Then again, this tweet from Jack has nothing whatsoever to do with any of that.
> One who passed 6th grade civics might also understand that the concept of “censorship” does not exclusively refer to US Government violations of the 1st Amendment, or even necessarily government actions at all. Nor does the concept of “freedom of speech” begin and end with the US 1st Amendment.
That's true, but it doesn't actually address the GP. Even a sixth grader knows it's not censorship to choose to not hand your megaphone to an asshole or troll (or to take it away from someone who, in your opinion, is using it for ill).
A vital element of free speech is the ability to select which speech you choose to transmit or amplify. Otherwise the "marketplace of ideas" can no longer sort the good ideas from the bad, and it becomes a cacophony of assholes and idiots.
If you give your megaphone to everyone by default (ie: anyone can sign up for Twitter), but then take it away from certain people you don’t like, it’s censorship. Even if you tell people ahead of time, “hey, you can’t use this megaphone to say X”, and then take it away when they say X, it’s still censorship.
It might be justifiable, it might not be, but it’s definitely within the definition of censorship and if you can’t start there, you’re arguing in bad faith to avoid uncomfortable connotations.
No it isn't. Those conditions are made up, and seem retroactively concocted to label getting banned from twitter as "censorship."
And if it is, all you've done is make "censorship" look appealing and reasonable, which I doubt is what you were going for.
But it is censorship. Moderation is not censorship. A moderator in a debate does not censor, he directs conversation. The fact that we’ve appropriated the term to mean censorship doesn’t mean that the definitions actually change.
Censorship is simply preventing people from saying what they would like to say.
> Censorship is simply preventing people from saying what they would like to say.
You're contradicting yourself. What if someone wants to disrupt the conversation? Depending on the audience and venue, disruption can take many forms.
So a moderator moderates, and extreme cases of moderation may censor. But there is still a distinction between censorship and moderation even if there are situations where one involves the other.
If corporations have more reach than governments when it comes to open exchange of ideas, restriction on censorship needs to extend to them too.
No. If twitter says you can't, you can't. Maybe you can repost elsewhere, but not on twitter.
Free speech doesn't mean you have the right to hijack others' resources to your own ends, even in the most expansive interpretations.
That's what this argument is about... Currently, the laws don't require companies or individuals to uphold free speech when they are providing a public square venue.
If people want to create private subreddits or private Facebook groups, go ahead and moderate.
But twitter isn't doing that, they're providing a quasi public space but then dictating what can be said.
The argument were making is that is dangerous to democracy and the same free speech rights should translate here.
Arguing from the point of view of what current laws say when we are arguing that laws need changing is just tiresome, please either argue why your current laws are actually worth keeping using first principles or just stop.
Upon more thinking, I feel like maybe this was close enough to a first principles argument.
The reason I think in this case we have a right to some of these resources is due to the fact they are in essence exploiting the people's resource. We have to speak somewhere online, if you want us to congregate in your public square, we should be entitled to some regulations, in return, you get to advertise to us, charge fees for upgrades or boosting or whatever else you want to do.
Ideally in a free market we would be able to find a competitor and congregate there instead but since this isn't a free market and tragedy of the commons is a thing were stuck with twitter being a monopoly on public political discourse.
Twitter isn't a monopoly, though: there's all kinds of other social media services available, as well as other places where "public political discourse" occur.
Free speech doesn't mean you're entitled to your preferred choice of venue. I recall when I was a kid, the local Nazi didn't get a prime time spot on local TV, though I'm sure he would have wanted one. He had to make due with a public access slot that very few (if any) people would watch.
That same Nazi is also the reason passwords were implemented on the university computer clusters, because he was caught using them without permission (as a non-student) to print neonazi flyers.
Tv airwaves and physical printers are not things open to the general public.
Content moderation is exactly what television censors did. Most people would agree that’s censorship — it’s right there in the name.
In the modern internet era, of course, there are dozens or hundreds of credible alternative ways to disseminate your speech.
This is still very much a concern when it comes to why Twitter enforces the rules it has on the books.
I'm very tired of it. I was just honestly wondering if anyone else is tired of it, too.
It seems to me that if could just stop debating in bad faith, perhaps we could then get to the actual issue, which is that some people think that private companies should not be allowed to do content moderation and that we'd all be magically better off if this were not allowed, or at least, not a common practice. Then we could have a debate on that question, without all the stupid noise about whether this is a real free speech issue.
Semantic arguments deployed to try to constrain the working definition of censorship (i.e. "it's a private platform, it can do what it want, if you don't like it just build your own and overturn overwhelming network effects through magic lmao!") are typically obfuscation and almost never in good faith.
And I think that you'll learn that a great many see right through them and are, indeed, very fucking tired of humoring them. Including, apparently, Elon Musk.
So occasionally non-technical people would get confused by what is meant by "free software". To resolve the confusion some people called it FOSS or FLOSS, some people called it "Free as in speech" vs. "Free as in beer", some called it "Libre". But there is a meaningful distinction between locked-down proprietary software given away for $0.00 in furtherance of some ulterior commercial motive and software which is genuinely free for you to do whatever you want with it.
I think we need a similar distinction for the two meanings of "free speech". One which is the legal "Congress shall make no law..." narrow reading of the First Amendment and one which is the Voltaire style “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The first one is a law, the second is more of a moral value many feel is essential for a free society.
I think a lot of the problem is constitutional law running into Voltaire. You are correct that Twitter is not "censoring" in the sense that it's a private company not governed by the First Amendment. They are correct that Twitter is "censoring" content and is not providing freedom of speech for at least some users.
The definition of the first is simple. You have the right of not been coerced to (not) say what you do (not) want to say. Note that this includes the possibility of being coerced not only by the government but by any other institution/individual. It also grants the right of private entities to arbitrarily decide their platform rules.
The spirit of free speech is more vaporous, but it's the idea that powers the right. It's the notion that every perspective deserves to be listened and that the society will be better as a consequence. It's one of the main values of western culture.
One can defend the right but not the spirit, the spirit but not the right, both or none of them.
No one's forcing people to break Twitter's rules, they should have read them before they broke them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitter/search?q=DMCA&restrict_sr=o...