problem is any platform that stakes a claim as caring about Free Speech almost immediately gets overrun by that sort of vitriolic hate that most people don't want to be around in their daily lives.
I went on one of the "free speech" video platforms about a year ago because I was curious, and on my first visit, right on the front page, were videos about how the Jews rule the world and Holocaust denial. I'm not remotely Jewish and I was immediately put off from ever revisiting.
This is a core problem that people who legitimately care about censorship and free speech need to address. It's extremely unfortunate, but "anti-censorship" has well and truly become a dog whistle in the modern era.
Remember that free speech is about the 'market of ideas.' In even totally free markets, not every product sells. An anti-censorship social network startup cratering because its platform immediately got overrun with hate is not censorship, it's the market at work. The vast majority of 'regular' people I know do not consider Facebook's rules prohibiting hate speech to be censorship. They're just grateful they aren't running into it every time they open their phones to scroll their feed.
These people who hate Twitter probably don't even use Twitter. If you're not interesting or important, then nobody on Twitter cares what you have to say. It's not like Facebook, where you can argue politics with someone from high school. A nobody on Twitter is just screaming at the clouds.
Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.
NO! I am not saying that at all. I am saying that this is why Twitter is a de facto public square. I am not advocating that Twitter should be a public square. Frustrating to see a strawman of this sorts. You have completely and utterly misunderstood my points. Basically, 180 degrees opposite of what I was trying to say, may be a failure of mine to be less precise but jeez.
The observation that Twitter has become a public square is undenieable (this is different from advocating Twitter to be a public square. I actually wish it wasn't).
Please, provide some content besides just a broad declaration. I don’t understand why someone would come to this conclusion.
Unrelated but - Doesn't it bother anyone that it has become a necessity to use Twitter and they demand your phone number to login simply to view the Tweet?
I'd like to see reasons why Twitter is not a public square.
I believe federal, state and local institutions have reporting requirements that ensure the information is also publicized on their website or available in paper form upon request. I don’t think it’s legal to put important government info exclusively on Twitter.
Twitter is 1 method of quickly dispensing information, but that information then gets more widely distributed through traditional news networks. For example, I use Twitter almost every day but I never once read Trump’s tweets. I heard about them by watching TV or reading a news article.
When anyone from police to the President need their message heard, they put it on TV.
Also, a town square is for the public to communicate to the public. People seem to use FB, Reddit, Instagram, etc. all for that purpose. I’ll grant that it’s one of many virtual town squares, but it’s not a monopoly, so I think “the de facto town square” is a bit of a stretch.
You provide no evidence and then try to shut down other opinions? This is certainly not a self-evident fact.
Maybe the public square is still the public square? Or the Internet itself?
Isn’t “public” in “public square” important? Twitter is a private company. The public square became important to free discussion because it was owned by the public. Twitter isn’t.
And between FB, YT, Reddit, podcasting, Google search, etc. we’ve actually never had this many different, non-siloed ways of communicating publicly. If Twitter went bankrupt tomorrow there would still be many ways for the public to broadcast their thoughts to a wide audience.
I don’t understand how a website that the majority of my friends and family don’t use, isn’t public and isn’t in the top 10 visited sites can be the “de facto public square”.
Sure, it’s a major communication channel, but one of many.
In what market? What is the evidence of non-substitution/pricing power?
> When the only way for government officials to relay messages to their constituents is through a private platform such as Twitter
It’s...not the only way.
> it ceases to have the same privilege as a private corporation
First Amendment rights of private parties are not privileges.
> It is a de facto public square.
It is neither a de facto nor de jure public square.
> This is not up for debate.
Saying “This is not up for debate“ does not make your bare assertion into an actually unquestionable position.
If they think the information is censored by tech companies, they'll care a lot about that!
"Elon will improve Twitter by expanding freedom of speech on the platform"
https://twitter.com/NarrativesProj/status/151139309757754574...
I will put $100 down right now that if you did a statistically significant, unbiased, controlled, representative sample of verified Twitter users - as in people you can provably show are actual human beings - you'll find the majority are left-leaning.
Oh wait, I don't have to, Pew Research Group already did it...
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...
Facebook is a different animal because more than half the planet uses it, and what we consider "left" or "right" as Americans is dramatically different than what other nations would consider "left" or "right" or "liberal" or "conservative".
Verified means the account is authentic and of public interest. It doesn't guarantee that you are a person and further, the vast, vast majority of real people on twitter aren't verified.
as for the pew survey, it isn't controlling for many of the things that we know correlate with political affiliation, it is just reporting them as isolated facts. Just education and age would likely explain the delta in political affiliations within that survey. [1]
Sure this doesn't change the fact that the slight majority is Dem-Leaning, but it should raise serious doubt that its because of bias on the part of twitter instead of just plain old demographics of the internet.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-...
These concedes the point that Twitter users are liberal on average.
The true dialogue in America is happening amongst center-left vs. far-right ideologies.
Far left is the opposite of far right, for which we can all point to many of them that have been banned from twitter.
So, I'll refine my question with an example from the list: who is the Anders Breivik of the left?
one can dream. as of now all corporations follow the same ideology of neoconservative imperialism because they are all owned by the same people (blackrock, etc)
Or Ukraine or many other countries. Not sure why you singled out Russia specifically.
However, if you are just watching corporate media you're not getting the full picture either. CNN and Fox News have very similar opinions on non-culture war issues.
Not ideal, but better than the status quo where there is 1 company catering to 1 group.
Majority of Americans (and most people I'd imagine) do not really care about their policies. They don't give two figs about it, and just go about their life just fine without being affected by it one bit. I'm sure you can find some people on both sides of the spectrum regarding their policies, but the vast majority don't. As someone who isn't from SV or has ever worked for in or for an SV company, my bubble is surrounded by farmers.
That's the problem with not giving a shit. When things finally do become bad enough that it affects you personally, it's too late. When it comes to standing up for what's right - and I define what's "right" as mostly what the Constitution of the United States lays forth as our inalienable rights, you better give a shit from the word "go" and you better oppose it stridently because once freedoms get stripped away from you, they're nearly impossible to recover.
I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.
And we can blather on all goddamn day about "muh private corporations!" but when these corporations are actively suppressing competitors and are working hand-in-hand with news outlets to label any new alterative as a Mos Eisley-esque shithole that no respectable person would frequent, the point is moot.
Facebook and Twitter are the modern day public square. Some people will want to claim it's "The Internet" itself; you can just go make your own public square and publish your own website, etc., but that's not actually how a public square works. Just because you hop on your tractor and box blade your front yard flat and pave it over with concrete and add some park benches to it, doesn't turn it into the public square. You actually have to have the public actively occupying it. The public square is where the people are. And the people are on Facebook and Twitter... at least in America.
I can't even take this seriously. These are the same folks that kept people as property. Didn't make sure everyone could vote (male land owners only). They founded the country on land stolen from folks already living here. It isn't like the founders were really beacons of freedom, at least not if you use today's standards and honestly, they'd not even have a grasp of the events leading up to it. Perhaps they'd back it up considering how glaringly the world has changed since then.
I'm sure it is supposed to make folks think the country is straying from its foundations, but look around: People that aren't straight, white land owners are walking around with all these rights and freedom and stuff. That's already happened long ago. Maybe straying is a really good thing.
That might not be the best argument. Remember that the First Amendment passed only a few years before the awful Sedition Act, which would never pass modern judicial review.
That's exactly where we are now? When twitter censors right of center ideas and de-platforms those who think them, we invariably seek refuge in alternatives that engender far more radical thinking than if we had stayed in a larger public discussion.
The ideological complex has not allowed anyone to rise. That's the issue. Even neutrality is considered distasteful.
The furthest ~25% on the left and right have an increasingly extreme, partisan, borderline psychotic view of the world that you're either with us or against us. That polarization has become radically more aggressive over the past decade.
Just to use a simple example: someone might might say it's not enough to not oppose men becoming women and dominating female swimming/sports (neutrality), you must support it. Anything else and you're an "enemy" and not an "ally." The left in particular has created an increasingly large vocabulary designed to polarize and split the population and draw lines between people (either or lines).
(this is extreme sarcasm, for those that can't tell)
Someone in support of trans men and women being able to compete would take issue with:
* “men becoming women” — transitioning doesn’t change your gender, it only aligns your outward appearance to the gender you have always been.
* “dominating female sports” — the whole point of the opposing view is specifically that trans women don’t dominate sports.
You’ve twisted it in such a way that even accepting the premise of your “neutral” statement is already super political.
Here’s a real neutral stance that would be accepted by people on both sides of this particular issue.
“I’m not qualified to have an opinion on this matter, the decision is best left to the athletic clubs and people more knowledgeable about the effects of HRT.”
Is that really true? There's a growing body of evidence that "the gender you have always been" doesn't really apply as a general case. For example: detransitioners, autogynephiles, abusive parents attempting to 'trans the gay away' in their kids, and so on.
Of course there are people who also report having felt like their dissonant gender identity for as long as they remember, and will for the rest of their lives. But this is not universal.
Seems there are many reasons why one may decide on transitioning, and not all of them are positive.
I think at some point it becomes a little bit semantics. If you transition for reasons other than your dissonance or because you suffer from dysphoria then you’re probably gonna have a bad time. And if you’re forced to transition by abusive parents or government you’re gonna cause dissonance or dysphoria.
Detransitioners are an interesting case because while it’s absolutely possible for people to be wrong the majority of cases of people doing it are because of external factors like violence, discrimination, and unsupportive friends and family. However, there are lots of safeguards to keep people from making mistakes. You need the sign off from a doctor, two psychologists, and have to be living as your post-transition gender for at least a year to get reassignment surgery, HRT is broadly speaking reversible, nobody is giving HRT at all to kids, teens only get puberty blockers until they and their doctors are sure, and adults still have to go through an interview. This process is supposed to catch autogynephiliacs (although this terminology is really really dated) and I suppose someone could lie their way into getting reassignment but that’s on them then.
So yeah, I think we’re basically in agreement. I think a better way to say it so it’s universal is “transitioning doesn’t change your gender.” A gay woman forced to transition against her will is still a woman, a man who detransitions because it doesn’t alleviate problems misidentified as dysphoria is still a man, and a trans woman is and always has been a woman.
I do, however, have some family members that demand I actively oppose this, and get very mad when I profess neutrality.
- Claim that Twitter is a private corporation and its their rules (Btw, you can check my history in 2020 where I did support purge of Trump from social media, but I am now comtemplating).
- But, anyone who starts a new platform (let's assume similar to r/conservative which is absolutely not neo-nazi or fascist), gets intense pushback from the existing incumbents not with market forces, but rather with censorship, algorithms, political and misinformation driven opposition.
So now we have public square that enjoys monopolistic powers (yes, government officials exclusively publishing on Twitter. Your tax money cannot buy a platform where you can listen to the constitutuents that you voted for), but also prevents incumbents from rising through political proxies that I mentioned earlier.
This is scary.
>But, anyone who starts a new platform (let's assume similar to r/conservative which is absolutely not neo-nazi or fascist), gets intense pushback from the existing incumbents not with market forces,
Not with market forces? You mean to say that censorship is what is actually holding Gab back from mainstream adoption? This sentiment has always been incredibly myopic. I don't know why American conservatives are always surprised when their flavor of politics aren't popular. For some reason Europe and the rest of the West, who are farther left than Americans, cease to exist and the reasons why sites like Gab aren't huge is because of censorship.
I also just don't see the widespread censorship of conservative opinions that you do. JK Rowling is still there with her TERF views (which I actually largely agree with). Jordan Peterson is still there denying the predominant view on human-caused climate change. r/conservative; nobody wants to censor this or anything like it. Bret Weinstein is still there spreading his Covid vaccine misinformation. Donald Trump got kicked off after repeated ToS violations. Far-leftists also get kicked off (I know they recently shut down a bunch of far-left subreddits) and you don't see that because of your echo chamber.