Ask HN: What happened to the law that would prevent social platforms censorship? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What happened to the law that would prevent social platforms censorship?

4 pointstechsin1014 comments

Every few months someone I watch/follow/listen to disappears from internet. It seems if someone is even slightly controversial they are wiped out off internet in due time. People don't even care about freedom of speech, sites collectively have started to disable comments. It used to be we would learn how important freedom of speech is through people like Voltaire, George Orwell, and so on. And how it formed the basis of our govt and how it has shaped our society and systems, often always for the better. Yet it feels right now people don't really care about principles and more interested in subduing the other side on all mediums. Almost feels like society as deteriorated a bit, concept of free speech is leaving fabric of society altogether. On campuses, on tvs, on social platforms. Whenever someone gets banned, it's welcomed. It's now known as cancel culture which celebrates censorship, just with different cover up term. Almost scary how irrelevant this principle is becoming.

Right now companies are shielded from liabilities of user generated content, but they also engage in selective editing. The new law was saying that a platform is either just a host of user generated content or an editor in which case responsible for the content, it can't claim to be a host and then edit selectively.

Just gonna toss this into the mix

https://www.socialcooling.com/

There are also aspects of preference falsification and self-censorship to avoid consequences at play.

definitely, also internet has gone from a place where you could discuss things, good or bad, not feel you are gonna get arrested, lose your job, and be banned for life.

I noticed the same things recently, to make the matter worse I think we reached a point where it’s easier to have a conversation in countries considered « anti free speech » than it is in western countries.

What always surprises me the most is the orchestration. When someone get wiped out of the internet, it comes from everywhere almost at the same time. Under normal conditions we would expect different social networks to react differently based on how favorable they are to free speech but somehow they now all have the same rules.

And everybody keep repeating the same mantra to justify it

1. X is not an opinion it’s a crime

2. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences

All in all, I will say it, I am enjoying more freedom when I am living in China or Thailand than when I am living in France.

Plenty of people say things I disagree with, but constant censorship prevent me from being able to approach other peoples ideas from a different viewpoint.

As a libertarian I can’t live in Europe anymore, it’s impossible to think there, ideas, truth, lies, wrong all disappeared to account for « feeling »

i think it's the result of monopolies: facebook, reddit, twitter, instagram, youtube, etc are too big. If they weren't this big they would really care about users. If they ban few popular users every months, users aren't gonna stop coming others will take their place in few weeks soon enough, no consequences.

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