Perhaps Hulu recognizes that some people just want to watch TV and not be bothered by campaign ads.
Also perhaps I'd be more sympathetic to the Democrats here if exactly this sort of deplatforming hadn't been part of their own playbook for years.
Also perhaps I'd be more sympathetic to the Democrats here if exactly this sort of deplatforming hadn't been part of their own playbook for years.
The key here is that Democrats are outraged at Hulu, but they're not trying to change laws to force Hulu to carry these ads.
That is in contrast to the other side of this debate about deplatforming, which has repeatedly proposed laws that violate the First Amendment because the marketplace of ideas rejects their regressive propaganda.
Should a business be forced to air content they don't want to be associated with or perceived as endorsing? It has already been established companies are not obligated to do business they find violate their 1A rights, so this would seem to fit into that precedent.
Moreover politicians aren't being silenced, there are a vast number of different avenues they can (and do) use to spread their campaign information.
If it's campaign ads being more equitably presented, there are a number of ways to approach this that don't involve forcing a private business to accept any and all ad content.
Maybe we will decide these types of ads are too poisonous for society to tolerate
Cigarette ads are totally irrelevant to this controversy.
Cigarettes are a non-ideological, commercial product without any therapeutic uses. We can suppress all mention of them from the media, and we would be in no danger of death, tyranny, etc. In fact, there would be far fewer deaths, as we've seen in the last few decades.
Suppressing political ads does carry the risk of death and tyranny. The whole reason people are worried about the erosion of free speech is that suppression of potentially valid ideologies is extremely dangerous.
But also, think about it this way: isn't this the other side of the slippery slope argument? I'm sure when cigarette ads were first banned, people made the argument that it would be used to justify banning other ads later, and were told that was a slippery slope fallacy... Now, you're essentially saying "we've already banned cigarette ads, if we're not going to ban gun ads too then we might as well re-allow cigarette ads!"
The first amendment does not compel speech or publication thereof.
I'm completely in agreement that the law doesn't compel speech, or publication, especially of ads. Hulu is completely legally in the right to not carry DNC ads, Google and Facebook are completely legally in the right not to carry Colt or Remington ads. They'd also be in the right not to carry Altria ads. But the question is what speech do we want to ban by law... and I think the only answer to that for a healthy, free society is "none."
I even go further and say that respecting free speech exists outside the first amendment as a societal value that we should all hold, like "politeness" and "honesty," and that it should be kept even when not legally required... So Hulu _should_ run the ads, even though they are not _required_ to.
> I think the only answer to that for a healthy, free society is "none."
This is not true or healthy in the internet age where speech can reach all of humanity in seconds and we are plagued by bad actors without the ability to easily rein them in. Telling people to do their own research or be safe does not scale and the negative externalities end up costing society more.
A company or platform that wants to allow unfettered speech is free to compete with those who filter & curate. We can then see without doubt which society prefers
If so, my argument is this: a company and a country have different goals. Many things that a country might provide (welfare programs, democracy, public services) are expenses that don't make us economically stronger. But, we do anyway because that's not the point of a country: the point is to provide the best quality of life for citizens. I'm happy to accept the drawbacks of free speech (people believing in Q, or that the Apollo landings were faked) in exchange for being able to say whatever I want. If you aren't, then there are other countries that make the other tradeoff.
I think this is the core of what's going to be a big debate over the next decade or two, though: is it better to be less productive and free (America), or more efficient but authoritarian (China)?
This is not why. Look at 4Chan, Parlor, Truth, or any other "free speech" platform. It ends up being toxic and noisy to the point that the vast majority of people will not use it. Thus the company fails, because it cannot reach critical mass for a 2 sided marketplace.
> I'm happy to accept the drawbacks of free speech (people believing in Q, or that the Apollo landings were faked) in exchange for being able to say whatever I want. If you aren't, then there are other countries that make the other tradeoff.
We live in a democracy and you might be the one looking to other countries, if any exist who want to support such an unfettered society. I don't know of any... and even if they did exist, if your company wants to operate in a given country, it has to follow the local laws.
> 4Chan, Parlor, Truth, or any other "free speech" platform. It ends up being toxic and noisy to the point that the vast majority of people will not use it.
4Chan and Parler seem to exist just fine. 8Chan doesn't, or was killed and then revived, or something, I'm not sure, but it wasn't due to lack of users; their host canceled them. Never heard of Truth before now, it seems to be Trump's Twitter clone that contains just Trump?
Anyway, my point is not that these free-speech-platforms are more successful than curated ones. My point is that that's the wrong metric to judge whether free speech is a good value to have in a society. I don't care if there are costs to it any more than I care whether the post office is profitable: I don't want to live in a society without freedom of speech, no matter how efficient it is, any more than I'd want to live in one without a post office or a fire department. I am willing to pay for the externalities because the alternative is much, much worse.
From your other reply: if I'm letting my bias in, then how am I misinterpreting what you say? I genuinely want to understand your position.
Again, you have a problem in that you only appear to think at the extremes. What concessions to your vision would you be willing to make?
I genuinely want you to understand your position
There's only one thing in there that I think any reasonable person could think is extreme, and that's having no bans on speech. I'm overall happy making the concessions to this that America already makes.
As for the rest of it: if that sounds extreme to you then I really don't think I'm the one with biases, and I really don't think there's going to be much common ground between us. It's cliche at this point but do you talk about this stuff to a lot of people who aren't on the internet? Because outside the bubble of social media and this website, nothing I've said here would be controversial at all.
I also notice that you think I'm misinterpreting what you said, but still won't say how... Which makes me think that I'm not misinterpreting it at all, you just don't like having a corollary of your beliefs pointed out to you.
Anyway this has been fun but I'm finished now, the anti-flame-war filter is making it take forever to post replies.
Have a look at the patterns and trends in your comment history, or better yet, have a trusted friend do this if they will give you an honest opinion. Thing is, the internet is more likely to tell you what you need to hear
I don't have any reason to explain myself to you more than I have, not worth the time with your attitude
> Is that close to right?
No, you are letting your bias in
Can you source this, repeated examples of Democratic policies to deplatform ideas?
More right-wing personalities than I can even remember have been banned from various media, not least being a sitting President of the United States. The same platforms also have policies against certain "disinformation" that target anyone discussing some issues or events like the Hunter Biden laptop which were later determined not to be disinformation at all. As for it being Democratic policy, there was (briefly) a White House office under a Democratic president to coordinate these policies.
Similarly, you cannot advertise cigarettes with cartoon characters, but can advertise a political candidate wanting to make that legal.
Meanwhile, right-wing people aren't being deplatformed because they are right-wing. It's because of other things they say and do.
Until, well, yesterday (edit: not yesterday, that says "June." My mistake), it was illegal in Germany to advertise where you can get an abortion. Abortion was and is legal there, but the doctors providing them weren't allowed to tell anyone that that's where they could go to get one.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-parliament-bundestag...
This is a pretty analogous situation to what Newsom / his party want in California: guns legal (after a fashion) but for anyone part of the gun industry to be excluded from the public square.
Do you think that Germany changing their law is a step backwards, since you support an equivalent law in California? Or do you have a double standard between free speech applied to one kind of ad versus the other?
> Meanwhile, right-wing people aren't being deplatformed because they are right-wing. It's because of other things they say and do.
I'm no fan of that right-wing nonsense (e.g. Hunter Biden, etc.), but your apologia isn't really compelling. The impermissible "other things they say and do" can be defined in slanted ways to deliver an ideological result that can be described in faux "neutral" terms. To flip things around, for instance, how would you feel if (hypothetically) some social media company de-platformed pro-choice advocates under a rule that bans advocacy of violence (because they're interpreted as advocating violence against "the unborn")? You probably wouldn't be satisfied with a "nothing to see here, they're just enforcing their policies against advocating violence."
I kinda would, though, but I'd phrase it more along the lines of "Nothing to see here, just a garbage website doing its trashy thing."
Cancel culture types don't seem to understand that refusing a platform to other people based on their beliefs is a right, which comes along with the right to free speech. I'd prefer if pro-choice positions weren't banned, but if a website wants to ban pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-gay, or non-QAnon positions, then they have the right to become a cesspit by doing so. Likewise and in exchange, other websites retain the right to ban anti-choice, pro-gun, anti-gay, and QAnon/neo-nazi views.
> I kinda would, though, but I'd phrase it more along the lines of "Nothing to see here, just a garbage website doing its trashy thing."
Even if it was major one with influence; like Twitter, Youtube, or Facebook/Instagram?
I should have been more clear, but I was specifically thinking of major social media sites like those when I wrote that sentence, not some marginal social media site like thedonald.win that's easy to ignore.
Also the main thing I was commenting on was defining things in such a way that describes a slanted result with faux-neutral language (e.g. "when it happens to us it's censorship, when it happens to you it's just enforcing the rules").
And is the action of large corporations that regularly donate to Republican candidates (as well as Democrats) really “part of [Democrats’] playbook for years”? Or are they just (perhaps selectively) enforcing their TOS in a way that they believe provides them the most value?
Anyway. Here's the WH Disinformation Governance Board: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Boar... This is the CA gun-ad law: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/gun-groups-challenge-califo...
As for it being just the unrelated actions of large corporations and not Democrats per se... Well, the White House part kind of disproves that, as does the California law. Yes, large corporations do act independently of the Democratic party, but the question here is does the Democratic party want this sort of censorship against other people, and they self-evidently do. And the WH Disinformation board shows that they're happy to use the large corporations as their tools to get it.
>Do you think sources for these easily-googleable facts don't exist
>does the Democratic party want this sort of censorship against other people, and they self-evidently do
People ask for these "easily-googeable facts", and your response is 1 link to something not really relevant, and an assertion that it is "self-evident". Apologies if not everyone finds this to be a convincing argument
Source? That sounds like a law to regulate advertisements, not a deplatforming
>Google and Facebook already ban that as well
This is irrelevant - these are not Democratic organizations, and they do not have Democratic policies. Are you somehow implying Google and Facebook are run by Democrats, and so supposedly Hulu is run by Republicans?
Are you suggesting that they aren't?
> and so supposedly Hulu is run by Republicans?
That doesn't actually follow.
> Are you somehow implying Google and Facebook are run by Democrats
Again, there was a White House office made specifically to coordinate these platforms banning "disinformation" content. It was later shut down, but its creation in the first place shows that the Democratic party wants to censor discussion it doesn't like. Or are you somehow implying the White House is not run by Democrats?
> That sounds like a law to regulate advertisements, not a deplatforming
Which is exactly what we're talking about here: these are advertisements, Hulu doesn't want them on their platform. You're fine with Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, banning advertisements from gun manufacturers and retailers, presumably pro-gun, but you have a problem with Hulu not wanting advertisements that are anti-gun.
Of course not, this is obvious?
>You're fine with Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, banning advertisements from gun manufacturers and retailers, presumably pro-gun, but you have a problem with Hulu not wanting advertisements that are anti-gun.
I may or may not be fine with either of those things, why do you assert something you don't know?
So far you've demonstrated an inability to source the information in your original claim, "this sort of deplatforming hadn't been part of [Democrat's] playbook for years."
I could probably write everything else you're going to say in this thread myself, so, I'm not going to bother continuing to argue with you. If you'd like to respond to the core point, which is why are Democrats justified in complaining about their own ads being refused while they celebrate Republican content being deplatformed, then we can continue.
Are you really asking "if you want to ban advertising murder weapons, why should you have a problem banning adverts telling people not to murder"?
In this case, of course, Hulu have the right to carry any adverts they like. It turns out, they don't want adverts for either side of the argument, as is their right.
If Hulu decided that they wanted to ban adverts for guns, and promote the hell out of adverts for psychiatric services for people who want to own guns so they can get the mental health treatment they clearly need, then that is also something they have a right to do.