Prediction: Twitter becomes more efficient, focused and profitable than they ever have been. And it will return to the platform neutrality and free speech ideals it had prior to 2015ish.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor"
Of course, it's not always clear what injustice is and reasonable people might disagree, but I think there are certain minimum standards, like "anti-semitism and blatant racism are bad".
A great example of this is the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of accounts, which were permanently banned in October of 2021. Their own thought crime was posting revelations from Ashely Biden's diary and Hunter Biden's laptop. The excuse was " Russian disinformation" but news of late have proven Twitter's statement as clear disinformation in itself.
Musk had already said content that is illegal won't be permitted, and troublemakers will be dealt with, and that perma-ban will be final course, not the first & only.
The American constitution has done a uniquely good job of enumerating those limits. It seems like a stretch to paint a de facto adherence to free speech (as outlined by the law of the land in a given jurisdiction) as oppressive, when the status quo has been unilateral normative judgements of relevant political speech by an unrepresentative cabal of employee-activists.
Assuming you're referring to constitutional law jurisprudence here and not the First Amendment's meager words here, I don't think I can agree with this statement. The short summary of the jurisprudence is that the government has no powers of censorship whatsoever, and the margins of where speech can become illegal are so far away that it's basically impossible to reach them (e.g., to reach the bar in Brandenburg, you more or less need to be at the head of a literal mob getting ready to lynch somebody). Unless you're a student.
As a guideline for moderation, it's absolute shit. There's ample evidence that absence of moderation will cause forums to degrade into cesspools, and the guideline of First Amendment jurisprudence is that the government is not permitted to be a moderator.
Legal interpretation of the constitution has also very clearly found that a huge collection of actual literal Nazis marching around shouting "death to jews" at the top of their lungs is a-okay. Excuse me if I'm not super excited for that to be present on various social media platforms.
Of course I despise the vitriol spewed on twitter as much as anyone else, but I'd sooner that idiocy be exposed and ridiculed than cede control over acceptable speech to ideologically motivated moderators in the inevitable instances where the ethical lines are blurrier. I realize that's a bit of an antiquated view, and the prevalent opinion is that these people can't be reasoned with and thus shouldn't be platformed, but I truly believe that that cynicism is a greater threat to our liberal institutions than the odd troll or bigot making racist remarks with 25 followers.
> but I'd sooner that idiocy be exposed and ridiculed than cede control over acceptable speech to ideologically motivated moderators in the inevitable instances where the ethical lines are blurrier.
Great. Will you also be willing to be the person who experiences a torrent of hate speech directed at them? This is not an abstract thing where somebody else can "expose and ridicule" proponents of hate. You need to be willing to have the Nazis literally protest at your home and your job every single day and not leave.
> the odd troll or bigot making racist remarks with 25 followers.
If you think this is an honest portrayal of the state of hate on social media when moderation is reduced to "everything that isn't illegal" then you are grossly mistaken.
Yes, I am committed to backing up my philosophical attachment to free speech at the expense of personal inconvenience. I realize that's an empty statement without actually being subjected to that reality, but that's the best I can do.
If I'm wrong about the extent to which hate speech proliferates in unmoderated spaces (absent the adverse selection effect for sites like 4chan), then that's all the more reason to address that undercurrent of our societies. If anything, I'd argue pushing people off platforms where they might encounter dissenting views exacerbates radicalization.
Not okay, but not illegal, and better than the alternative i.e. a society without freedom of speech (as the Reich was, or Weimar Germany).
I do find the continued attempts to paint social media kicking transphobes off their platforms as equivalent to the actual Nazis hilarious, though.
2. I probably take the threats to your elections more seriously than you (I read whole of the the Antrim County computer forensics report, I'll never get that time back but I put in the effort).
3. To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
4. I take anyone being banned from anything for speech that should be free (which is almost all speech) very seriously.
5. "haha Nazis are shit" is below par for HN. Try not to waste my time and others with stuff you can safely spew out on Twitter and get likes for even though it's vapid.
I don't think that's true, since you think that people being banned on social media is a greater threat to a fall to authoritarianism.
> To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
I did not do this. Nor is this just "simply for disagreement." Argument over the best way of funding retirement savings programs is distinct from arguments over whether or not to throw gay people in prison, for example.
> I take anyone being banned from anything for speech that should be free (which is almost all speech) very seriously.
I'm sure you do. I hope that you also donate your time and money to those who suffer at the hands of people spreading hate.
> haha Nazis are shit" is below par for HN. Try not to waste my time and others with stuff you can safely spew out on Twitter and get likes for even though it's vapid.
Nazis are shit. You are treating me like a child. You use this "you talk like you are on Twitter" move pretty often as a way of talking down to people.
That's a strange reading that seems to assume that free speech goes hand in hand with authoritarianism, a laughable notion. Free speech is the antithesis of authoritarianism. No authoritarian has ever allowed anything approaching freedom of speech within their jurisdiction and sometimes even enforce it far beyond. As such, what you think is wrong.
> > To label ideological opponents with the label of a mental illness simply for disagreement is a poor show.
> I did not do this.
A phobia is a mental illness, you call your ideological opponents transphobes, so you did do this. It's pathetic name calling.
> I hope that you also donate your time and money to those who suffer at the hands of people spreading hate.
I'm here right now spending my time doing just that because you quite clearly do hate your opponents.
> Nazis are shit. You are treating me like a child.
No one here has claimed that Nazis aren't shit but you're acting like a teenager high on self righteousness that thinks proclaiming that is some kind of insight for the rest of us. It is childish.
As I wrote, HN isn't the place, and one reason I bring it up far too often is because far too often of late I see people, like yourself, treating it as such. I make no apologies for wanting the standards to remain high.
Tell you what. I'll change all my words if it'll make you take me seriously. Substitute "bigots against trans people." It'll change none of my meaning.
There's a reason such a misnomer is used, and there's a reason why those using it such as yourself, seem to overlook its utterly mistaken connotations.
> Substitute "bigots against trans people." It'll change none of my meaning.
I know, but you're begging the question, while being an ironic hypocrite. How about you substitute a specific and accurate term for those you disagree with, or would it be too difficult for you to actually drop the ad hominem for even a moment out of fear of being shown up?
It's tricky because these platforms are huge, and are a public square in many ways. But they are also companies. The local newspaper is not required to print some anti-semitic screed. A local bar can kick out nazis. People do have alternative ways of freely expressing themselves.
Due to the massive size of these platforms, it feels a bit different, though in that being removed from one could really alter your online presence.
I don't have all the answers. And I suspect that Elon Musk does not, either, but we will have to wait and see...
I'm personally of the belief that network effects have granted Twitter a relatively unassailable cultural position, or at least enough of a moat to greatly reduce competitive pressures, and so should be subjected to different standards than a local bar or paper -- and if the analogy is to a newspaper, then Twitter should be treated as a publisher with all the attendant regulatory baggage that carries. It's hard for them to argue they have a right, as a private company, to shape the conversation, and in the same breath claim they're shielded from legal responsibility for what takes place on their site.
It's definitely a tricky debate, but in my personal value stack I place individuals' freedom of speech much higher than a private company's right to refuse service, so that's where I fall.
Hard to say... there are massive network effects, but switching costs are also pretty low. Facebook seemed pretty solid not so long ago.
As with many of the things Elon has tweeted or said, appearing to value free speech for Twitter was just him appealing to conservatives, upset with their perception of cancel culture.
Wait to see if Elon actually makes any TOS and policy changes in the next month, and debate then.
Conservatives now define it as the permission to spread deliberate misinformation and overt racism and bigotry without consequences from either the government OR private entities.
Which, in a world where anything you don't like or agree with must be one of those things, is kind of unavodiable.
So the "conservatives" believe very strongly in free speech (at the moment) because it's their speech that is currently getting crimped. And, seeing the trends, they think it's likely to get worse in the future. (As, say, anything disagreeing with the current "liberal" position gets labeled "racist" or "transphobic" or something, designed to make it virtuous to censor.)
Conservative and liberals have flip flipped on worker rights, corporate power and speech
It leaves conservatives open to being conned by everything from Chinese electronics manufacturers [1] to bankrupt reality TV stars [2]. Misconstruing TOS agreement violations as censorship persecution makes it easy for billionaires to win conservative admiration without actually doing anything.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/foxconn-sharply-scales-back...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/politics/trump-save-am...
The (absurd, imho) belief that such a right should preclude any sort of government regulation is a libertarian value.
Are you going to be correct all the time? Or even majority of the time?
If you believe in your capability to be correct all the time, might as well make billions in the market and help fight injustice everywhere.
No one can credibly deny that some speech is harmful. We'd all like to suppress some speech that we don't like, but the reason free speech advocates take the position they take (generally) is that once speech is prohibited the status quo regime will ban legitimate criticisms. So the good has to be accepted with the bad.
It's a tough issue. If I'm honest I favor censorship of views that I believe are harmful, but would object strenuously if my point of view is censored. I also think being called slurs, etc, is an unpleasant user experience, to say the least, so from a business perspective if nothing else I get why that is censored. Still, the censorship has gone too far in my view. We need to figure out a way to circle this square.
Granting, of course, Twitter goes beyond this. They ban all hate speech at all, no matter how limited it is, but they're a private platform, which gets to the real heart of the issue. Everyone that cares deeply about this who is in agreement with Elon's side and isn't just being petulant about having personally been banned seems to equate Twitter with some kind of true public square or some necessary platform that handicaps a political movement if it can't access it. I just don't see this. The public streets, the government itself, I have no choice but to use and participate in. Everyone has to. But I have never had a Twitter account, never visit the site, and seem to have gotten along fine like that for over 40 years. Trump got banned and is still likely to win his party's presidential nomination in two years. It hasn't materially impacted his ability to get his message out and reach followers at all. Everything Kanye says is still going to be on every headline in every news service in the country the same day, and if he releases an album, his fans will still know. He doesn't need Twitter. I just don't see how that isn't definitive proof that Twitter is not this true common carrier people seem to think it is. You don't need access to one specific private platform to be heard. They're not like an electric utility with a local monopoly that is truly your only option to access a critical service. Trump and Kanye were both well known with hoards of followers before Twitter ever existed, and people would still hang on their words if Twitter completely disappeared tomorrow.
They still take these cases. (It is a bit complicated, individual ACLU chapters have a lot of autonomy, and they do not all agree with each other in all ways.)
So I see a substantial difference.
On one hand, you have lawyers from a nonprofit arguing in court that, while someone's views may be abhorrent, they are legal, and the principle matters more than the harm.
On the other, you have a for-profit entity tilting the landscape upon that speech rests, and as the raging debates about this stuff have shown, is difficult to distinguish profit from other motives.
Running a company with specific ideological priors looks a lot different to me than defending assholes for past speech on principle.
Following that logic, I support censoring/deplatforming fascists et al. because I want to hurt their ability to do fascism, not for some higher principle of striving towards a perfect, values-neutral marketplace of ideas. Speech is just another front on the plains of power.
See this bit of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33375286
Should Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Smith & Wesson be allowed to have Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers each?
Honestly, if you want to be really consistent, almost every world government should have its officials off Twitter. Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
> Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
That comparison is invalid because those companies don't commit their purported harm on Twitter. Same with government officials. Even Kim Jong Un has a Twitter account https://twitter.com/official_kju
The "teenager" (or billionaire influencer) dropping racial slurs and either targeted or broad threats uses social media as the method of the harm they inflict. Mainstream social media companies are concerned with their platforms being used for harm.
My neighbor Sam down the street likes to say the n-word sometimes and thinks offering hormones to kids is grooming. Still, I don’t think all the Sams in the US would ever be able to do as much material harm by having access to Twitter as ISIS does in one afternoon. Could be wrong.
ISIS is a sanctioned entity. Knowingly allowing them, or anyone identified as a member, to post on Twitter, would likely be illegal under sanctions laws.
To the extent that Twitter’s approach to ISIS is not mandated by sanctions laws-I don’t see Musk changing Twitter’s corporate policies on ISIS-he has zero sympathy for them and no doubt views them as a threat to humanity’s future.
Musk is likely good news for Donald Trump, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Libs of TikTok, etc - but no change for ISIS.
I still wonder about the legalities of Twitter allowing them to use the site, given they are still under US sanctions. It is possible, however, that the US government has (quietly) asked Twitter to allow it, as a diplomatic/political calculation. Sanctions concerns disappear if the government is asking you to disregard them (they can give you a formal legal exemption from them - even secretly; even without a formal exemption, if the government asks you to do something, that is an estoppel against them taking legal action for acceding to your request.)
<<people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way
Eh. This train is never late. Just wait until you find out that eventually all the out groups are thinned out and you are identified as the next one in line. That is the normal course of things. People are assholes. Freedom of speech is a basic safety valve.
I dislike that I even have to explain those. All this stuff should be covered in basic social studies.
If you want to talk about basic social studies, I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
Would you feel comfortable if your opinion that you just expressed above was being targeted for no other reason that it exists and someone somewhere finds it abhorrent. Do you not agree it is a rather bad standard just because, well, it is very general and can be applied to anything down the line?
Edit2:
Yes, I am invoking the "what if that was done to you".
edit3:
<<I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
There is no paradox. What you have is a conflict of values. From my perspective, things are either in balance or they are not. I personally would postulate that "escape from freedom" is a much more applicable here, where the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other.
Personally, I do find it mildly amusing that the groups that were persecuted not that long ago are embarking on their own witch hunts shortly thereafter. It is a fascinating insight into the human condition.
Should I be allowed to hold a rally and say "Someone needs to start lynching some $RACIAL_SLURs"?
If you say yes, then...well there's no further discussion to have, and you scare me.
If no, then it's clear you and I both agree that there SHOULD be SOME limits on speech, we just disagree where the line is.
Heh. I too would love to live in such a binary word, where things are simply black or white and there are no shades of grey. I also love how you think this allows to bow out of the discussion. For the record, it does not and I challenge you to openly discuss it. Otherwise, and I am not using this phrase lightly here, you are an intellectual fraud pretending to engage in a good faith argument.
Now, the actual response to:
<< Should I be allowed to hold a rally and say "Someone needs to start lynching some $RACIAL_SLURs"?
Is that even a real question? Are you really drawing a line at name calling? This the hill you are willing to die on? I might be willing to accept some limits along the lines of the precedent that happens to include relatively conclusive standard of "immediate and present danger", but KKK members going through the streets shouting slogans using words you find offensive is absolutely something I am willing to defend, because I actually happen to believe in the founding document of this nation. Hell, I actually promised I will uphold it. I was not born into it and blessed with apathy. I voluntarily chose that path, because I happen to believe in ideals it espouses.
If you think I am the person to be scared of, I feel genuinely concerned for you. I would recommend less.. whatever it is that got you wound up.
Wait.
Are you arguing that "Someone needs to start lynching" equates to clear and present danger", because I am relatively certain a lot would depend on the context AND the resulting consequences? Like.. not to search very far, and to put things in perspective, to what extent did BLM protest rhetoric contributed to the resulting riots. Should we start locking them up?
I can give you that it is a close call, but nowhere near as clear you as you make it seem.
Either way, you may want to reconsider your argument a little. Those same rules are supposed to protect everyone. There is a reason for it.
Edit:
<< How far are you willing to take the notion of Freedom of Speech?
Notion. It is an idea enshrined in god damn law. It is a right. And it is one of the few things founders agreed upon. And it is the very first one.
You know what is a notion? Deconstructionism. There is a difference.
Notion.
Twitter as a company/platform never went after anyone's job.
Free speech does not mean that speech is without consequences.
This can certainly go to far, but it's kind of up to the employer, isn't it.
I'll absolutely screenshot it and report it to your employer, should it be truly heinous behavior that would make your coworkers uncomfortable.
Minimum western standards.
Anti-semitism is a “good” if you’re a Palestinian.
Racism similarly can be “good” for members of a minority fighting for literal survival.
The results are unsurprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential...
My guess would be that parent commenter is talking about the time before Twitter was fighting back against the “alt right”.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...
I'm not sure that's possible. Even if you could magically roll back Twitter to pre-2015 (staff, code, rules, etc.), the world has changed and the average Twitter user has changed.