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Comment by ethbr0 | Hacker News Reader

My read on the libertarian, free-speech Twitter pitch was that the mainstream media typically uses a straw man to dismiss it.

If you start with the proposition "Anyone should be able to post anything on Twitter"...

... and want to get to "Everyone enjoys reading Twitter," then there's a lot of black box space in the middle.

You can have the most vile things on your platform, but your userbase self-censors. E.g. crowdsourced shadow-banning / down-voting. Or reputation with verified identities underneath.

Or just... more transparency.

Empowering the public to data-mine Twitter opens some interesting windows to a platform that has terrible things, but empowers interested parties to fruitfully research who they're coming from.

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> libertarian, free-speech

Incidentally, in the US at least, the idea of “free speech” is now firmly associated with the far right conservatives.

Only because the left has been running from this idea as fast as they possibly can for the last decade or so. It used not to be the case. The left used to be the free speech movement. But then they decided they have no use for it anymore - banning and deplatforming is much more fun. And here we are.

Lifelong US resident here - this is not remotely true.

Free speech rallies have been customarily labeled by the national media (and not only) as white supremacist, for example. Regardless of whether this has merit or not, whenever you say that you “support free speech” (without a “but”) you’ll be now suspected of being one of them.

> Free speech rallies have been customarily labeled by the national media (and not only) as white supremacist,

You have that backwards.

White supremacist rallies have labeled themselves as "free speech" rallies in an attempt to normalize their cause. This is a well documented strategy [1]

However, exercising one's free speech rights by rallying for a cause (i.e. Charlottesville's "You will not replace us") does not automatically make that cause synonymous with supporting "free speech".

1. https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/im-not-racist-examining-white-...

True, but before about 10 years ago, the reaction to that was mostly "well, those people are wrong in everything, but they right in this - this is free speech, and we value it, even if we hate those people". Now the reaction is "well, everybody knows "free speech" is a code word for "Nazi" so no wonder...".

It oscillates from decade to decade.

The latest impression is driven by conservatives' current messaging that "big tech" is censoring them, coupled with their belief that the tech mores used to calibrate that censorship are coastal, and therefore more liberal.

Ergo, free speech is conservatives' right to say conservative things.

In the 60s and 80s and 00s, it was liberal. Give it another few years to swing back.

> conservatives' current messaging that "big tech" is censoring them, coupled with their belief that the tech mores used to calibrate that censorship are coastal, and therefore more liberal.

It's not a "messaging", it's an observable fact. Look at political leanings and donations for Twitter or Facebook workers. Over 80% goes to the left. And that's before we consider that the power is not distributed equally there and if you look at the people in power it's more like 100% to the left.

> Ergo, free speech is conservatives' right to say conservative things.

That's a completely wrong conclusion. Free speech is everybody's right to say their things, but conservative's rights are infringed much more frequently, so they complain more.

You are currently being downvoted, but I think it depends and you are half-right.

Free speech as in the first amendment is pretty universal.

Free speech as in Twitter bans and complaining about cancel culture is largely the far right.

> Free speech as in Twitter bans and complaining about cancel culture is largely the far right.

It’s hardly the far right. People from all 3 political groups are scared of cancel culture. Painting this as far right serves only to label anybody that cares about such things as far right. You’re attempting to shut the conversation down. This is part of the problem and is literally misinformation that could cause violence against those labeled “far right” in the future.

Differentiating between two nuanced things which someone has lumped together is the opposite of attempting to shut the conversation down.

> could cause violence against those labeled “far right” in the future.

That’s quite the scaremongering there, hyperbole does not move the dialog forward.

> Differentiating between two nuanced things which someone has lumped together is the opposite of attempting to shut the conversation down.

Oh but it is, why else would you label people that care about such things as extremists?

> That’s quite the scaremongering there, hyperbole does not move the dialog forward.

No it serves to make you aware of the danger of your speech.

Also, labeling free speech as "far right" will serve to make "far right" seem more positive.

That seems… unlikely.

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